WASHINGTON — President Trump detailed his falling out with late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein for the first time Tuesday, telling reporters the convicted sex offender used Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club spa as a hunting ground for young women.
“Everyone knows the people that were taken, and it was the concept of taking people that work for me is bad,” Trump, now 79, said as he flew back to Washington after spending five days in Scotland. “But that story has been pretty well out there, and the answer is yes, they were.”
The US president said Monday that he booted Epstein — who died in his Manhattan jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges — from Mar-a-Lago because the financier “stole people that worked for me.”
“I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world, at Mar-a-Lago. And people were taken out of the spa, hired by him,” Trump recounted. “When I heard about it, 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.’”
Among the victims Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell met at Mar-a-Lago was Virginia Giuffre, who made global headlines when she claimed she had sex with the UK’s Prince Andrew at the age of 17.
“I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah, he stole her,” Trump said of Giuffre, who took her own life this past April. “And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.
Giuffre, who went public with her accusations against Epstein in 2011, had worked as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, where her father was a maintenance manager.
At some point in 2000, Giuffre, then 16, met Maxwell, who offered her a job working for Epstein as a traveling masseuse.
