Trump says Epstein ‘stole' underage victim Virginia Giuffre from his Mar-a-Lago spa leading to feud
Speaking aboard Air Force One while returning from his five-day golf holiday in Scotland, Trump was asked about comments he'd made over the weekend suggesting that he'd banned the disgraced financier from his Palm Beach club for hiring away employees.
He confirmed that Epstein 'took people that work from me' and did so again despite being admonished not to poach Mar-a-Lago workers by Trump.
'He took people that work for me, and I told him, don't do it anymore. And he did it. I said, Stay the hell out of here,' he said.
Pressed further on whether the workers poached by Epstein included Virginia Giuffre, a Mar-a-Lago pool attendant who was recruited and groomed by Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and raped by Epstein on numerous occasions after being ostensibly hired as a 'masseuse,' Trump confirmed that the employees who factored in the dispute leading to the end of his friendship with Epstein included young women.
'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,' he said, describing Epstein as having 'stolen' his spa workers.
Asked point-blank if one of them was Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, he replied: 'I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people.'
'Yeah, he stole her,' he said.
Trump added that Giuffre, who also accused other powerful men of raping her during the time she was associated with Epstein, 'had no complaints' about him.
The president's new claim about the reasons why he ended a years-long friendship with Epstein contradicts previous statements made by him over the years with respect to why he cut off contact with the notorious sex offender, who was arrested in March 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial.
He previously said he cut off contact with Epstein because he was a 'creep,' citing a 2009 conviction for soliciting underage prostitutes. Trump and people close to him have routinely cited the end of his friendship with Epstein when attempting to distance the president from the disgraced sex trafficker.
The last few weeks of Trump's presidency have been consumed by scandal over his administration's handling of longstanding calls from his supporters to release files associated with the cases of Epstein and Maxwell, who is currently serving a two-decade sentence for sex trafficking charges in a Florida prison.
Asked about the matter on Monday during a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Trump went on an extended rant during which he accused Democrats of having fabricated the whole issue for political gain.
He called the bipartisan clamor for the documents 'a hoax that's been built up way beyond proportion' and accused his predecessor of having tampered with the infamous case files.
'Those files were run by the worst scum on Earth. They were run by Comey, they were run by Garland, they were run by Biden, and all of the people that actually ran the government, including the auto pen. Those files were run for four years by those people. If they had anything, I assume they would have released it,' he said.
He also said that he turned down an invitation to Jeffrey Epstein's notorious island, characterizing the decision as "one of my very good moments."
'I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island,' he said. ' I turned it down. I didn't want to go to his island."
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