US President Donald Trump has said that he ended his relationship with disgraced financier and convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein because he “stole” young female workers from Trump`s Mar-a-Lago resort, Al Jazeera reported.
Speaking to reporters on his way home from a trip to Scotland on Tuesday (local time), Trump alleged that one such worker was the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein`s highest-profile accusers.
“People were taken out of the [Mar-a-Lago] spa, hired by him. In other words, gone,” Trump said. “When I heard about it, I told him, I said, `Listen, we don`t want you taking our people.` And then, not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, `Out of here,`” Al Jazeera quoted.
The US president, who had a close relationship with Epstein for years, has become increasingly defensive as he faces growing scrutiny over his administration`s refusal to release government records with information about Epstein`s abuses.
Officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, have said that releasing further documents would risk disseminating victim information and child pornography collected as evidence.
But Bondi`s comments have helped fuel the controversy. In a February interview with Fox News, Bondi said that Epstein`s supposed client list was “sitting on my desk right now,” as per Al Jazeera.
And the White House last week had said Trump barred Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club “for being a creep,” as per CNN (Trump on Tuesday said the two reasons were “sort of a little bit of the same thing.”)
But back in 2019, reporting traced their fallout to another factor entirely: the two powerful real estate men competing for the same Palm Beach property, as per CNN.
It`s clear that this is something of a sensitive subject. After Epstein`s arrest in 2019, Trump declined to go into detail about their falling out, telling reporters, “The reason doesn`t make any difference, frankly,” CNN reported.
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