Trump called Ghislaine Maxwell ‘evil’ and thanked police for ‘stopping’ Epstein back in 2006: report
President Donald Trump seemed to be aware of Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s activities with teenage girls and young women before the 2006 state charges against the pedophile financier, a document in the Epstein files suggests.
In a 2019 FBI interview, former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter reportedly told federal investigators that Trump was among the first people to call the police department in July of that year, to thank them for investigating Epstein and recommended they look into “evil” Maxwell.
“Trump called the [Palm Beach Police Department] to tell him, ‘thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,’” the FBI transcript says.
Trump allegedly told Reiter that “people in New York knew Epstein was disgusting” and that he was once around Epstein “when teenagers were present” but that he “got the hell out of there.”
The newly-reported transcript appears to contradict the president’s claim that he had little to no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes before he was charged with solicitation of prostitution in Florida.
When asked, in July 2019, if he had any knowledge that Epstein molested underage women, Trump told reporters, “No, I had no idea. I had no idea.”
In July 2025, reporters asked Trump if he knew why Epstein had recruited female staffers from Mar-a-Lago. Trump responded, “No, I don’t know really why.”
The White House referred The Independent to the Justice Department for comment. The Independent has asked the Justice Department for comment.
Reiter’s name is redacted in the transcript. But he confirmed to the Miami Herald that the FBI interviewed him in October 2019 about his department’s investigation into Trump. Reiter said Trump called him in July 2006.
An FBI official told the Miami Herald it did not have “corroborating evidence” that Trump had called Reiter.
“We are not aware of any corroborating evidence that the President contacted law enforcement 20 years ago,” the official said.
The FBI transcript is the latest development from the Epstein files that suggests the president may have been more aware of Epstein’s activities than he has publicly admitted.
Trump and Epstein were friends through the 1990s and early 2000s, but the two had a falling out after Trump learned Epstein and Maxwell had “stolen” women staffers from Mar-a-Lago’s spa. There are also reports that they had fallen out over a real estate deal in Florida in 2004.
Epstein and Maxwell often recruited young women and sometimes girls into their orbit under the pretense of performing massages.
