President Donald Trump’s official story for when he cut off contact with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein isn’t adding up, according to one journalist and author.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club after the wealthy financier “stole” girls from the club’s spa — particularly Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who was 17 at the time she met Epstein. Before she died by suicide earlier this year, she maintained she met Epstein through his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited her to be a “traveling masseuse” for the serial pedophile. Trump has insisted he kicked Epstein out for “being a creep.”

“I told him we don’t want you taking our people, whether it’s spa or not spa. He did it again, I said, ‘out of here,’” Trump said, while saying of Epstein and Giuffre: “He stole her.”

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But in a Tuesday interview with CNN host Erin Burnett, investigative journalist Barry Levine — a Pulitzer Prize nominee — said the timeline of Trump’s story doesn’t add up, as Maxwell recruited Giuffre in 2000. He cited reporting from the Miami Herald finding that Epstein was still a paying member of Trump’s Palm Beach County club many years after Epstein exploited Giuffre — including for a full year after he was arrested for child trafficking.

“Jeffrey Epstein was actually still on the Mar-a-Lago membership logs up to 2007,” Levine said. “So Trump was still getting money from Jeffrey Epstein up until 2007 … Jeffrey Epstein was still paying for his membership at Mar-a-Lago, according to the Miami Herald. And that of course is a year after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest in Florida in 2006.”

“So if he kicked him out for ‘being a creep,’ that would even have been a year after that would have been established through a legal suit?” Burnett asked.

“Correct,” Levine said.

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