White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that a recently released Department of Justice document supports what President Trump has long maintained — that he took early, proactive steps to alert authorities about Jeffrey Epstein's behavior, years before the financier's crimes became a matter of national reckoning.
The document, released by the DOJ, contains details from a 2019 FBI interview with Michael Reiter, then the police chief of Palm Beach, Florida. According to that interview, Trump called Reiter in July 2006 to offer assistance with the investigation into Epstein, making him, per the document's language, "one of the very first people to call" the police chief about the case.
The timing matters. In 2006, Epstein had not yet become a household name. His crimes were still emerging through a local Palm Beach investigation, not splashed across cable news. And yet, according to Reiter's account to the FBI, Trump reached out on his own initiative.
According to Breitbart News, the DOJ document relays Reiter's recollection of his conversation with Trump. Reiter's 2019 FBI interview documents what Trump told the Palm Beach police chief:
"You should know that guy is a bad guy, and you should be looking at him."
Reiter further told the FBI that Trump offered to help the investigation in whatever way he could. According to the document, Trump said:
"If you need anything from me, you call."
These aren't quotes captured on tape or pulled from a deposition. They are statements attributed to Trump by Reiter during an FBI interview conducted over a decade after the phone call allegedly took place. That's an important distinction — but so is the fact that a law enforcement official was willing to relay them to the FBI under those circumstances.
At the White House briefing, Leavitt seized on the document's contents to push back against years of insinuation linking Trump to Epstein's crimes. She told reporters that the release "cracks" the establishment narrative surrounding the president and Epstein.
Leavitt pointed to Trump's long-standing claim that he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, arguing the newly surfaced document adds weight to a pattern of behavior Trump has described for years.
"President Trump has always said he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago."
She added that the evidence suggests Trump was ahead of the curve:
"He was one of the first people — if not the first person — to call the Palm Beach Police Department to report what he knew about Jeffrey Epstein."
It's worth noting that Leavitt herself used conditional language when discussing the phone call, suggesting the White House is presenting the document's account as strongly supportive rather than independently verified in every detail. But her broader point is clear: when the question was whether Trump was complicit or cooperative, this document lands firmly on the side of cooperation.
For years, a certain class of commentator has treated a handful of photographs and passing social references as evidence that Trump and Epstein were close associates — or worse. The implication was always heavy, always directional, and seldom accompanied by anything resembling proof of wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, the actual investigative record — now including this DOJ release — tells a different story. A man who called the police. A man who offered to help. A man who, by Reiter's account, flagged Epstein as someone worth investigating before most of the country had any idea who Epstein was.
The media spent years building guilt by association. What they never seemed interested in was the association that actually mattered: Trump's association with the investigation itself.
The released document does not appear to be the full scope of the DOJ's Epstein-related materials. There's no indication of why the department chose to release this particular document now, or what else may remain in the pipeline. Ghislaine Maxwell is referenced in the document, though her specific role in the context of these details is not elaborated.
Nor does the document resolve every open question about the Epstein case — a case that involves dozens of powerful figures across politics, finance, and media. The full Epstein story remains one of the most significant unfinished chapters in modern American public life.
But what this document does accomplish is straightforward: it provides a contemporaneous law enforcement account — relayed to the FBI — that Trump acted as a willing cooperator, not a person with something to hide.
Consider the asymmetry. Every time an Epstein-related document drops, a segment of the media reflexively scans it for Trump's name. When they find it in the context of cooperation with the police, the story vanishes from the front page. When a photo from a 1990s party surfaces, it leads the cycle.
This is not journalism. It is narrative maintenance.
The same outlets that spent years demanding transparency on Epstein have shown remarkably little interest in the transparency that has actually arrived — because it doesn't confirm what they assumed. The document doesn't show a man entangled with a predator. It shows a man who picked up the phone and called the cops.
That's not ambiguous. That's not spin. That's the FBI's own file.
