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“Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” he allegedly said.
U.S. president Donald Trump knew convicted sex-offender, Jeffrey Epstein. That much we know, and the pictures of Donald Trump and Epstein standing next to each other confirms this.
What is more fuzzy is how much Donald Trump actually knew about what Jeffrey Epstein was up to.
Trump has repeatedly denied knowing anything about Epsteins crimes, but those denials are now being called into question following a newly released 20-yore-old FBI document.
“Everyone” knew
Reuters and CNN reports that, according to a summary of a 2019 FBI interview, Trump contacted Palm Beach police in 2006 when Epstein first faced sex crime allegations.
The document was among millions of files recently made public by the Justice Department under a bipartisan transparency law of the Epstein-files.
The summary recounts a call between Trump and then–Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter. It states that Trump said: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
According to Reuters, Reiter also told investigators that Trump described Ghislaine Maxwell as “evil” and said he once left a gathering with Epstein when teenagers were present, saying he “got the hell out of there.”
Renewed scrutiny
Reiter, who retired in 2009, confirmed the contents of the FBI summary to the Miami Herald, which first reported on the interview.
The Justice Department responded cautiously when asked about the alleged call. “We are not aware of any corroborating evidence that the president contacted law enforcement 20 years ago,” the department said.
Trump has long maintained that he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal conduct. While acknowledging a previous friendship, he has said the two men fell out before Epstein’s first arrest.
Political fallout
According to CNN, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the president on Tuesday, telling reporters that Trump had been “honest and transparent” about cutting ties with Epstein.
“It was a phone call that may or may not have happened in 2006,” she said. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
The broader release of Epstein-related records has also triggered political reverberations beyond the United States, exposing links between the financier and prominent figures in politics, finance and academia.
The developments add to ongoing controversy surrounding the administration as questions continue to surface over past associations.
Sources: Miami Herald, U.S. Justice Department files, Reuters, CNN
