President Donald Trump told Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene this year that he opposed the release of the Epstein files because his “friends will get hurt,” Greene said in a New York Times Magazine profile published Monday.
Trump also told Greene, R-Ga., that he would not invite the Epstein survivors to the Oval Office because they had not earned that honor, according to Greene, who was once among Trump’s biggest boosters but has broken with him.
Greene said the president made the comments in the last conversation he had with her, in a phone call after she appeared at a September news conference with Epstein survivors on Capitol Hill. During the call, which the soon-to-be-ex-representative says Trump initiated, the president yelled at her as she listened on speakerphone, the Times said.
“Congresswoman Greene is quitting on her constituents in the middle of her term and abandoning the consequential fight we’re in,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Times and MS NOW. “We don’t have time for her petty bitterness.”
The Justice Department began releasing the Epstein files earlier this month. They included an email stating that Trump flew on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet at least eight times in the mid-1990s. The Justice Department said in a statement that some of the files “contain untrue and sensationalist claims” about Trump that the FBI received before the 2020 election. The released files also contained images of Trump posing with unidentified women whose faces were blacked out.
Other files included in the document dump included images of former President Bill Clinton alongside Epstein, his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and others whose identities were redacted; Trump adviser Steve Bannon; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; director Woody Allen; and lawyer Alan Dershowitz. All of those men have distanced themselves from Epstein and denied wrongdoing, as has Trump.
The DOJ said it has more than a million other documents related to the Epstein investigation to review and release.
Trump has said he was concerned people’s reputations could be damaged if they were merely named in the files without proof of wrongdoing.
The details featured in the Times story offer new insight into Greene’s remarkable break with Trump after being one of his staunchest supporters since she took office in 2021.
Greene began speaking out against the president earlier this year, criticizing his foreign policy decisions — including speeding up weapons deliveries to Ukraine and launching strikes on Iran — which she argued ran counter to the “America First” platform he campaigned on.
Their public bickering turned into a full-blown breakup after Greene became one of only four Republicans to sign on to a discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the Justice Department to release all documents related to its investigation of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
Greene told the Times that her support for releasing the Epstein files was the final straw for Trump: “Epstein was everything,” she said.
In mid-November, as pressure to pass the bill ramped up, Trump railed against Greene in a Truth Social post, calling her a “traitor” and a “Lunatic” and announcing he was withdrawing his support for her. Greene has said those posts led to death threats against her and members of her family. She told the Times that she wondered: “Am I going to get murdered, or one of my kids, because he’s calling me a traitor?” Greene said she texted Trump about the death threats, but he only insulted her in response, the Times wrote, citing an anonymous source familiar with the conversation. A week after Trump’s angry posts, Greene announced she was resigning from office in January and said Trump’s opposition to her advocacy to release the Epstein files played a key role in her decision. “The Epstein files represent everything wrong with Washington,” Greene told the Times. “Rich, powerful elites doing horrible things and getting away with it. And the women are the victims.” Greene also called herself “naive” in her once unblinking support of Trump. But she rejects the claim that she has changed. “I haven’t changed my views,” Greene told the Times. “But I’ve matured. I’ve developed depth.” “I’ve learned Washington, and I’ve come to understand the brokenness of the place,” she added. “If none of us is learning lessons here and we can’t evolve and mature with our lessons, then what kind of people are we?”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
