Trump says Jeffrey Epstein was never a Mar-a-Lago member. A new book shows he was, and why the paedophile was kicked out
- Donald Trump publicly disavowed Epstein when he was arrested in 2019, and denied he was ever a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida
- A new book, The Grifter’s Club, shows that to be untrue, and that Epstein’s account there was closed in 2007 after he harassed another member’s teenage daughter
US President Donald Trump severed ties with Jeffrey Epstein after the disgraced financier hit on the teenage daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member, according to a new book published about the president’s club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump publicly disavowed Epstein a day after the financier’s arrest on July 11, 2019, saying in the Oval Office that the two hadn’t spoken in 15 years after a falling out. He has also claimed that Epstein was never a Mar-a-Lago member.
“I’m not a fan of his,” the president said, while not disclosing why they fell out.
But a new book, titled The Grifter’s Club, says the late paedophile was indeed a member and that the two stopped talking – and Epstein was kicked off the rolls and banned from Mar-a-Lago – following the incident with a club member’s teenage daughter.
Another club member explained that Trump “kicked Epstein out after Epstein harassed the daughter of a member. The way this person described it, such an act could irreparably harm the Trump brand, leaving Donald no choice but to remove Epstein”, said Sarah Blaskey, an investigative reporter who co-wrote the book with fellow Miami Herald journalists Nicholas Nehamas and Jay Weaver, and Caitlin Ostroff of The Wall Street Journal. “The Trump Organisation did not respond to our requests for comment on this or other matters.”
