By Joseph Ax and David Lawder
Feb 10 (Reuters) – A newly uncovered FBI interview raised new questions about U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion he knew nothing about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, while Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, faced a barrage of questions from lawmakers on Tuesday about his own ties to the financier.
The day’s developments underscored how the fallout from the Epstein scandal remains a major political headache for the Trump administration, weeks after the Justice Department released millions of Epstein-related files to comply with a bipartisan bill.
The files have also created crises abroad after revealing new details of Epstein’s ties to prominent people in politics, finance, business and academia.
In July 2006, as Epstein’s first sex crime charges became public, the police chief in Palm Beach, Florida, received a call from Trump, according to the summary of a 2019 FBI interview with the police chief that was among the files.
The police chief, Michael Reiter, cited Trump as having told him: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
Trump told Reiter that people in New York knew about Epstein and advised him that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate, was “evil,” according to the document. Trump also said he had once been around Epstein when teenagers were present and that he “got the hell out of there.”
Reiter, who retired in 2009, confirmed the details of the FBI interview to the Miami Herald, which first reported its existence.
Asked about the reported conversation, the Justice Department said, “We are not aware of any corroborating evidence that the president contacted law enforcement 20 years ago.”
Trump was friends with Epstein for years, but they had a falling out before Epstein’s first arrest, Trump has said. The president has repeatedly said he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday that Trump has been “honest and transparent” about ending his association with Epstein.
“It was a phone call that may or may not have happened in 2006,” she said. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
LUTNICK GRILLED AT SENATE HEARING
Separately on Tuesday, Lutnick sought to distance himself from Epstein while testifying at a Senate hearing, alleging he “barely had anything to do with” him.
The Justice Department files included emails that showed Lutnick appears to have visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island for lunch in 2012, seven years after he claimed to have cut off all ties. The revelations have prompted calls from both Republicans and Democrats for him to resign.
Lutnick told senators that the two men had met only three times over 14 years and that the lunch, which included his family, occurred simply because he was on a boat near the island.
“I know and my wife knows that I have done absolutely nothing wrong in any possible regard,” Lutnick said at the hearing.
But the emails contradicted Lutnick’s previous statements that he vowed in 2005 never to see Epstein again, after Epstein, his neighbor at the time, showed Lutnick a massage table at his townhouse and made a sexually suggestive comment.
Republican Representative Tom Massie told CNN on Sunday that Lutnick should “make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”
Leavitt told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Trump “fully supports” Lutnick.
Congressional Democrats also introduced legislation on Tuesday intended to make it easier for adult victims of sex trafficking to sue their abusers, even many years later.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez announced the bill alongside Epstein victims and Virginia Giuffre’s family. The proposal — Virginia’s Law — is named after Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers, who died by suicide last year.
Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial. While officially ruled a suicide, his death has prompted years of conspiracy theories, including some that Trump himself amplified to his supporters during his 2024 presidential campaign.
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in helping Epstein abuse teenage girls, sat for a deposition before the U.S. House’s oversight committee on Monday but refused to answer any questions.
(Reporting by David Lawder, Courtney Rozen, Andrea Shalal and Alexandra Alper; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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