President Trump was one of the first people to call Palm Beach police to alert them that Jeffrey Epstein was sexually abusing teenage girls, a bombshell Justice Department file has revealed.
A 2020 document released by the Justice Department as part of a mass disclosure of the “Epstein files” showed that Mr. Trump called the Palm Beach Police Department in Florida and told then-Chief Michael Reiter, “thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone knows he’s been doing this.”
Mr. Trump told the police that he “was around Epstein once” when teenage girls were present. Mr. Trump said he “got the hell out of there,” and was “one of the very first people to call” when he found out the Palm Beach Police Department was investigating Epstein. The Department’s investigation began in 2005.
Mr. Trump reportedly made the call in 2006.
The revelation came from an FBI interview with Mr. Reiter, who retired from the police department in 2009 and is considered one of the law enforcement heroes who pushed for the investigation and prosecution of Epstein.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not confirm Mr. Reiter’s claim but told reporters, “This call, if it did happen, corroborates exactly what President Trump has said from the beginning,” and “cracks the narrative” pushed by some that Mr. Trump was involved in the sexual abuse.
At the time the Palm Beach police began investigating Epstein, he was luring underage girls from the local high schools to give him massages at his Palm Beach mansion. The girls reported that he sexually assaulted them.
Mr. Reiter’s name is redacted in the file.
Mr. Trump had been friends with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Epstein once claimed the two were best friends.
Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Reiter suggests Epstein’s involvement with teenage girls was known in the wealthy and influential circles in which the two men socialized in both Palm Beach and New York City.
According to the FBI document, Mr. Trump told Mr. Reiter “he threw Epstein out of his club,” and that “people in New York knew he was disgusting.”
Mr. Trump told Mr. Reiter to investigate Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted of luring underage girls into Epstein’s clutches.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Reiter, “she is evil and to focus on her.”
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence on sex trafficking charges and refused to answer questions this week from a House panel investigating who participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. She is seeking a pardon from Mr. Trump in exchange for her testimony.
Ms. Leavitt said Mr. Trump isn’t focused on Maxwell’s fate and that clemency for her “is not a priority” for the president.
The testimony from Mr. Reiter largely lines up with Mr. Trump’s retelling of his relationship with Epstein and the reports of close Trump associates, among them longtime ally Roger Stone.
Mr. Stone said the president encountered young girls in Epstein’s swimming pool on a visit there decades ago and that he at first thought Epstein had opened up his pool to the neighborhood kids.
“Trump turned down numerous invitations to Epstein’s hedonistic private island and his Palm Beach home,” Mr. Stone wrote on Substack. “There is no evidence Trump did anything improper.”
Mr. Stone wrote that Mr. Trump told him he visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home one time and that the pool was full of girls who he thought were “kids” from the neighborhood.
“According to his personal security guard, Trump left Epstein’s home within 15 minutes of arrival, feeling uncomfortable with the strange ratio of men to much younger women,” Mr. Stone said.
Mr. Trump has said he threw Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club after Epstein lured away one of his female employees, Virginia Giuffre, who later became one of the most vocal Epstein victims.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in 2019 as he awaited prosecution on federal sex trafficking charges.
The Epstein files have revealed a long list of influential and wealthy individuals who socialized with Epstein, even after his 2008 conviction in Florida on soliciting prostitution from a minor.
On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended visiting Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in 2012. Mr. Lutnick told a Senate committee he stopped on the island for lunch “for an hour,” with his wife, children and nannies during a December trip.
“I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with that person,” Mr. Lutnick said during a hearing on broadband funding.
Mr. Lutnick said he met Epstein three times over 14 years. The two lived next door to each other in New York. Lutnick was formerly Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald.
Democrats seized on Mr. Lutnick’s name surfacing in the Epstein files and accused him of misrepresenting the extent of his relationship to Epstein.
Mr. Trump, Ms. Leavitt told reporters Tuesday, “fully supports the secretary.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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