A newly uncovered FBI interview raised new questions about US President Donald Trump’s assertion he knew nothing about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, while Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, faced a barrage of questions from lawmakers on Tuesday about his own ties to the financier.

The day’s developments underscored how the fallout from the Epstein scandal remains a major political headache for the Trump administration, weeks after the Justice Department released millions of Epstein-related files to comply with a bipartisan bill.

The files have also created crises abroad after revealing new details of Epstein’s ties to prominent people in politics, finance, business and academia.

In July 2006, as Epstein’s first sex crime charges became public, the police chief in Palm Beach, Florida, received a call from Trump, according to the summary of a 2019 FBI interview with the police chief that was among the files.

The police chief, Michael Reiter, cited Trump as having told him: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”

Trump told Reiter that people in New York knew about Epstein and advised him that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate, was “evil,” according to the document. Trump also said he had once been around Epstein when teenagers were present and that he “got the hell out of there.”

Reiter, who retired in 2009, confirmed the details of the FBI interview to the Miami Herald.