MSNBC host Alicia Melendez and Bloomberg Opinion executive editor Timothy O'Brien on September 9, 2025

Timothy L. O'Brien, a journalist and senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, said Tuesday it was "patently obvious" that President Donald Trump was attempting to conceal tax shelters that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein provided to his clients, which included wealthy individuals.

During an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday evening, O'Brien, who has been advising journalists to "follow the money" while covering the Epstein scandal, said, "It's interesting that this whole investigation is running at pace with the Trump administration getting the IRS to turn its back on patently obvious abusive tax shelters used by corporations and wealthy people."

He continued: "That was one of the services Jeffrey Epstein provided to his clients. He engineered tax shelters for them. Leon Black and others have said that's what they were grateful to him for. This issue of whether or not this is his signature is a total distraction."

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The journalist went on to say that Trump told him in 2005 in Palm Beach that he was good friends with Epstein.

"He took me on a tour of a house in Palm Beach that he that he won in a bidding war against Jeffrey Epstein, but told me in 2005, we're still friends. He's mad he lost the bidding war, but we're still friends. I suspect the biggest thing that what Trump is afraid of in all of this is our financial shell games and services that Epstein provided for Trump, that Trump doesn't want to get out into the wild," he said.

Journalist Joy Reid said during the segment that the key question is why the president doesn't put the issue to bed.

"If he'll lie about this, how can the people that say that that hang on every word that the president says, how can they believe him when he talks about the economy? How can they believe him when he talks about social security, when he says that he's not going to cut their Medicaid and Medicare?"

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She continued: "How can you believe anything this man says? "If we can see very clearly that he's going to lie about the smallest things, how can they believe him? That's why we should care about whether the president is telling the truth or not."

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