© Davidoff Studios/Getty ImagesDonald Trump and his then girlfriend Melania Knauss pictured with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in February 2000.
According to the summary of an October 2019 interview of Michael Reiter, who served as the wealthy Florida enclave's top cop from 2001 to 2009, the future president was "one of the very first people to call when people found out" that authorities were investigating Epstein for sex with girls as young as 14 whom he had hired to give him massages.
Donald and Melania Trump with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Getty Images
"Thank goodness you're stopping him, everyone has known he's been doing this," Trump was quoted as telling Reiter on the call, adding that he "got the hell out of there" on one occasion when he was around Epstein while teenagers were present.
The summary, first reported by the Miami Herald, added that Trump told Reiter he "threw" Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago and that "people in New York knew Epstein was disgusting."
Trump also referred to Maxwell as "Epstein's operative," telling the chief "she is evil and to focus on her."
Reiter's name is redacted in the interview summary, but details in the document match up with publicly known information about his role in the Epstein probe.
According to the chief, he met Epstein after the financier reported one of his employees for stealing from him.
Reiter recounted that Epstein donated $40,000 to the department for the purchase of a machine to review security footage, cut a $90,000 check (never cashed) to buy a fingerprinting machine around the time his first victim came forward, and gave "more than others" to a police scholarship fund for children.
Comment: Who's going to bite the hand that feeds them? Plus the Florida AG Alex Acosta was being leaned on by intelligence services, who claim Epstein was"one of theirs".
When Reiter inquired about Epstein, he claimed to have been told that the financier "supports law enforcement and is an important guy."
The Palm Beach Police Department began receiving reports about Epstein "[i]n the early 2000's, maybe 2003," according to the summary. Eventually, Reiter said, his officers put together a sprawling case against Epstein, including "sexual battery cases against the co-conspirators."
However, Reiter recalled that state prosecutors "said the victims were not credible and would show their MYSPACE pages and such. They would refute minute details in the probable cause affidavit ... This case died at the state level."
The summary of the FBI interview of Reiter was included in millions of files that have been released by the Justice Department in connection with the case of Epstein, who pleaded guilty to Florida charges of soliciting a minor for sex in 2008 under a controversial non-prosecution agreement that saw him serve 13 months in prison, much of that time on work release.
Epstein was arrested by the FBI in July 2019 and charged with sex trafficking, but was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell the following month while awaiting trial.
The document emerged hours after Maxwell invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a closed-door virtual deposition before the House Oversight Committee.
The 64-year-old UK-born socialite declined to answer questions about her friendship with Epstein or her role in the trafficking of young women and girls.
An attorney for Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a medium-security Texas facility, said following the testimony that his client would speak freely if she is granted clemency by Trump.
The White House has said no such action is under consideration, with Trump telling reporters in July that he would "take a look at it."
"I wouldn't consider it or not consider it. I don't know anything about it," he said at the time. "I will speak to the DOJ."
The man is complicit in a cover up and is a complete and total coward. I can’t imagine John F. Kennedy, his brother Bobby, Frank Church or any other number of truly principled and fearless legislators allowing themselves to bend the knee to the forces of evil like this. The man thinks we should move on. The man is a trembling cockroach. I ask every other man (sorry ladies) who comments in this forum:
If you were President and presented with evidence that anyone (your friends, colleagues or not) had engaged in the acts which these files point to would you not risk your life proudly to expose them all and fight to the death to see them sway from the gallows or crumple in a heap in front of a bloodied wall after a hail of gunfire?
Do not find solace in the fact that Donald Trump may not have raped children. Accept that this story is the clearest indication that the United States of America as we know it is finished.