US President Donald Trump says Jeffrey Epstein “stole” young women, including Virginia Giuffre, who worked for the spa at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
The acknowledgement is the latest evolution in Trump’s description of how his highly scrutinised relationship with Epstein ended years ago.
Trump’s comments on Tuesday (US time) expanded on remarks 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.
Trump faces a continuing outcry over his administration’s refusal to release more records about Epstein after promises of transparency, a rare example of strain within his tightly controlled political base.
Trump has attempted to tamp down questions about the case, expressing annoyance that people are still talking about it six years after Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial.
Aboard Air Force One while returning from Scotland, Trump said he was upset 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”.
“I think she worked at the spa … and by the way, she had no complaints about us,” Trump said.
The White House originally said Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because he was acting like a “creep.”
Giuffre, who had moved to Western Australia, died by suicide earlier this year, aged 41. She had long claimed that Epstein’s long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell spotted her working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000, when she was a teenager, and hired her as Epstein’s masseuse, which led to sexual abuse.
Although Giuffre’s allegations did not become part of criminal prosecutions against Epstein, she is central to conspiracy theories about the case. She accused Epstein of pressuring her into having sex with powerful men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew.
The King’s younger brother strenuously denies her allegations. He reached a multimillion-dollar out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in 2022.
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-with AAP
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