President Donald Trump Monday said he never had the “privilege” of visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s private island as he shed new details on his split from the notorious pedophile who was once his close friend and Palm Beach neighbor.
Brushing off questions about Epstein, Trump again suggested the firestorm over Epstein was overblown and accused political enemies of concocting claims about his ties to Epstein and being closer to the infamous sex trafficker than he ever was.
“I never went to the island and Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times,” Trump said during a press conference in Scotland with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “I never had the privilege of going to his island. I did turn it down. .. In one of my of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go.”
He also tweaked his story about how his once-cozy friendship with Epstein ended. He said Epstein irked him by poaching employees from his Mar-a-Lago estate, a different story from his previous claim that he cut ties because Epstein was a “creep.”
“He hired (my) 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.
Trump said he then declared Epstein to be “persona non grata,” in his circle.
“I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “I never had the privilege of going to his island.”
Trump also was forced to fend off questions about Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and is angling for a pardon.
He said it would be “inappropriate” to discuss a get-out-of-jail-free card for Maxwell, who recruited and groomed dozens of young girls to be abused by Epstein.
But he refused to rule out a pardon, noting as he has done before that he has the power to grant clemency to her.
Trump’s No. 2 official at the Department of Justice spent two days last week quizzing Maxwell about what she may have not yet revealed about the notorious case.
Congressional Democrats are demanding that the administration reveal what Maxwell said and explain what Trump hopes to get out of the highly unusual discussion with the convicted sex offender.
Maxwell has asked the Supreme Court to hear her appeal of her 2022 conviction and is awaiting a ruling on whether it will take up the case.
With the political damage from the Epstein scandal showing no signs of abating, Trump also sought to deflect blame to his Democratic rivals.
He claimed that ex-President Biden or officials in his administration might have planted his name in explosive prosecution files about the Epstein case, a far-fetched allegation for which he provided no evidence.
Trump tried to keep a lid on the release of the files after he reportedly was told by Attorney General Pam Bondi that he is mentioned in them.
“I was running against someone who ran the files,” Trump said, mentioning ex-Attorney General Merrick Garland and former FBI Director James Comey. “They can easily put something in the files that’s a phony.”
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