US President Donald Trump has claimed that Jeffrey Epstein “stole” young women who worked for the spa at Mar-a-Lago.
It is the latest evolution in his description of how their highly scrutinised relationship ended years ago.
One of the women, he acknowledged, was Virginia Giuffre, who was among Epstein’s most well-known sex trafficking accusers.
Mr Trump’s comments expanded on remarks he had made a day earlier, when he said he had banned Epstein from his private club in Florida two decades ago because his one-time friend “stole people that worked for me”.
At the time, he did not make clear who those workers were.
The Republican president has faced an outcry over his administration’s refusal to release more records about Epstein after promises of transparency, a rare example of strain within Mr Trump’s tightly controlled political coalition.
Mr Trump has attempted to tamp down questions about the case, expressing annoyance that people are still talking about it six years after Epstein took his own life while awaiting trial, even though some of his own allies have promoted conspiracy theories about it.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend, was recently interviewed inside a Florida courthouse by the Justice Department’s No 2 official, though officials have not publicly disclosed what she said.
Her lawyers said on Tuesday that she is willing to answer more questions from the US congress if she is granted immunity from future prosecution for her testimony.
Aboard Air Force One while returning from Scotland, Mr Trump said he was upset that Epstein was “taking people who worked for me”.
The women, he said, were “taken out of the spa, hired by him — in other words, gone”.
“I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people,” Mr Trump said.
When it happened again, Mr Trump said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.
Asked if Ms Giuffre was one of the employees poached by Epstein, he demurred but then said “he stole her”.
The White House originally said Mr Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because he was acting like a “creep”.
Ms Giuffre died by suicide earlier this year.
She claimed that Maxwell spotted her working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000, when she was a teenager, and hired her as Epstein’s masseuse, which led to sexual abuse.
Although Ms Giuffre’s allegations did not become part of criminal prosecutions against Epstein, she is central to conspiracy theories about the case.
She accused Epstein of pressuring her into having sex with powerful men.
Maxwell, who has denied Giuffre’s allegations, is serving a 20-year-prison sentence in a Florida federal prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse underage girls.
A spokeswoman for the House Oversight Committee, which requested the interview with Maxwell, said the panel would not consider granting the immunity she requested.
The potential interview is part of a frenzied, renewed interest in the Epstein saga following the Justice Department’s July statement that it would not be releasing any additional records from the investigation, an abrupt announcement that stunned online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and elements of Mr Trump’s political base who had been hoping to find proof of a government cover-up.
Since then, the Trump administration has sought to present itself as promoting transparency, with the department urging courts to unseal grand jury transcripts from the sex-trafficking investigation and deputy attorney general Todd Blanche interviewing Maxwell over the course of two days at a Florida courthouse last week.
In a letter on Tuesday, Maxwell’s lawyers said that though their initial instinct was for Maxwell to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, they are open to having her co-operate provided that legislators satisfy their request for immunity and other conditions.
But the Oversight Committee seemed to reject that offer outright.
“The Oversight Committee will respond to Ms Maxwell’s (lawyer) soon, but it will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony,” a spokesperson said.
Separately, Maxwell’s lawyers have urged the Supreme Court to review her conviction, saying she dd not receive a fair trial.
They also say that one way she would testify “openly and honestly, in public”, is in the event of a pardon by Mr Trump, who has told reporters that such a move is within his rights but that he has not been not asked to make it.
“She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning,” they said.
