The explosive claim is contained in a secret 2019 FBI interview with former Palm Beach Police Chief who led the first investigation into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls.
According to the document, Trump phoned the department in July 2006, as details of the probe into the billionaire paedophile began to emerge.
He was reportedly “one of the very first people to call”.
Trump allegedly told the police chief: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” according the the FBI summary.
The document says Trump went further – claiming he had personally thrown Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, warning police about Maxwell, and admitting he once fled a gathering involving Epstein when teenagers were present.
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The FBI report states: “TRUMP told him people in New York knew EPSTEIN was disgusting. TRUMP said MAXWELL was EPSTEIN’s operative, ‘she is evil and to focus on her,’”.
The account was given to federal investigators in October 2019, two months after Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
The four-page FBI report summarises testimony from the then-Palm Beach police chief – whose name is redacted in the document but whose identity matches Michael Reiter, the top cop who led the Epstein probe from 2001 to 2009.
Trump has repeatedly denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes and has insisted he cut off contact with the financier more than 20 years ago.
In July 2019, when asked if he had any knowledge Epstein molested underage girls, Trump told reporters: “No, I had no idea. I had no idea.”
In July 2025, he again denied knowing why Epstein recruited female staff from Mar-a-Lago, saying: “No, I don’t know really why.”
The newly surfaced FBI document appears to contradict those public claims.
The former president has said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after discovering he was poaching spa employees. Other reports suggest the two also fell out over a Florida real-estate deal in 2004.
Trump and Epstein were friends throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and Trump was photographed socialising with both Epstein and Maxwell.
In a 2002 New York Magazine interview, Trump said Epstein was “a lot of fun to be with” and added: “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Epstein and Maxwell later recruited young women – and girls as young as 14 – under the pretence of providing massages, which turned sexual, according to investigators.
Reiter’s detectives began receiving reports about Epstein in the early 2000s, possibly as early as 2003, and built a sprawling case that included “sexual battery cases against the co-conspirators”.
But the police chief told the FBI the case collapsed at state level.
He recalled prosecutors dismissing victims as unreliable, scrutinising their MySpace pages and refuting “minute details” in the affidavit.
Reiter said: “This case died at the state level”.
Reiter later went public in 2006, apologising to victims and criticising the prosecutor’s decision to take the case to a grand jury instead of charging Epstein directly.
He then coordinated with federal authorities, leading to Epstein’s controversial 2008 non-prosecution agreement, under which Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex and served 13 months in jail -much of it on work release.
During the investigation, Epstein made large donations to the Palm Beach Police Department.
Reiter told the FBI that Epstein donated $40,000 for a security-footage review machine, cut a $90,000 cheque for a fingerprinting device that was never cashed, and gave “more than others” to a police scholarship fund.
When Reiter questioned Epstein’s background, he said he was told the financier “supports law enforcement and is an important guy.”
Epstein was arrested again by the FBI in July 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges – but died weeks later in custody.
The FBI document was released as part of millions of pages unsealed by the Justice Department in connection with the Epstein case.
It emerged just hours after Ghislaine Maxwell, 64, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a closed-door virtual deposition before the House Oversight Committee.
The UK-born socialite declined to answer questions about her friendship with Epstein or her role in trafficking young women and girls.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence at a medium-security facility in Texas.
Her lawyer said she would speak freely if granted clemency by Trump.
The White House said no such move is under consideration, with Trump previously saying: “I wouldn’t consider it or not consider it. I don’t know anything about it. I will speak to the DOJ.”
An FBI official told the Miami Herald there is no corroborating evidence of Trump’s alleged call.
“We are not aware of any corroborating evidence that the President contacted law enforcement 20 years ago,” the official said.
Trump is named in the Epstein files due to his former friendship with the financier – but he has denied wrongdoing and has never been formally accused of any crime linked to Epstein. Being named in the files does not imply guilt.
Maxwell has also said Trump did not participate in Epstein’s crimes.
However, in a 2019 email between Epstein and author Michael Wolff, Epstein claimed Trump “knew about the girls” – without elaborating.
Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump gave Epstein a 2003 birthday note, allegedly written inside a drawing of a naked woman, reading: “May every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump denied the note’s authenticity and sued the paper for $10 billion.