President Donald Trump downplayed his past relationship with late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, claiming they had a fallout over Epstein having "hired help" from him.

“For years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump said during a trip to Scotland on Monday (July 28) via the New York Times.. “I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help, and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that worked for me. I said ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place, persona non grata. I threw him out, and that was it.”

Trump said he "never had the privilege" of visiting Epstein's private islands, claiming he turned down an invitation while accusing former President Bill Clinton of doing so.

“I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there supposedly” a number of times, Mr. Trump said via the New York Times.

“I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down," he added.

Epstein, a New York financier, owned two private islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands where he hosted famous friends and allegedly trafficked underage girls for sex. Clinton, who has denied visiting the islands or being aware of Epstein's criminal behavior, has since denounced the late convicted sex offender and, despite having flown on a private jet owned by Epstein as part of a visit to Africa in 2002, has not been linked by prosecutors or officials to any of the crimes linked to the financier.

Trump, whose name reportedly appeared seven times in Epstein's flight logs, and his administration have recently faced scrutiny for not releasing more information about the Epstein files, which led to the president publicly directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to release "pertinent" grand jury testimony. On July 16, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing a majority of Americans (63%) disapproved how Trump and his administration had handled the Epstein files.

Podcaster Joe Rogan, who staunchly supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, criticized the administration's announcement claiming there was never a list or footage revealing Epstein's alleged clients, which was a talking point of conservative pundits for years.

“They’ve got videotape and all [of] a sudden they don’t,” Rogan said on the episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast released on Tuesday (July 15).

“You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is on those tapes,'” he added, referring to FBI Director Kash Patel's appearance on his podcast in June. “Like, what? Why’d they say there was thousands of hours of tapes of people doing horrible s–t? Why’d they say that? Didn’t Pam Bondi say that?"

Bondi had previously claimed that the supposed Epstein list was on her desk awaiting review months ago and told reporters that the FBI was reviewing "tens of thousands of videos" of Epstein "with children or child porn" on July 1 before the DOJ suddenly announced that there was no "Epstein list" or incriminating footage of his associates days later. President Trump spent months claiming he had plans to release everything the government had on Epstein and his alleged associates, which included releasing The Epstein Files: Phase 1 in February, though the files revealed next to no new information.

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