President Donald Trump was taken aback by speculation that he was personally involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 jail cell death, author Michael Wolff said on the latest edition of The Daily Beast Podcast.
The biographer said the lingering controversy over Trump’s ties to Epstein resulted in the president having to deny culpability for his one-time friend’s demise.
“Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone who talks to Trump frequently. And this person had a conversation with Trump in the last 48—slightly, possibly more—hours, and it kind of gave me a chill,” Wolff told host Joanna Coles.
“So Trump called up this person and said, ‘They say I killed Epstein. I didn’t have Epstein killed,’” Wolff continued. “And then this person said, ‘Well, do you think he was killed?’ And then Trump said, ‘A lot of people wanted him dead.’”
The White House responded to Wolff’s remarks with its previous comment about the Fire and Fury author.
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s–t and has been proven to be a fraud,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast in a statement. “He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Unsubstantiated rumors about Epstein’s death, which was officially ruled a suicide, took an interesting turn this past week following the release of footage from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York which showed a mysterious, orange shape ascending the stairs toward Epstein’s cell the night he died.
Questions persist about Epstein’s death while in custody in light of a security camera’s “missing minute” and how corrections officers did not do their required check-in on Epstein every half hour. The disgraced financier was alone in his cell at the time of his death, despite having been placed on suicide watch.
Trump has urged Americans to move on from the Epstein saga, calling it “pretty boring.” However, his efforts to dismiss the outcry have only seemed to garner more interest. Wolff explained that he believes the story won’t entirely disappear until its most mysterious aspects—like the circumstances of Epstein’s death—get conclusive explanations.
“It keeps coming back,” Wolff said of the Epstein story. “I’m sure it will go quieter, but the fact of the story is that there are questions which demand answers and they aren’t given. So you can put them out of your mind for this period, but they never entirely go out of your mind.”
To quell the latest outcry for answers, Trump’s Justice Department has met with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Epstein for more than a decade to sexually exploit and abuse minors.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—Trump’s former personal attorney—interviewed Maxwell last week for approximately nine hours over two days, where they reportedly discussed more than 100 people associated with the Epstein case.
Following their meeting, Maxwell’s lawyers made it clear that they are seeking a presidential pardon for the 63-year-old British socialite. When confronted by reporters about the possibility of a pardon, Trump wasn’t willing to rule the prospect out. “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about,” he said.
On Friday, Maxwell appeared to receive a sweetheart prison move when she was quietly transferred from Florida’s low-security Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee to the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas—the same facility where Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and former Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jennifer Shah are currently serving out their sentences. The move brought Maxwell closer to her family, as public records indicate that her sister Christine owns an apartment in Dallas, about 175 miles north of Maxwell’s new home.
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