IN THE EPSTEIN MESS, GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS FOR TRUMP. On Tuesday, first son Donald Trump Jr. wrote a very brief post to his 15.9 million followers on X. “Seems like a really big deal” was all it said. But it linked to a story headlined, “Ex-police chief says Trump told him ‘thank goodness you’re stopping’ [Jeffrey] Epstein in the 2000s.” Indeed, that is a big deal.
The story is based on a document made public in the Justice Department’s most recent 3 million-page release of Epstein material. The document was FBI notes from an October 2019 interview with Michael Reiter, who in 2006 was the police chief of Palm Beach, Florida. Reiter told the FBI that in 2006, shortly after public reports that police were investigating the financier, future President Donald Trump called Reiter.
“Trump called the PBPD [Palm Beach Police Department] to tell him ‘thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,'” the report said. “Trump told [Reiter] people in New York knew Epstein was disgusting. Trump said [Ghislaine] Maxwell was Epstein’s operative, ‘she is evil and to focus on her.’ Trump told [Reiter] that he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and Trump ‘got the hell out of there.'” The report went on to note that “Trump was one of the very first people to call when people found out that they were investigating Epstein.”
The reason the FBI interview is a big deal is that it strongly supports Trump’s contention that he broke ties with Epstein sometime around 2004 and never resumed them. That is important because the people who are now drawing the most attention in the continuing Epstein matter are those who maintained ties with Epstein after the 2006-2008 period, when Epstein was charged and pleaded guilty to sex trafficking an underage girl. Trump is not part of that group that kept up with Epstein after his true nature was known. Trump socialized with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, then cut it off. That appears to be the story.
The new document was a blow to Democrats who are trying to use the Epstein mess to damage Trump. Cumulatively, the Justice Department document dumps have done terrible damage to some reputations — just ask the former Prince Andrew, former U.K. Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, lawyer Brad Karp, former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, and others. But Trump has remained relatively untouched because he had the sense to stop associating with Epstein before Epstein’s criminal conviction and, later, not to associate with Epstein when Epstein was a known sex offender.
But another Epstein problem has arisen for Trump: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. It has long been known that Lutnick owned the Manhattan townhouse next to Epstein’s. In a podcast interview with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine last October, Lutnick described what he said was his first and only contact with Epstein in 2005.
It came when Lutnick briefly visited his new neighbor’s house. Lutnick said Epstein showed him around, and after the living room, opened the doors to what Lutnick thought would be the dining room. Instead, there was a massage table surrounded by candles in the middle of the room. Lutnick, whose wife was with him, asked Epstein how often he had massages. “Every day,” Epstein said, according to Lutnick. Then Epstein moved closer to Lutnick and added, “The right kind of massage.”
At that point, Lutnick said he and his wife excused themselves and left. “And in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again. So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn’t going, because he’s gross.” A moment later, Lutnick concluded, “That’s my story — a one and absolutely done.”
Now it turns out that was not true. The latest Epstein documents showed Epstein and Lutnick arranging a lunch together on Epstein’s island in the Caribbean in December 2012 — four years after Epstein was known as a sex offender. In a Senate hearing this week, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) asked Lutnick, “Did you in fact make that visit to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island?”
“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” Lutnick said. “My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with — they were there as well, with their children. And we had lunch on the island. That is true for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies, and with my wife all together. We were on a family vacation.” Lutnick said he and his entourage were not a part of any untoward behavior, adding of the visit, “I don’t recall why we did it.”
The documents suggested other contacts between Epstein and Lutnick, and the commerce secretary testified that he saw Epstein one other time, in 2011, after Epstein’s conviction.
There is no evidence or suggestion that Lutnick engaged in any inappropriate behavior related in any way to Epstein. On the other hand, his “one and absolutely done” statement to Devine was pretty definitive and definitely untrue. Democrats, of course, called for Lutnick to be fired immediately. A White House spokesperson expressed confidence in the secretary. Trump has not taken any action. And that is where things stand.
So what should Trump do now? The problem the president would face were he to fire Lutnick is that it would give Democrats a huge burst of energy, would make them resolve to keep up and even intensify their Epstein-related attacks on Trump. Trump’s adversaries would have a scalp, and they would be eager to get another one, and another one, and another one, until — they hope — they finally get Trump’s scalp. It is both human nature and an iron rule of politics.
So look for Trump to keep toughing it out on Epstein. So far, millions of documents, including the newly released account of the former Palm Beach police chief, have supported Trump’s contention that he broke off relations with Epstein well before his criminal behavior became publicly known, and did not have any contact afterward.
Some journalists have pointed to Trump’s statement nearly seven years ago disavowing knowledge of Epstein’s crimes to suggest Trump is covering something up. In July 2019, shortly after Epstein’s arrest, Trump was asked, “Did you have any suspicions that [Epstein] was molesting young women, underaged women?” In response, Trump said, “No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I haven’t spoken to him in many, many years. But I had no idea.” In the same interview, Trump added that, “I didn’t want anything to do with [Epstein]. That was many, many years ago.”
BYRON YORK: THE CLINTONS ARE SO OVER
Does the Palm Beach Police document prove that wrong? Perhaps. But it’s also true that sometimes we know things, or think we know things, but we don’t know them definitively enough to take action on them. Did Trump know that Epstein was a creepy guy? It seems that he did. Did he know that Epstein was involved in the criminal sex trafficking of minor girls? Trump might well not have had sufficient knowledge to conclude something like that.
What we do know, through the latest document release and earlier revelations, is that there is no evidence Trump was ever involved in any inappropriate behavior involving Epstein, that Trump was finished with Epstein before he was convicted, or even charged, with sex crimes, and that Trump had nothing to do with Epstein afterward. Given the current standards of the Epstein matter, that is a really big deal.
