President Trump is now naming Virginia Giuffre as one of the young women he claims Jeffrey Epstein “stole” from Mar-a-Lago two decades ago as the controversy over what the government is not saying about the dead pedophile swirls.

Mr. Trump has previously said that he had severed ties with Epstein because he was a “creep.” Reports surfaced in 2021 that Mr. Trump booted Epstein after he hit on the teenage daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member. Now Mr. Trump is saying it is because Epstein “stole” young women who worked at his spa at Mar-a-Lago and he believes that an Epstein victim, Giuffre, who was 17 at the time, was among them.

Mr. Trump was headed back to Washington from Scotland aboard Air Force One on Tuesday when he answered a question about Epstein stealing his employees.

“People were taken out of the spa. Hired by him. In other words, gone,” Mr. Trump said. “And other people would come and complain, ‘This guy is taking people from the spa.’ I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people,’ whether it was spa or not spa, I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine and then, not too long after that, he did it again and I said, ‘Outta here.'”

Mr. Trump first brought up the claim about his employees being stolen on Monday but didn’t bring up any names.

On Tuesday, a reporter asked if one of the employees poached was Giuffre. Mr. Trump first responded, “I don’t know,” but a few seconds later said, “I think she was one of the people. He stole her.”

Giuffre was sexually abused by Epstein and claimed his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, recruited her while she was working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago as a teenager and groomed her. Giuffre died by suicide in April.

Epstein killed himself in a federal jail in New York in July 2019 as he awaited trial on child sex trafficking charges.

Ms. Maxwell is being held in a federal prison in Florida after being convicted on sex-trafficking charges.

During the election, Mr. Trump promised to release all of the government files on Epstein. Early in the administration, Attorney General Bondi released a batch of papers she said was just the first of multiple rounds of Epstein-related documents. Most of them contained previously released information.

But recently, Ms. Bondi said that a review by Department of Justice and FBI officials determined no client list existed and that Epstein had died by suicide. The word that no additional files would be released has created a political firestorm that has dogged the president for weeks.

Mr. Trump has tried to downplay the issue by questioning why anyone still cares about Epstein but he keeps answering questions about him — keeping the story alive.

Ms. Maxwell has been subpoenaed to give testimony before the House Oversight Committee next month as Congress hunts for answers about possible Epstein clients. Last week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche questioned Ms. Maxwell at a Florida courthouse.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly stated in recent days that he’s allowed to give Ms. Maxwell a pardon but says nobody has approached him about it.