The FBI Interview About Trump and Epstein That Just Went Viral, Here’s What’s In It
The Miami Herald has brought to light new information about Jeffrey Epstein. The document discussed here was released as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Epstein files in Data Set 9 on January 30, 2026, but it is just now starting to go viral on February 10th.
It’s getting a lot of coverage because it describes Donald Trump proactively calling the Palm Beach Police Department to report Jeffrey Epstein, directing investigators to focus on Ghislaine Maxwell, and claiming he distanced himself from Epstein after witnessing teenagers in his presence.
But before we get into the Trump and Epstein connection, let’s talk about some of the core points made in the document. Because unlike all the conspiracies going viral about Epstein, this document really outlines plainly and without any conspiracy how evil Epstein was.
What is this document?
Here is the link the original document published on justice.gov. The document is an FBI FD-302, a standard interview summary, from an October 18, 2019 interview with Michael Reiter, the former Chief of the Palm Beach Police Department. Reiter led the original investigation into Epstein in the mid-2000s and sat down with the FBI two months after Epstein was found dead in his jail cell.
What do we learn about Epstein from it?
Epstein tried to buy off the police department investigating him. He first came to the Palm Beach Police Department’s (PBPD) attention through a theft complaint, and then cultivated a relationship with the department through large donations, $40,000 for security footage equipment and a $90,000 check for an AFIS fingerprint terminal. Reiter did not cash the $90,000 check. Around this same time, Epstein’s first victim came forward. This is insane!
The victims were children, and there were many of them. The investigation grew rapidly after a stepmother brought her daughter to PBPD, and the girl said she wasn’t the only one. Surveillance of Epstein’s house revealed prepubescent children “with braces and backpacks coming from school,” and aviation personnel reported dozens of girls visiting in a single day.
The State’s Attorney’s office protected Epstein instead of the victims. When Reiter brought the case to the State’s Attorney, the office told him to write a misdemeanor notice to appear instead of pursuing serious charges. The State’s Attorney’s office called the victims not credible, showed their MySpace pages to discredit them, and picked apart minor details in the probable cause affidavit. Reiter believed information was being leaked to the defense.
The federal government made the case disappear. After the case stalled, Reiter referred it to the FBI, but eventually learned about a non-prosecution agreement. When Reiter confronted U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, Acosta said the defense had him “very frustrated” and that “there was a lot of interest from higher up.” Reiter described a rush to make the case disappear.
Epstein’s team intimidated and surveilled the officers who investigated him. After Reiter retired, private investigators harassed officers, pulled their trash, and contacted Reiter through an attorney claiming to have “safety concerns” for him. A strange call falsely told Reiter that Epstein had sold his Palm Beach house and left.
So what does it say about Trump and Epstein?
“Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.” That’s what Donald Trump told Reiter when he called the PBPD after learning they were investigating Epstein. According to the document, Trump was one of the very first people to call when people found out about the investigation.
Trump told Reiter that people in New York knew Epstein was “disgusting.” He portrayed himself as someone who was aware of Epstein’s reputation and wanted to signal that awareness to law enforcement.
Trump told Reiter that Ghislaine Maxwell was Epstein’s “operative” and that “she is evil and to focus on her.” He specifically directed the police chief’s attention toward Maxwell and her role in Epstein’s operation.
Trump told Reiter that he threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago. The document notes that Trump claimed he had removed Epstein from his club. However, as the New York Times reports, Representative Jamie Raskin says other documents in the Epstein files contain Epstein’s lawyers quoting Trump as saying Epstein “was a guest at Mar-a-Lago and he had never been asked to leave.”
Trump told Reiter that he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and that he “got the hell out of there.” This is notable because in 2019, when asked by reporters whether he had any suspicions that Epstein was molesting underage women, Trump said, “No, I had no idea. I had no idea.”
In a 2002 New York Magazine profile, Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” and remarked that he liked women “on the younger side.” Four years later, in 2006, Trump told a police chief that “everyone” knew what Epstein was doing, that he had seen teenagers around Epstein, and that he believed Maxwell was “evil.” Then in 2019, after Epstein’s federal arrest, Trump told reporters he had “no idea” about Epstein’s crimes and said he hadn’t spoken to him in “many, many years.”
Taken together, those three statements tell different stories at different moments. It’s possible Trump’s awareness grew between 2002 and 2006, or that in 2006 he was passing along Epstein’s reputation in New York circles rather than speaking from firsthand knowledge, or that by 2019 he simply didn’t connect a phone call from over a decade earlier to the question being asked. What the document does show is that Trump proactively contacted law enforcement. What it also shows is that by his own account to Reiter, he knew more than he later admitted to reporters. The document puts all of it on the record and leaves readers to draw their own conclusions.
Leave your conclusions in the comments.