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Former U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island and had declined an invitation to go there.
“I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down,” Trump said during a visit to Scotland. “In one of my very good moments, I turned it down.”
Jeffrey Epstein was a wealthy man who was accused of sex trafficking and abusing young girls. He owned a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and reports say many famous people from politics, business, and entertainment visited there. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while waiting for trial.
His statement is part of a broader effort to distance himself from Epstein, the wealthy financier who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands is widely known as a place where underage abuse allegedly took place, and reports have linked numerous high-profile individuals to the location.
Trump and Epstein were known to have socialised in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Trump now says their relationship soured when Epstein tried to hire away his staff.
“He hired help. And I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again,’” Trump explained. “He stole people that work for me. He did it again. And I threw him out of the place, persona non grata.”
Trump’s comments come amid continued public interest in the Epstein case files and questions about who had contact with Epstein during his years of alleged abuse and trafficking.