Trump calls paedo pal Jeffrey Epstein's isle 'cesspool - just ask Prince Andrew'

Donald Trump once described Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island as a “cesspool” saying “there’s no question about it, just ask Prince Andrew - he’ll tell you about it”.

The comment has resurfaced just weeks before the President is due to meet the Duke of York’s brother, King Charles, and the royal family during his second state visit to the UK. Trump’s remarks have taken on new significance as the US president furiously attempts to distance himself from the growing scandal surrounding his close friendship with Epstein.

He has been forced to deny ever setting foot on Little St James, which has been at the centre of allegations of underage sex trafficking, saying he didn’t have the “privilege” to visit. But speaking in 2015, months before launching his first presidential bid, he described the island as “an absolute cesspool” before claiming the Duke of York had knowledge of it.

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“That island was really a cesspool, there’s no question about it. Just ask Prince Andrew, he’ll tell you about it,” Trump said.

The renewed interest in the royal’s friendship with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwellwas reignited after pictures inside the paedophile’s New York home were published on Tuesday. Inside the house, in which Andrew stayed while visiting his pal in Manhattan, was a table of photos showing Epstein with a raft of famous people.

They included him with Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II, Fidel Castro, Richard Branson and Mick Jagger. But it was an image of Epstein, Maxwell and the Duke inside the Royal Box at Royal Ascot when the Queen attended that took centre stage. It was positioned close to one of the convicted sex offender and Trump.

According to Epstein’s flight logs, Prince Andrew flew at least once to Little St James on the disgraced financier’s private jet. Former staff on the island have claimed he visited several times, while the paedophile’s ‘teen sex slave’, Virginia Giuffre, once claimed she took part in a nine-girl orgy with the Duke while there.

Andrew, 65, has always denied the claims and said he has no recollection of ever meeting Giuffre, who took her own life in April. The scandal surrounding Epstein, six years after his jail cell suicide, has gained new impetus since Trump returned to the White House in January.

While campaigning for the presidency last year, the US leader vowed to release all government documents related to Epstein. However, just weeks after Elon Musk claimed in June that Trump’s name appeared in the files, the president's administration said there were no papers to be released and that it was a “hoax”.

The move sparked a civil war among MAGA supporters, with many disavowing their support for him. He has since attempted to distance himself from the scandal and play down his decades-long friendship with Epstein.

Despite being pictured and filmed together on countless occasions, the president has now made a virtue of not visiting the convicted sex offender’s private island.

Speaking at a press conference last week, he insisted: “I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.”

Photographs taken in 2000 show Trump and his wife Melania socialising with Epstein and convicted teen sex trafficker Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private Florida estate.

In July 2020, days after Maxwell’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, Trump raised eyebrows again by publicly expressing support for her. When asked whether Maxwell, a former friend of his, would reveal the names of powerful men, Trump replied: “I don’t know, I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly.”

At the same briefing, he claimed ignorance of the Duke of York’s links to Epstein: “I don’t know the situation with Prince Andrew. Just don’t know. Not aware of it.”

Trump’s relationship with Epstein has long been the subject of speculation. The pair is known to have socialised in Florida's elite Palm Beach circles from the late 1980s through to the mid-2000s. In 2002, Trump told New York Magazine: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

He has since claimed to have cut ties with Epstein and has sought to put distance between himself and the late financier, who died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

The Duke has been contacted for comment.