A newly uncovered FBI interview raised new questions about US President Donald Trump’s assertion he knew nothing about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.
The latest twist in the fallout from the Epstein scandal shows how it remains a major political headache for the Trump administration.
It comes weeks after the Justice Department released millions of Epstein-related files.
In July 2006, as Epstein’s first sex crime charges became public, the police chief in Palm Beach, Florida, received a call from Trump, according to the summary of a 2019 FBI interview with the police chief that was among the files.
The police chief, Michael Reiter, cited Trump as having told him: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
Trump told Mr Reiter that people in New York knew about Epstein and advised him that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate, was “evil,” according to the document.
Trump also said he had once been around Epstein when teenagers were present and that he “got the hell out of there.”
Mr Reiter, who retired in 2009, confirmed the details of the FBI interview to the Miami Herald, which first reported its existence.
Asked about the reported conversation, the Justice Department said: “We are not aware of any corroborating evidence that the president contacted law enforcement 20 years ago.”
Trump was friends with Epstein for years, but they had a falling out before Epstein’s first arrest, according to the US president, who has repeatedly said he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday that Trump has been “honest and transparent” about ending his association with Epstein.
“It was a phone call that may or may not have happened in 2006,” she said. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
Separately on Tuesday, Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, faced a barrage of questions from lawmakers about his own ties to the financier.
The Justice Department files included emails that showed Mr Lutnick appears to have visited Epstein's private Caribbean island for lunch in 2012, seven years after he claimed to have cut off all ties. The revelations have prompted calls from both Republicans and Democrats for him to resign.
Mr Lutnick told senators that the two men had met only three times over 14 years and that the lunch, which included his family, occurred simply because he was on a boat near the island.
“I know and my wife knows that I have done absolutely nothing wrong in any possible regard,” Mr Lutnick said at the hearing.
But the emails contradicted Mr Lutnick's previous statements that he vowed in 2005 never to see Epstein again, after Epstein, his neighbour at the time, showed Mr Lutnick a massage table at his townhouse and made a sexually suggestive comment.
Republican Representative Tom Massie told CNN on Sunday that Mr Lutnick should “make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”
