WASHINGTON — President Trump stunned reporters Friday by offering them “a list” of Jeffrey Epstein associates and telling them he hasn’t thought about whether he will pardon the dead pedophile’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump commented on the case as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Maxwell, 63, for a second day in Tallahassee, Fla. — as the administration seeks to put to bed three straight weeks of renewed controversy over the late criminal.
“You should focus on [Bill] Clinton. You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard [Larry Summers], you should focus on some of the hedge fund guys. I’ll give you a list,” the president said as he departed the White House for a trip to Scotland.
“These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein, I sure as hell didn’t.”
“You ought to be speaking about Bill Clinton, who went to [Epstein’s private isle in the US Virgin Islands] 28 times. I never went to the island,” the president scolded the White House press corps. Asked whether he would pardon Maxwell, with whom Trump socialized along with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, Trump said first that he “can’t talk about pardons” and then that “it’s something I haven’t thought about.”
The president also said he wasn’t worried that Blanche could be misled by the convicted sex trafficker in a gambit to win an earlier release, calling Blanche, his own former personal lawyer, a “professional lawyer who’s been through things like this before.”
Trump also addressed a crude note he purportedly wrote in 2003 to Epstein on the occasion of his 50th birthday as part of a bound book assembled by Maxwell, saying: “Somebody could have written a letter and used my name.”
Public interest in the Epstein case was revived this year by Attorney General Pam Bondi publicly teasing bombshells and even at one point appearing to indicate she had possession of a client list.
Prince Andrew, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Victoria’s Secret billionaire Les Wexner are among Epstein’s former friends, as are Clinton and Trump, who reportedly had a falling out with the sex pervert in late 2004 due to competitive bidding on a Palm Beach mansion, though various alternate triggers have circulated.
Trump has struggled to strongarm fellow Republicans, including members of Congress and grassroots allies, to move on from the matter after Bondi issued a July 6 memo saying there is no Epstein client list and the evidence indicates that he died by suicide in jail on Aug. 10, 2019.
