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President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Jeffrey Epstein “took” young women who were working for him at the Mar-a-Lago spa.
Reporters asked Trump for details about his falling out with Epstein on Air Force One following the President’s comments the previous day that he ended his years-long friendship with the convicted sex offender after “he stole people that worked for me.” Trump confirmed that Epstein hired young women who worked in the spa of his private club in Florida. He declined to say how many staffers Epstein hired, saying it was “many years ago.”
“I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world in Mar-a-Lago. And people were taken out of the spa. Hired by him. In other words, gone. And other people would come and complain, this guy is taking people from the spa. I didn't know that,” Trump told reporters. “And then 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. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said—out of here.”
Asked specifically about Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Epstein’s sex-trafficking who has alleged she was recruited while working at Mar-a-Lago as a teenager, Trump confirmed he thought she was among the employees Epstein “stole” from the resort.
“I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people, yeah,” the President said. “He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.”
Trump has faced increased scrutiny over his years-long friendship with Epstein since the Wall Street Journal published an article alleging that he sent a “bawdy” birthday letter to the now-disgraced billionaire financier in 2003. Trump has denied writing the letter, and filed a lawsuit against the Journal's parent firms, its owner Rupert Murdoch, and the two reporters behind the article. The Journal later reported that the Justice Department informed Trump at a May meeting that his name was among the many in the Epstein files.
Epstein has been the subject of attention and conspiracy theories for years, but his case has drawn renewed interest after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo earlier this month, concluding that the disgraced financier didn’t have a “client list” of co-conspirators and that his 2019 death in jail was a suicide. Trump, facing outrage from many of his own supporters, has tried and failed to brush off concerns about the case. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called on the Administration to release the files related to the Epstein case for transparency.
Amid the controversy, Trump instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to ask a court to release the transcripts of grand jury testimony made against Epstein years ago. A federal judge in Florida rejected one of the requests, but another ruling is pending.
