A newly released document published as part of the disclosure of files from the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia case raises questions about U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that he knew nothing about Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls, despite a long friendship between the two that ended in the early 2000s.
The document, now reported by U.S. media, is a transcript of a 2019 interview FBI agents conducted with the former police chief of Palm Beach, Florida. The former chief, Michael Reiter, described how Trump called him in July 2006, after the first sexual abuse charges against Epstein became public. According to Reiter, Trump said during the call: ‘Thank goodness you're stopping him, everyone has known he's been doing this.’
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Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein in February 1997
(Photo: Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images)
Reiter said Trump added that people in New York knew about Epstein’s behavior and told him that Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was ‘evil.’ According to the document, Trump also described being in Epstein’s presence when underage girls were nearby and said he ‘got out of there’ because of it. Reiter, who retired in 2009, confirmed the details of the document yesterday in a conversation with the Miami Herald.
While the document appears to show that Trump himself was not a participant in Epstein’s actions — and he was never suspected of doing so — the assertion that many others knew about Epstein’s conduct casts doubt on Trump’s version that he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes while they were friends. Trump has previously said he cut ties with Epstein and banned him from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach because he behaved like a ‘creep.’ He has also claimed Epstein ‘stole’ young women from the club’s spa, including Virginia Giuffre, the most prominent accuser of Epstein and Britain’s Prince Andrew, who died by suicide last year.
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Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell, the ‘madam’ who recruited underage girls
(Photo: U.S. Justice Department/Handout via REUTERS)
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked last night about the new document and neither confirmed nor denied its claims. She said Trump had always been ‘honest and transparent’ about his relationship with Epstein.
At the same time, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, faced calls yesterday to resign after the documents revealed that he, too, had ties to Epstein and visited the financier’s private Caribbean island in 2012, known as the ‘pedophile island.’ The released investigative files showed that Lutnick attended a dinner with Epstein that year, despite his previous claim that he cut off contact with him seven years earlier, in 2005, after Epstein allegedly showed him a massage table and made a crude sexual remark.
The disclosure prompted a wave of calls from lawmakers in Congress for Lutnick’s resignation, including from members of Trump’s Republican Party. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie told CNN that Lutnick should ‘make life easier on the president and just resign.’ Lutnick testified yesterday at a Senate hearing, saying in his defense that he barely had any relationship with Epstein. He said they met only three times over 14 years and that family members were also present during the Caribbean island visit. ‘I know, and my wife knows, that I have done absolutely nothing wrong in any possible regard,’ Lutnick said at the hearing. For now, he has Trump’s backing, with Leavitt saying the president supports him fully.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during a Senate hearing
(Photo: CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
Epstein was a Jewish American financier who was a close friend of Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s, until a falling out around 2004. Epstein was first convicted of sex offenses involving a 14-year-old girl in 2008 and received a lenient sentence of one year in jail under a plea deal. Only in 2019 did the full scope of his sexual abuse of underage girls become public, carried out with the assistance of Maxwell, who was later convicted of recruiting the girls and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Epstein was found dead in his New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial, and his death was ruled a suicide.
Since then, numerous conspiracy theories have circulated about an alleged cover-up to protect powerful figures with whom Epstein socialized and who were said to have possibly taken part in his actions.
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Trump and an alleged drawing of a nude woman that he is said to have sent Epstein as a birthday greeting; he has denied it
(Photo: AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Since Trump’s return to the White House, the Epstein case has returned to the headlines in U.S. and international media, in part due to promises by senior Trump administration officials of explosive revelations. Those statements were followed by surprise when the administration initially sought to avoid releasing the investigative files. Only last December, after months of pressure that included an unprecedented Republican revolt against him, did Trump allow the passage of legislation mandating the disclosure of the documents. He had previously claimed the case was a ‘Democratic hoax’ against him and that the renewed focus on the affair was meant to distract from Republican Party successes.
In recent weeks, millions of documents from the investigation have been released, containing embarrassing or new details about Epstein’s connections to prominent figures worldwide, from Norway’s crown princess to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The mere mention of names in the documents does not indicate any suspicion of wrongdoing. The disclosures have also shaken British politics and now threaten the tenure of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. An analysis of FBI documents by The Associated Press, published earlier this week, found that investigators uncovered no evidence that Epstein ran an underage sex trafficking ring serving influential men, as claimed by proponents of conspiracy theories.