President Donald Trump treated reporters to a meandering, angry rant on Friday in an Air Force One gaggle when confronted about the ongoing questions over the Epstein case files, and the newly released emails that show Epstein boasting that Trump knew about his abuse of young girls but kept his mouth shut.
This comes at a moment when Congress is preparing to vote on a bipartisan measure to compel the full release of the files, despite his efforts to dissuade Republican lawmakers from doing so.
"Mr. President, what did Jeffrey Epstein mean in his emails when he said you knew about the girls?" one reporter asked.
"I know nothing about that," said Trump. "They would have announced that a long time ago. It's really, what did he mean when he spent all the time with Bill Clinton, with the president of Harvard who, you know who that is. Summers, Larry Summers, whatever his name is, all of the other people that he spent time with."
"Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years," said Trump. "But he also saw strength because I was president, so he dictated a couple of memos to himself? Give me a break. You gotta find out, what did he know with respect to Bill Clinton, with respect to the head of Harvard, with respect to all of those people that he knew, including J.P. Morgan Chase."
Trump has frequently claimed that, while he and Epstein were friends at one point, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago upon learning he was poaching his young female employees. However, the timeline does not add up for his story.