BBC: A former Florida police chief said he received a call from Donald Trump in 2006 in which the now-president told him “everyone” knows about Jeffrey Epstein’s behaviour, according to an FBI document released by the justice department.
The document is a written record of a 2019 FBI interview with the former Palm Beach police chief, who alleges Trump called him after the department launched an investigation into Epstein and said: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
The officer’s name is redacted, but the document identifies the interview subject as the Palm Beach police chief at the time of its Epstein investigation. That was Michael Reiter, who told the Miami Herald that he received the call from Trump.
The president has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and has said he did not know about his crimes. The alleged call, however, is likely to raise further questions about what Trump knew and when.
Asked by reporters in 2019 – when Epstein was arrested by federal agents for sex trafficking – if he had “any suspicions” about the disgraced 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 summary of the interview, which was released in the latest tranche of Epstein files, Reiter said Trump told him in a July 2006 call that he had thrown Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club and “people in New York knew he was disgusting”.
Reiter also claims Trump told him Ghislaine Maxwell was Epstein’s “operative”, and “she is evil and to focus on her”.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role in luring underage girls for Epstein.
Reiter also told the FBI that Trump said he was around Epstein when he was with teenagers and that he “got the hell out of there”.
According to the document, he said Trump was one of the “very first people to call” Florida police when he heard they were investigating Epstein.
