Trump says he declined Epstein’s invitation to visit his island: ‘I never had the privilege of going’
"In one of my very good moments, I turned it down."
President Donald Trump said Monday that he had “never had the privilege” of visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island because he had turned down an invitation from the financier.
As part of a continued effort by Trump to distract, deny and deflect from his long-running relationship with Epstein, the president vigorously denied that he had ever visited Epstein’s private islands in the Caribbean, while in the same breath baselessly accusing his predecessor, former President Bill Clinton, of visiting the islands, his latest bid at conspiracy deflection.
“I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there supposedly” a number of times, Trump said during a trip to Scotland. Epstein owned two islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands — Little St. James and Great St. James, where he entertained famous friends and allegedly trafficked underage girls for sex.
He continued, “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. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down.”
Clinton has denied visiting the islands or having any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal behavior, and has said he wishes he had never met him. When asked about Trump’s accusations, an aide to Clinton pointed to that original denial, adding that it had been 20 years since Clinton had been in contact with Epstein.
In 2002, Clinton had flown on a private jet owned by Epstein as part of a visit to Africa — a trip which brought a flurry of media attention — but the former president has not been linked by prosecutors or officials to any of the criminal accusations against Epstein. Between 1993 and 1997, while Trump and Epstein remained friendly, Trump’s name appeared seven times in Epstein’s flight logs.
In his appearance Monday, Trump also contradicted a previous explanation for the eventual rupture in their relationship offered by the White House. Aides had said that Trump barred Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club “for being a creep.” On Monday, Trump said Epstein was blacklisted because he had hired away some of Trump’s employees.
“For years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help, and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that worked for me. I said ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place, persona non grata. I threw him out, and that was it.”
It was unclear what employees Trump was referring to, and the White House did not immediately offer an explanation. Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring who died by suicide last year, had said that she was recruited into his world while working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago.
The two men also had a falling out in 2004, when both sought to buy an oceanfront Palm Beach mansion that had fallen into foreclosure.
The conspiracies around Epstein’s crimes, fed by Trump and his allies, have consumed Washington in recent weeks. After backtracking on promises of uncovering a potentially sinister truth about the death of Epstein, the conspiratorial fervor drummed up by Trump and his subordinates has backfired, triggering a political backlash among Trump’s most ardent and outspoken supporters.
Trump has also sought to distance himself from Epstein after new reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times detailed their past relationship.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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