A newly surfaced Epstein-related document is renewing scrutiny of Donald Trump’s long-standing claims that he knew little about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes — and it exposes glaring inconsistencies in Trump’s own account of why he cut ties with Epstein.

At the center of the controversy is a 2019 FBI interview with former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, which recounts a phone call Trump allegedly made to local law enforcement in 2006, just as the Epstein investigation became public.

According to the FBI document, Trump told the police chief: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him. Everybody has known he’s been doing this. Everyone has known.” Trump also reportedly described Ghislaine Maxwell as “evil” and referred to her as Epstein’s operative.

Those statements directly conflict with Trump’s public narrative over the years.

For more than a decade, Trump has insisted that his falling out with Epstein had nothing to do with criminal behavior, instead portraying it as a mundane business dispute involving Epstein allegedly poaching employees from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago spa. As recently as last year, Trump reiterated that version of events, even suggesting that one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, had been among those “taken” from his staff.

The FBI document tells a very different story.

If Trump told police in 2006 that “everybody knew” about Epstein’s behavior — and if he acknowledged leaving situations where Epstein and teenagers were present — then Trump’s repeated claims that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes become difficult to reconcile.

The contradiction raises a fundamental question: why would Trump spend years minimizing the reason for his break with Epstein if the true explanation was that he recognized Epstein as a predator?

Ironically, admitting that he expelled Epstein because he feared for young women would have placed Trump on firmer moral ground. Instead, Trump consistently downgraded the issue to a petty staffing dispute, obscuring what now appears to be a more serious awareness of Epstein’s conduct.

The timing of Trump’s alleged call to police further complicates his defense. If he truly believed Epstein was dangerous and that “everyone knew,” why did he wait until law enforcement had already launched an investigation before speaking up? Trump appears not as a whistleblower, but as someone reacting to a scandal that was already unfolding.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to dismiss the significance of the document during a recent press briefing, claiming Trump had “always remained consistent” and reiterating that Epstein was expelled from Mar-a-Lago because he was “a creep.” When pressed on whether the 2006 call occurred, Leavitt conceded she did not know, saying it “may or may not have happened.”

That ambiguity only sharpened the contrast between Trump’s private remarks to police and his public statements.

The Ghislaine Maxwell aspect of the story adds another layer. According to the FBI account, Trump privately labeled Maxwell “evil” in 2006. Yet when Maxwell was arrested in 2020 on federal child sex trafficking charges, Trump publicly said he “wished her well,” repeating the phrase even after being reminded of the allegations against her.

The shift from privately condemning Maxwell to publicly expressing goodwill raises obvious questions about motive and messaging. One statement was delivered quietly to law enforcement; the other was made on camera, to a national audience.

Taken together, the emerging record paints a picture of someone who may have known far more about Epstein’s activities than he later admitted — and who reshaped his story over time to reduce scrutiny.

If Trump knew Epstein was dangerous, knew Maxwell was complicit, and believed the behavior was widely known, his silence prior to the investigation becomes difficult to explain. The new document does not merely challenge Trump’s version of events; it suggests a deliberate effort to rewrite history once the full scope of Epstein’s crimes became impossible to ignore.

As more records are released, Trump’s carefully maintained narrative appears increasingly fragile — and the question is no longer whether he crossed paths with Epstein, but what he knew, and why he waited to speak only after the truth was already coming out.