President Donald Trump’s recent account of how he broke off his friendship with the late, convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein sent shockwaves Tuesday.
Trump told a gaggle of reporters aboard Air Force One that he banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago resort over a dispute about Epstein poaching employees. Trump’s association with Epstein is known, but the full extent, or whether the president is associated with Epstein’s crimes, is not.
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“The concept of taking people who work for me is bad,” Trump said. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him [Epstein].”
“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. He was fine, and then not too long after that, he did it again. I said, ‘out of here.’”
The president told New York magazine in 2002 what he knew of Epstein, claiming they’d known each other for 15 years.
Democratic lawmakers immediately jumped online to comment on Trump’s latest Epstein account.
“Trump was cool with the sex trafficking. NOT cool with the employee-poaching. Got it!” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) wrote on X Tuesday.
“RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) wrote on X.
“CANCEL THE MEDICAID CUTS.”
“As usual, Trump has no idea he just made Trumpstein 1000x worse,” sports commentator Keith Olbermann wrote.
TIM BURCHETT ADMITS HE WAS ‘TICKED OFF’ BY TRUMP’S DISMISSAL OF EPSTEIN
Earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi teased releasing the list of Epstein’s clients. However, neither her office nor the FBI has released it as promised. Bondi promised she had documents related to Epstein “sitting on my desk right now to review” on Fox News around the same time.
While many called for Bondi’s resignation over the broken promise, Trump defended Bondi and has not fired her. Instead, Trump instructed her to release “pertinent” documents on July 17.