Trump says his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein was over spa workers at Mar-a-Lago : NPR

President Trump walks up to get on the Navy One in Trump International Golf Links in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, Tuesday at the end of his trip to Scotland.

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Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images

President Trump offered new details on Tuesday on what led to his fall with Jeffrey Epstein about two decades ago, telling journalists on the Air Force One that the rupture had to do with the employees who worked at the Mar-A-Lago spa.

Trump repeatedly said that he had expelled Epstein from his club for hiring workers far from Mar-A-Lago. When asked if the workers who were hired were young women, Trump replied: “The answer is yes, they were.”

“People were out of the spa – hired by him – in other words, disappeared. And other people would complain:” This guy takes people from the Spa “,” said Trump. “I didn’t know it. And then when I heard about it, I said to him, I said,” Listen, we don’t want you to take our people, whether it’s a spa or not a spa, I don’t want them to take people. “And he was fine.”

The remarks occurred at the end of the trip to Scotland which was sometimes dominated by questions about Trump’s history with Epstein – questions that came when the president announced a new preliminary trade agreement on Sunday with the European Union. Despite being an ocean, Trump could not escape the political drama in Washington, DC, on the processing by his administration of the files of the condemned sex offender.

Trump was questioned by journalists on the calendar of the commercial announcement on Monday and if it was an attempt to change the subject.

“You have to joke with that,” said Trump, adding, “it had nothing to do with that.”

Trump faced even more questions by discussing the food crisis in Gaza while meeting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Trump explained that he had cut his friendship with Epstein for hiring workers from his Florida club, calling what Epstein did “inappropriate”.

“He stole people who worked for me. I said:” Never start again. “He did it again.

While a large part of the pressure for more information comes from the president’s own basis of the president, Trump continues to insist that the controversy is a hoax which has been built far beyond the proportion by its political enemies. He argued for a long time that his friendship with Epstein ended before the disgrace financier was charged for having asked prostitution in 2006. And the White House officials said that Trump had expelled Epstein from Mar-A-Lago “to be a flu.”

Maxwell requests immunity

However, the White House has struggled to go beyond the history of Epstein, because many allies of the president in the congress continue to put pressure for answers – notably from Ghislaine Maxwell, the long -standing confidant of Epstein is currently serving a 20 -year prison sentence for having helped Epstein to sexually abuse minors.

Several Republicans of the Chamber called on Trump administration to publish files from the Epstein Ministry of Justice, and last week, the Chamber’s supervisory committee published a summons to Maxwell for a testimony.

Tuesday, Maxwell lawyers asked the immunity the committee in exchange for its testimony. In a letter to the panel obtained by NPR, her legal team also declared that she wanted to postpone the appearance in the hope that the Supreme Court would resume her business first.

In the letter, Maxwell’s lawyers said they were initially thought that she would invoke her rights to the 5th amendment or refuse to testify. However, they said that testimony in certain parameters could change this.

“We would like to find a way to cooperate with the Congress if a fair and safe path can be established,” wrote lawyers David Oscar Markus, Leah Saffian and Melissa Madrigal on behalf of Maxwell in the 3 -page letter.

In the assignment, the president of the James Comer Chamber’s supervisory committee, R-Ky., Called Maxwell’s testimony on August 11, but his lawyers said it was too early. They argued that the Supreme Court could resume its business when they meet in October.

The committee said Maxwell’s immunity request was going too far.

“The supervisory committee will soon respond to Ms. Maxwell’s lawyer, but he will not plan to grant the immunity from the Congress for his testimony,” said a spokesperson for the committee at NPR.

The panel had hoped to sit with Maxwell in Tallahassee prison in Florida where she purges her prison sentence, and has not excluded a delay in the leading recovery.