WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday continued to dodge questions about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the notorious child sex traffickers he used to party with, responding to one query with a rambling answer that accused former President Barack Obama of treason.
“The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama, absolutely cold,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question about Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence after her conviction on sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell’s associate and fellow sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found hanged in his jail cell in 2019, a month after his arrest on similar charges.
Trump, though, has shown little interest in discussing either of his former friends, and on Tuesday rambled on for seven minutes and 41 seconds, generating 1,281 words, about Obama and his top aides, claiming that they had illegally begun an investigation about the help he received from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 presidential election.
(Obama’s office on Tuesday, pointing out it that it “does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House,” noted that Trump’s statements do not refute the conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 election, which was affirmed in 2020 by the Senate Intelligence Committee, led at the time by now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio.)
Indeed, Trump has taken to calling questions about his relationship with Epstein a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” — the same phrases he has used to describe the Russia election investigations, his attempted extortion of Ukraine to help win the 2020 election, and his attempted coup in 2021 to remain in power despite having lost reelection.
Trump, who is an adjudicated sexual abuser as well as a convicted felon, claims that he never did anything wrong.
During his campaign to regain his job, Trump promised his base of supporters he would release more information about Epstein, his death in a federal lockup, and about those who committed sex crimes with him but who were never charged. His top law enforcement appointees promised the same, as late as a few weeks ago. Attorney General Pam Bondi even invited pro-Trump social media stars to the White House and passed out binders labeled “Epstein Files” with the pledge that more was coming.
All that ended abruptly two weeks ago, with a July 7 Department of Justice statement that said Epstein had truly died by suicide and there was really no other information to release, including the “client list” that Bondi had previously said was in her possession.
The following day, Trump scolded a reporter who asked him about it. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. You’re asking — we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable,” he complained.
And last week Trump sued the Wall Street Journal after it published an article describing a letter from Trump to Epstein that the paper said was included in a scrapbook Maxwell prepared for Epstein for his 50th birthday. The note included a line drawing of a nude woman, the Journal wrote, and a script-style conversation between Trump and Epstein in which he talked about their shared “wonderful secret.” Trump claims he did not write the letter or make the drawing.
White House aides subsequently removed a Journal reporter from the press pool for an upcoming trip Trump is taking to his golf resorts in Scotland.
Other Republican leaders, meanwhile, are feeling pressured to help Trump end public discussion of Epstein. House Speaker Mike Johnson, of Louisiana, cut short his chamber’s work week and will start a planned August recess early in order to avoid holding recorded votes demanding the release of Epstein investigative files. The House Oversight Committee, however, agreed in a voice vote to ask Maxwell to provide a deposition.
For about 15 years, Trump had socialized with Epstein and Maxwell. Epstein was a frequent guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago country club estate in Palm Beach, and in 2002 Trump praised Epstein in a New York magazine interview: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
The two had a falling out a few years later following a dispute over a real estate deal. Trump began telling people at some point that the real reason was that Epstein behaved inappropriately at Mar-a-Lago with the daughter of a member.
That’s the version his White House aides are pushing today. “The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep,” communications director Steven Cheung told The New York Times.