The US has released a document about Trump's call to the police in the Epstein case
The US Department of Justice has released a document containing a transcript of an FBI interview with former Palm Beach County Police Chief Michael Wright dated 2019. It refers to a phone call Donald Trump made to the local police after an investigation into financier Jeffrey Epstein became public in the mid-2000s, CNN reports.
According to the document, Trump thanked law enforcement officials and said it was good that they were stopping him, adding that everyone knew he was doing it. The call, according to the Miami Herald, likely took place around 2006. In the conversation, Trump allegedly noted that people in New York knew about Epstein's unacceptable behaviour, and he called his associate Ghislaine Maxwell Epstein's operative and advised paying attention to her, describing her as evil.
The document also states that Trump recounted an incident in which he was with Epstein in the presence of minors and immediately left the scene afterwards. According to the FBI, he was one of the first to contact the police after the investigation became public.
White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt said she could not confirm the call, but stressed that if it did take place, it would confirm Trump's position on severing ties with Epstein in the early 2000s. According to her, Trump expelled Epstein from the Mar-a-Lago club, considering him an unacceptable person.
At the same time, a representative of the Department of Justice stated that the agency had no corroborating evidence that the president had contacted law enforcement about 20 years ago. A private security company associated with Reiter said he was not currently participating in interviews.
The question of what Trump knew about Epstein's activities remains a focus during his second presidential term amid the publication of millions of pages of case materials. Trump has acknowledged that he was friends with Epstein in the 1990s and was part of the same social circle in Palm Beach, but claims that he cut off contact in the early 2000s. According to him, the reason was Epstein's attempts to poach employees from his club.
One of them, according to Trump, may have been Virginia Giuffre, who later became one of the most prominent victims in the Epstein case and later died by suicide. At the same time, Trump later stated that he did not know exactly why women left his club.
Ghislaine Maxwell, whom Trump called evil in the document, was arrested in 2020 and is currently serving a long prison sentence for human trafficking for sexual exploitation. During her latest testimony, she exercised her right not to answer questions, but her lawyer said she was willing to cooperate fully in exchange for a pardon. Trump said in July that he had not considered the possibility of a pardon, although he did not rule it out.
