Portrait of American financier Jeffrey Epstein, left, and Donald Trump as they pose together at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1997.
Davidoff Studios Photography | Archive Photos | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Monday said he threw his longtime friend Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club and cut ties with him years ago because “he stole people who worked for me.”
Trump said Epstein poached at least one more employee from him after being warned not to do it again.
The president, speaking in Scotland, provided no other details of the dispute with Epstein, who killed himself in a federal jail in New York weeks after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges in July 2019.
“That’s such old history, very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it,” Trump said, after a reporter asked him to put to rest questions about what led to the rift between the two men and Epstein’s exile from the president’s Palm Beach, Florida, club.
“But for years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate,” the president said.
“He hired help, and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that work for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again,” Trump said.
Epstein then became “persona non grata,” Trump said.
“I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know the truth,” he said.
Virginia Giuffre, who was sexually abused by Epstein, has said British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her as a teenager to be exploited by Epstein when Giuffre was working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago.
Giuffre died by suicide in April.
It has long been known that Trump and Epstein had been friends, and there have been various explanations for why they fell out several years before Epstein pleaded guilty to a Florida state charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.
Questions about the men’s relationship have been raised in recent weeks after Attorney General Pam Bondi reneged on a promise she and other Trump administration officials made to release investigative files about Epstein.
Prior reports have suggested that Trump and Epstein fell out after 2004, when Trump outbid Epstein for a French Regency-style estate in Palm Beach.
A White House spokesman last week said Trump expelled Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for “being a creep.”
Bondi earlier this month had the Department of Justice ask several federal judges to unseal transcripts of grand jury testimony about Epstein and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison term for procuring underage girls for Epstein to abuse.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell and her attorney for hours last week at a Florida courthouse. Blanche has said he wants to ask Maxwell about other people who may have abused girls and women in Epstein’s orbit.
