White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was swiftly criticized after she tried to sweep aside President Donald Trump's role in the Epstein files, urging the press—and by extension the public—to "move on" from the matter.
Trump has done everything he can to dismiss or downplay the outrage surrounding the documents, which are said to contain detailed lists of some of his former friend and associate Jeffrey Epstein's most high-profile clients and enablers. The late disgraced financier was a convicted pedophile and sex trafficker.
The Justice Department recently released about 3 million new documents collected as part of its years' long investigation into Epstein.
The DOJ said this release would be the final tranche of Epstein-related files required under the law, but the disclosures have instead sparked renewed outrage over the government’s failure to deliver transparency or accountability for Epstein’s many survivors.
The records include an FBI interview in which a former Florida police chief recalled receiving a phone call from Trump in 2006, shortly after local authorities opened an investigation into Epstein. According to the document—a written summary of a 2019 FBI interview—Trump allegedly told the officer that Epstein’s behavior was widely known, saying, “Thank goodness you’re stopping him. Everyone has known he’s been doing this."
While the officer’s name is redacted in the file, the interview subject is identified as the Palm Beach police chief during the Epstein investigation, a role held at the time by Michael Reiter.
Reiter later confirmed to the Miami Herald that Trump had called him. The account is likely to intensify scrutiny over what Trump knew—and when.
While Leavitt would not confirm whether the phone call had happened, she claimed Trump has always been "honest and transparent" about his relationship with Epstein, a remark that doesn't make sense given how much effort Trump has made to distance himself from his former friend.
She added:
"That remains true and this call, if it did happen, corroborates exactly what President Trump has said from the beginning."
"I'm sure many of you, when you read that alleged FBI report, probably thought to yourself, 'Wow, this really cracks our narrative that we've been trying to push about this president for many years.'"
"We're moving on from that."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
But critics were very clear that no—no one is moving on from this at all, nor will they.
Just last week, Trump, who admitted he had not read files containing thousands of photos of Epstein's properties, emails, flight logs, and tips submitted to the FBI through its National Threat Operations Center, was criticized for saying "it’s really time for the country to get on to something else."
He insisted "nothing came out about me other than it was a conspiracy against me, literally by Epstein and other people, but I think it's time now for the country to maybe get on to something else, like health care and something people care about."
However, in total, the most recent release from the Justice Department includes more than 5,300 documents containing upwards of 38,000 mentions of Trump, his wife, his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and related terms. Earlier releases of the Epstein-related records, made public late last year, contained an additional 130 files with references tied to Trump.
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