President Donald Trump has insisted that he turned down ‘the privilege’ of visiting the late Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous private island.
Trump said he rejected an invitation to the Caribbean island Little Saint James, where many of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes were committed.
‘I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island,’ Trump told reporters on Monday.
‘In one of my very good moments, I turned it down.
‘I didn’t want to go to his island.’
Trump was asked about his administration’s ongoing Epstein controversy during a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in Turnberry, Scotland.
The US president has previously denied ever going to Epstein’s 75-acre paradise in the US Virgin Islands. The disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, assisted by his girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, allegedly sex trafficked young women and underage girls at the island.
On Monday, Trump also said that Epstein ‘stole’ people who worked for him by hiring them away.
‘I said, “Don’t ever do that again.” He did it again,’ Trump said.
‘And I threw him out of the place persona non grata. I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know the truth. And by the way, I never went to the island.’
He added that he wouldn’t speak to Epstein for years ‘because he did something that was inappropriate’.
White House spokesman Steven Cheung last week stated that ‘the fact is that The President kicked (Epstein) out of his (Mar-a-Lago) club for being a creep’.
The Trump administration has continued to face backlash on its handling of the Epstein case after the Justice Department and FBI earlier this monthsaid there was no incriminating client list, despite previous promises to release the documents.
Trump’s name is in flight logs from Epstein’s plane, ABC News reported. However, most of the flights recorded are from Palm Beach, Florida, to Teterboro, New Jersey.
Epstein purchased Little St James, dubbed ‘Pedophile Island’, in 1998. Numerous politicians, celebrities and public figures stayed there overnight.
Trump on Monday again did not rule out clemency for Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. He said, as he did last week, that he is ‘allowed to give her a pardon’ but has not been asked about it, and ‘right now it would be inappropriate to talk about it’.
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