US President Donald Trump offered a clearest explanation on why he severed ties with the late Jeffrey Epstein, disgraced financer and a notorious sex offender. Trump had to answer a question on Jeffrey Epstein in Scotland as he was asked to explain what led to the rift between him and Epstein, who once used to be regular at Trump’s Florida club.
President Trump said that he cut ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein because he “stole” employees from his spa at Mar-a-Lago. The president said the workers in question were young women who worked at the spa, including Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre.
Trump on cutting ties with Jeffrey Epstein
Trump shed light on his falling out with late pedophile, telling reporters the soon-to-be convicted sex offender used Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club spa as a hunting ground for young women.
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“Everyone knows the people that were taken, and it was the concept of taking people that work for me is bad,” Trump, now 79, said. “But that story has been pretty well out there, and the answer is yes, they were.”
“For years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump told reporters during his trip to Scotland. “I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired (my) help, and I said: ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ 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.”
Trump said he booted Epstein — who died in his Manhattan jail cell on August 10, 2019, while awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges — from Mar-a-Lago because the financier “stole people that worked for me.”
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“I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world, at Mar-a-Lago. And people were taken out of the spa, hired by him,” Trump recounted aboard Air Force One. “When I heard about it, I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people,’ whether it was spa or not spa, I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, ‘Out of here.’”
One of the women, he acknowledged, was Virginia Giuffre, who was among Epstein’s most well-known sex trafficking accusers. The remarks by US President when he comes massive criticsm over his administration’s refusal to release more records about Epstein after promises of transparency during his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump has also made attempt to tamp down questions about the case, expressing annoyance that people are still talking about it six years after Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial, even though some of his own allies have promoted conspiracy theories about it.
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Trump was also asked again about the possibility of a pardon for Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
“Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon,” he reiterated. “But nobody’s approached me with it, nobody’s asked me about it. It’s in the news … But right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”
What Trump explained was exactly the modus operandi of Epstein and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell to run their sex trafficking ring. Virginia Giuffre, who died earlier this year, claimed to have been recruited from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago by Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview
Recently, Ghislaine Maxwell was interviewed inside a Florida courthouse by the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, though officials have not publicly disclosed what she said. Her lawyers said Tuesday that she’s willing to answer more questions from Congress if she is granted immunity from future prosecution for her testimony.
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Asked if Giuffre was one of the employees poached by Epstein, he demurred but then said “he stole her.” “I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah, he stole her,” Trump said of Giuffre, who took her own life this past April. “And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.
Giuffre, who went public with her accusations against Epstein in 2011, had worked as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, where her father was a maintenance manager. At some point in 2000, Giuffre, then 16, met Maxwell, who offered her a job working for Epstein as a traveling masseuse. She accused Epstein of pressuring her into having sex with powerful men.
The White House originally said Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because he was acting like a “creep.”
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Trump recently acknowledged that “for years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein, for years, because he did something that was inappropriate.”
“By the way, I never went to the island,” Trump elaborated, referencing Epstein’s Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands, where much of the lurid abuse is alleged to have taken place.
“I never had the privilege of going to his island — and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island,” he said. “In one of my very good moments, I turned it down, I didn’t want to go to his island.”
(With inputs from AP)