(Headline USA) President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Jeffrey Epstein “stole” young women who worked for the spa at Mar-a-Lago, including Virginia Giuffre, who was among Epstein’s most well-known sex trafficking accusers.
Trump’s comments expanded on remarks he had made a day earlier, when he said he had banned Epstein from his private club in Florida two decades ago because his one-time friend “stole people that worked for me.” At the time, he did not make clear who those workers were.
The Republican president has faced an outcry over his administration’s refusal to release more records about Epstein after promises of transparency, a rare example of strain within Trump’s tightly controlled political coalition.
Aboard Air Force One while returning from Scotland, Trump said he was upset that Epstein was “taking people who worked for me.” The women, he said, were “taken out of the spa, hired by him — in other words, gone.”
“I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people,” Trump said. When it happened again, Trump said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.
Asked if Giuffre was one of the employees poached by Epstein, he demurred but then said “he stole her.”
The White House originally said Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because he was acting like a “creep.”
Giuffre, formerly Virginia Roberts, alleged that Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell groomed her, starting at 16 years old, for Epstein’s “pleasure, including lessons in Epstein’s preferences during oral sex.” Giuffre said she was trafficked to prominent figures such as Prince Andrew, attorney Alan Dershowitz, politician Bill Richardson, and others.
She settled a lawsuit with Maxwell in 2017 and Prince Andrew in 2022, while dropping her lawsuit against Dershowitz.
Giuffre reportedly committed suicide in April, but her lawyer has raised questions about what really happened.
“When I got the phone call, I was like, are you joking? Because there was no sign that that was something she was considering,” Giuffre’s attorney, Karrie Louden, told The Sun in an article published Monday. “We’ve got big question marks over it.”
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice, was recently interviewed inside a Florida courthouse by the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, though officials have not publicly disclosed what she said. Her lawyers said Tuesday that she’s willing to answer more questions from Congress if she is granted immunity from future prosecution for her testimony and if lawmakers agree to satisfy other conditions.
But the Oversight Committee seemed to reject that offer outright.
“The Oversight Committee will respond to Ms. Maxwell’s attorney soon, but it will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony,” a spokesperson said.
Separately, Maxwell’s attorneys have urged the Supreme Court to review her conviction, saying she did not receive a fair trial. They also say that one way she would testify “openly and honestly, in public,” is in the event of a pardon by Trump, who has told reporters that such a move is within his rights but that he has not been not asked to do it.
“She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning,” the lawyers said.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
