President Donald Trump says he “never had the privilege” of going to Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious child sex island and suggests the reason they fell out was because the disgraced financier stole his staff.
As the political firestorm over the Epstein files continues, Trump told reporters in Scotland that he didn’t talk to his old associate for years “because he did something that was inappropriate,” which led to Epstein getting kicked out of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“He hired help, and I said: ‘Don’t ever do that again’,” the president explained on Tuesday.
“He stole people that worked for me. I said: ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place - persona non grata. I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know the truth.”
The comments are the first time that the president has gone into such detail about his relationship with Epstein, who he spent nearly 15 years mingling with as public friends, attending everything from lavish dinners at Epstein’s mansion in New York to wild parties with models and cheerleaders at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
But the president on Monday insisted that he had nothing to do with the notorious sex trafficker’s crimes, and “turned down” the chance to go to Little Saint James, the small private island in the US Virgin Islands that served as the base for Epstein’s operations.
“I never had the privilege of going to his island,” Trump said. “But a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down.”
Numerous stories about Trump and Epstein’s falling out have surfaced over the years, from suggestions that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for hitting on a member’s child, to reports of a property dispute between the pair.
The private Florida club also played a key role in allegations against Epstein by Virginia Giuffre, one of his victims, who alleged that she was working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago as a teenager when Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell approached her and offered her a job as his masseuse.
But despite being a known associate of the former financier, Trump played down suggestions that his name is in the Esptein files, claiming the files were a hoax “run by the worst scum on earth,” such as former president Joe Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, and former Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“If they had anything, I assume they would have released it,” he said, even suggesting that people could “easily put something in the files that’s a phony”.
He also rejected reports that he gave a letter and a lewd drawing to Epstein for his 50th birthday. According to the Wall Street Journal, the letter contained several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman with Trump’s name mimicking pubic hair.
But Trump, who has several drawings on the public record, told reporters: “I don’t do drawings. I’m not a drawing person… Sometimes people would say, ‘Would you do a building?’ And I’ll draw four lines and a little roof, you know, for a charity. But I’m not a drawing person. I don’t do drawings of women, that I can tell you.”
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 as he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges involving underage girls. In 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping Epstein recruit and abuse underage girls.
However, despite her heinous crimes, Maxwell last week met with Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, where they discussed “100 different people” related to the case, according to her lawyer David Markus.
Trump has also not ruled out a pardon for Maxwell, something that would likely inflame tensions among his MAGA base.
Asked about this on Monday, he replied: “I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody has approached me, nobody has asked me for it. It’s in the news, but right now it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”
