A former Florida police chief has said Donald Trump called him in 2006 and remarked that “everyone” knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s behaviour, according to an FBI document released in the latest batch of Epstein-related files.
The document is a written summary of a 2019 FBI interview with the former Palm Beach police chief, who said Trump contacted him after police launched an investigation into Epstein. According to the interview record, Trump said: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
The officer’s name is redacted in the document, but he is identified as the Palm Beach police chief at the time of the Epstein investigation. That role was held by Michael Reiter, who later told the Miami Herald that he did receive a call from Trump.
Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein and has said he did not know about his crimes. The alleged call is likely to raise new questions about what Trump knew and when.
When asked by reporters in 2019, after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges, whether he had any suspicions about the financier, Trump said: “No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I haven’t spoken to him in many, many years.”
According to the FBI interview summary, Reiter said Trump told him during a July 2006 call that he had thrown Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club and that “people in New York knew he was disgusting”. Reiter also claimed Trump described Ghislaine Maxwell as Epstein’s “operative” and said “she is evil” and should be a focus of investigators.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role in recruiting underage girls for Epstein.
Reiter further told the FBI that Trump said he had been around Epstein when he was with teenagers and that he “got the hell out of there”. He also said Trump was among the first people to call Florida police when he learned they were investigating Epstein.
At the time, Palm Beach police were probing allegations that Epstein sexually exploited underage girls. The case was later handed to federal prosecutors, who in 2008 reached a controversial plea deal with Epstein that included a non-prosecution agreement shielding him from more serious charges.
In a statement, a US Justice Department official said they were not aware of any corroborating evidence that Trump contacted law enforcement 20 years ago.
At a White House briefing on Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about the reported call and said it “may or may not have happened in 2006”.
“What President Trump has always said is that he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club because Jeffrey Epstein was a creep,” she said. “And that remains true in this call. If it did happen, it corroborates exactly what President Trump has said from the beginning.”
Trump and Epstein socialised in the 1990s and were photographed together, but Trump and his aides have repeatedly said he cut ties with Epstein around 2004, years before Epstein’s first arrest. Trump has said the fallout happened after he learned Epstein was trying to recruit employees from Mar-a-Lago.
“When I heard about it, I told him, we don’t want you taking our people,” Trump said last July. “He was fine and then not too long after that he did it again and I said, ‘outta here’.”
The renewed attention comes after Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, testified virtually before the US House Oversight Committee on Monday. According to committee chairman James Comer, she refused to answer questions and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Her lawyer later said Maxwell would be willing to speak “fully and honestly” if granted clemency by Trump. Trump has said he has not considered giving her a pardon.
