A former Palm Beach, Florida, police chief who investigated Jeffrey Epstein in the mid-2000s told the FBI that Donald Trump called him during the investigation to express support for stopping Epstein, according to an FBI summary of a 2019 interview.
The Miami Herald first reported on the existence of the FBI document.
Trump has repeatedly denied knowing about Epstein’s criminal conduct and has said he cut off contact with Epstein more than 20 years ago. Trump has also said he removed Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after learning Epstein was poaching employees from the club’s spa.
The former police chief, Michael Reiter, is not named in the publicly posted version of the document, but the details in the FBI summary align with previously reported information about his role in the investigation, which began in 2005. Reiter’s detectives were investigating Epstein over allegations that he recruited underage girls—some as young as 14—for “massages” that became sexual.
The alleged call from Trump is described as one portion of a four-page FBI report summarizing Reiter’s account from October 2019, two months after Epstein’s death. In the report, Reiter said Trump told him he had thrown Epstein out of his club and called law enforcement to say, “thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
A source familiar with the matter said the call would have occurred in July 2006, around the time details of the police investigation became public.
According to the FBI summary, Reiter also said Trump told him that people in New York viewed Epstein as “disgusting,” and that Ghislaine Maxwell was Epstein’s “operative,” urging investigators to focus on her. The report says Trump told Reiter he had been around Epstein once when teenagers were present and left immediately. Reiter also told the FBI that Trump was among the first people to call when news spread that police were investigating Epstein.
A Justice Department official told ABC News the department was not aware of corroborating evidence that Trump contacted law enforcement at the time.
At a White House briefing Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not directly address questions about the alleged call. She reiterated that Trump removed Epstein from Mar-a-Lago and ended their relationship, and said she did not know whether the phone call occurred.
The account of the alleged call, as described in the FBI document, had not been previously reported.
Reiter was a central figure in the initial Florida investigation. After clashing with local prosecutors, he publicly criticized the decision to take the case to a grand jury rather than charging Epstein directly. He later apologized to victims for how the case was handled and worked with federal authorities to open a separate investigation, which ultimately led to Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution agreement.
