An ex-police chief says Trump told him "thank goodness you're stopping" Epstein in the 2000s.

For

FBI 302 interview notes released in the Epstein files record that former Palm Beach police chief Richard Reiter said Trump called him in July 2006 and discussed Epstein, saying he had thrown Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago and that 'people in New York knew he was disgusting' (BBC). NPR reports the same 302-summary recollection that Trump called to say things like 'thank goodness you're stopping him' and 'everyone knew' about Epstein's conduct. CNN's reporting of the files likewise recounts the chief's memory that Trump said 'everyone' knew about Epstein.

Against

The quoted recollection appears in a 2019 FBI 302 summary of a decades-old call, and reporters note limits and challenges in building a complete, objective picture from those files (NPR). The White House has called the newly published allegations 'completely baseless' and 'backed by zero credible evidence', which contests acceptance of the account (BBC). Other documents in the files show inconsistent or ambiguous material about Trump's relationship to Epstein (for example, Epstein told a writer Trump said he asked Epstein to resign and that Epstein was 'never a member'), underscoring some contradictory records in the archive (BBC).