- President Donald Trump said that Jeffrey Epstein “stole” Virginia Giuffre from the spa of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
- Giuffre, years later, went public with allegations that she had been sexually abused by Epstein as a teenager and passed around to other men who also abused her.
- Trump said defendants in his defamation lawsuit over a Wall Street Journal story about him and Epstein who include Rupert Murdoch want to settle the $10 billion civil complaint.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump claimed that Virginia Giuffre was “stole” by Jeffrey Epstein from her position at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
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Trump informed reporters that the infamous sex offenders snatched a worker from the Mar-a-Lago spa at least twice, including when Epstein poached Giuffre in the early 2000s.
Years later, Giuffre came out with claims that Epstein had sexually assaulted her while she was a teenager and had then passed the abuse on to other men.
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Trump said on Monday that he severed his relationship with Epstein, his buddy at the time, in the middle of the 2000s because “he stole people who worked for me” despite receiving warnings against it.
When asked if there were any young ladies among those employees on Air Force One on Tuesday, Trump said, “Well, I don’t want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken.”
According to Trump, “People were taken out of the spa, hired by” Epstein.
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“I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether it was spa or no spa,'” Trump recalled.
“And he was all right. Then he did it again shortly after,” Trump remarked of Epstein. “And I said, ‘Out of here.'”
Giuffre, who committed suicide in April, said that while she was employed at the spa, Epstein’s convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, had recruited her.
Regarding Guiffre, Trump remarked on Tuesday, “I think that was one of the people here.”
“He stole her.”
“And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever,” Trump continued.
A representative for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms stated on Tuesday that the committee “will not consider granting congressional immunity for” any of Maxwell’s testimony.
That declaration followed Maxwell’s attorney’s letter to the committee stating that she would exercise her Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination and decline to appear in response to the panel’s subpoena last week unless certain predetermined terms were met.
According to her lawyer David Oscar Markus, those requirements include being granted immunity from prosecution for her testimony, being questioned outside of prison, receiving any questions beforehand, and only appearing after the Supreme Court has decided her appeal of her sentence.
Nevertheless, Markus added that “she would be willing and eager to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, D.C.” if “Ms. Maxwell were to receive clemency” from Trump, who could either pardon her or commute her 20-year jail sentence.
The spokeswoman for Oversight stated, “The Oversight Committee will respond to Ms. Maxwell’s attorney soon, but it will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony.”
At trial, Maxwell, 63, was found guilty of offenses involving arranging for Epstein to sexually abuse minor females.
Following criticism triggered by the Justice Department’s earlier July failure to reveal investigative files in Epstein’s case, despite earlier pledges to do so, members of Congress and others are calling for additional information regarding Epstein and Maxwell.
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Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the Oversight Committee, wrote to Maxwell last week, “It is essential that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr. Epstein,” as the Justice Department “undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr. Epstein’s cases.”
“In particular, the Committee seeks your testimony to inform the consideration of potential legislative solutions to improve federal efforts to combat sex trafficking and reform the use of non-prosecution agreements and/or plea agreements in sex-crime investigations,” Comer stated.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who requested the meeting after expressing interest in interrogating Maxwell about her knowledge of possible other abusers of women and girls associated with Epstein, spoke with Maxwell for hours over two days this month.
For the interview, Maxwell was granted limited immunity by the Justice Department.
The defendants in Trump’s recent $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal publisher and others over an article about him and Epstein “want to settle” the case, which is still pending in federal court in Miami, Trump added on Tuesday.
In connection with the Journal article claiming that Trump wrote Epstein a “bawdy” letter in 2003 to celebrate Epstein’s fiftieth birthday, Trump is suing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, Murdoch’s News Corp, Dow Jones & Co., and two reporters. The Journal is published by Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp.
The president disputes that letter’s authorship.
Trump’s attorneys requested on Monday that a judge force Murdoch to appear in court for a deposition in the matter within 15 days, pointing out that the 94-year-old “has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life, is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares.”
“These factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” the motion filed by Trump’s lawyers stated.
On Tuesday, the president stated, “I would have assumed that Rupert Murdoch controls [the Journal], but, you know, maybe does, maybe doesn’t.”
“They are discussing doing something with us, but we’ll wait and see. We’ll see,” he added, adding that perhaps they wanted us to abandon it. “They want to settle.”
Dow Jones has been asked by CNBC to comment on Trump’s assertion.
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