President Donald Trump weighed in on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files on the same day the Department of Justice published transcripts from its interview with Epstein’s longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump claimed that former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers was Epstein’s “best friend” and also alleged that former President Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s private plane.
The president expressed concern about “innocent people” being unfairly implicated in the documents.
“Innocent people shouldn’t be hurt, but I’m in support of keeping it totally open, I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “You got a lot of people that could be mentioned in those files that don’t deserve to be… because he knew everybody in Palm Beach.”
He added that Attorney General Pam Bondi had been instructed to “give them everything you can give them.” His remarks followed a subpoena issued earlier this month by the House Oversight Committee for the Epstein records.
Maxwell’s Statements on Trump
During her interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell denied ever seeing Trump engaged in “inappropriate” behavior.
“I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting,” she said, according to the transcript. “I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
Maxwell said she first became aware of Trump in the early 1990s, when her father, newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, owned the New York Daily News. She recalled visiting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, sometimes on her own, but said she had not seen him since the mid-2000s.
When asked if she had ever heard Epstein—or anyone else—suggest that Trump acted improperly with women or staff in their circle, Maxwell responded: “Absolutely never, in any context.”
(With AP inputs)
