(LifeSiteNews) – The latest batch of documents to be released pertaining to deceased sex predator Jeffrey Epstein contain an FBI interview in which a former police chief claims future President Donald Trump expressed gratitude for law enforcement for stopping Epstein and claimed his crimes were widely known.
The Miami Herald reported that, among the Justice Department’s latest release of another 3.5 million Epstein documents on January 30, was a 2019 FBI report on an interview with former Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter that contains the following passage detailing a phone conversation between himself and Trump that allegedly took place in July 2006 (the same month as Epstein’s first indictment for sex-related charges):
DONALD TRUMP told [REDACTED] that he threw EPSTEIN out of his club. TRUMP called the PBPD to tell him “thank goodness you’ re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this”. TRUMP told him people in New York knew EPSTEIN was disgusting. TRUMP said MAXWELL was EPSTEIN’s operative, “she is evil and to focus on her”. TRUMP told [REDACTED] that he was around EPSTEIN once when teenagers were present and TRUMP “got the hell out of there”. TRUMP was one of the very first people to call when people found out that they were investigating EPSTEIN.
Reiter confirmed to the Herald that he was the subject of the interview and said he did have the conversation with Trump as detailed. But an FBI official said the bureau was “not aware of any corroborating evidence that the President contacted law enforcement 20 years ago.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she did not know whether the call happened, but if it did it “corroborates exactly what President Trump has said from the beginning,” that he expelled Epstein from his orbit because Epstein “was a creep.”
Partisans have fixated on different aspects of the story as support for their dueling narratives. Defenders of the president emphasize that it unequivocally depicts Trump as a foe of Epstein eager to help the police bring him to justice while critics argue it contradicts Trump’s denials that he ever had specific knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Trump and Epstein were friendly associates in the president’s days as a liberal celebrity businessman, through which Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet, but no evidence linking Trump to Epstein’s crimes has ever emerged, and in fact Trump eventually banned him from his Mar-a-Lago club for assaulting an underage girl (though Trump himself strangely offered a less-flattering explanation for their falling out last year, that Epstein poached employees from him).
The dispute comes amid a tangled web of tensions over the extent of Epstein’s influence, more than six years after he killed himself in his prison cell while being held on charges of trafficking underaged girls to be raped by himself and wealthy associates.
In November, Trump signed legislation giving the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) 30 days to release whatever documents it still has in its possession pertaining to Epstein in a reversal from his prior dismissal of the effort as a “hoax” and distraction amid months of discontent over his administration’s handling of the situation since returning to office. In a January 5 court filing, the DOJ admitted more than two million unreleased documents were still in “various phases of review and redaction,” and that the government had released “less than one percent of the total” material in its possession.
Other public figures embarrassed by the latest document dump, but not implicated in crimes, include tech mogul Elon Musk, who exchanged emails about a party on Epstein’s private island (which he ultimately did not attend); and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who admitted to Congress this week he briefly visited the island for lunch in 2012, seven years after claiming to have severed ties with Epstein.
House Republicans are currently battling with former President and First Lady Bill and Hillary Clinton to get them to testify under oath about their relationship with Epstein. The 42nd president says they will only testify if the hearings are made public.