Billionaire and former DOGE boss Elon Musk shocked X users on Friday when he made an eye-opening claim about who he believes is the late financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s so-called ‘client list.’
One platform user wrote, “When a Democrat becomes president, they’ll un-redact these names,” leading Musk to respond: “They won’t, because major Dems and their donors are on the list too.”
It’s not clear how Musk would know who is or is not on the list.
Shortly after he left the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this spring, he had a falling out with President Donald Trump over his support for what became the “Big, Beautiful Bill” and its failure to include most of the budget cuts identified by the DOGE team. At the time, he accused Trump of being on the list, too, though he later retracted that.
That said, Trump dropped additional information on Thursday regarding his past relationship with the late financier.
During a press conference at the White House, Trump was asked about statements he made last week regarding Epstein’s efforts to ‘recruit’ young girls working at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in the early 2000s.
Previous reports from years ago noted that Trump and Epstein were friends for some time but that they eventually had a falling out, with Trump removing and then banning Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago resort. On Thursday, Trump provided additional information about that.
Asked by ABC News at an executive order signing if he knew why the disgraced financier was taking women from his club, the president replied, “No, I don’t know really why, but I said, if he’s taken anybody from Mar-a-Lago, he’s hiring or whatever he’s doing, I didn’t like it. And we threw him out.”
Those remarks followed public pushback from the family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent victims, over comments President Trump made the previous day regarding her and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted accomplice in the sex trafficking operation.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump suggested that Giuffre—who died by suicide in April—may have been among several Mar-a-Lago employees who were “stolen” by Epstein.
“I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people,” Trump said of Giuffre. “He stole her. You want to know the truth? And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.”
In a statement, Giuffre’s family rejected that characterization, however.
“We would like to clarify that it was convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell who targeted and preyed upon our then 16-year-old sister, Virginia, from Mar-a-Lago, where she was working in 2000, several years before Epstein and President Trump had their falling out,” the family said, according to ABC News.
“It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side . . . no doubt about it,’” the family said in its statement, referencing a quote attributed to Trump in a 2002 New York Magazine profile of Epstein. They added: “We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.”
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and died by suicide in custody the following month, according to federal authorities.
Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison. The Department of Justice stated that she “assisted, facilitated, and participated” in Epstein’s abuse of underage girls between 1994 and 2004.
Virginia Giuffre alleged that Maxwell recruited her from Mar-a-Lago when she was 16 and also accused Maxwell of personally abusing her. Maxwell denied the accusations, claiming in a 2016 deposition that Giuffre had “lied repeatedly.”
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and died by suicide in custody the following month, according to federal authorities.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison.