Longtime journalist Tara Palmeri (Photo: Screen capture)
Longtime journalist Tara Palmeri has become an expert on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and responding to President Donald Trump's comments aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, she walked through his conflicting stories.
Trump accused Epstein of poaching young women from his Mar-a-Lago beach club spa, and said that led to their falling out.
"Well, I don't want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken, and it was the concept of taking people that work, for me, is bad, but that story has been pretty well out there, and the answer is yes, they were in the spa," Trump said. "People that work in this five-star great spa, one of the best spas in the world, at Mar-a-Lago, and people were taken out of the spa hired by him."
"I didn't know that, and then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, listen, we don't want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa," Trump continued. "I don't want to take your people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, out of here."
Trump then said Epstein "stole" Virginia Giuffre, a prominent accuser of Epstein, from him.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, Palmeri smacked down the story.
"That's not true," she said, cutting off Wallace.
"Sorry, I have to interject on this because when I heard that, I was just, I was, it's just not true," she added.
"I worked very closely with Virginia Giuffre," Palmeri said. Her podcast, "Broken: Jeffrey Epstein," included her and Giuffre traveling the country trying to find people willing to corroborate her story.
"We find someone who recalls when she was found at Mar-a-Lago, and by the way, wasn't Epstein," recalled Palmeri. "Ghislaine Maxwell, the woman he's considering setting free, who actually procured Virginia. But they remained friends during that time. And Virginia told me that she met Donald Trump through Jeffrey Epstein, and Virginia was only with Epstein from 2000 to 2002."
She noted that there are photos of Epstein and Trump together in those years. There's also Trump's comments to New York Magazine in 2002, saying that Epstein was a "terrific guy." That was around the same time Trump claims he was so furious about the stealing of Virginia Giuffre.
"The timeline doesn't add up. It doesn't reflect any of the reporting that I've seen. And also, Donald Trump is deposed by one of the victims. The lawyers for the victims, Brad Edwards. And when he told the story, it was over real estate," Palmeri said about the falling out between Trump and Epstein.
"It was over a piece of property, Palm Beach waterfront property. They got in a bidding war, and because of it, Trump had to pay more. He ended up having to pay over; $40 million for a property, ironically called The House of Friendship. And he was furious at Epstein. He called him up, and he cursed him out over it. And that was the end of their friendship. And that was in 2004. It just doesn't line up, and it doesn't make any sense at all."
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