Footage of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a party at Mar-a-Lago in the 1990s (Image: Screengrab via NBC News)
With every fresh disclosure, Donald Trump’s connection to trafficker Jeffrey Epstein appears increasingly intimate.
The New York Times' Nicholas Confessore and Julie Tate interviewed more than 30 former employees of Epstein, along with survivors of his abuse, and found that he and Trump bonded over their mutual "pursuit of women."
"For nearly a quarter-century, Mr. Trump and his representatives have offered shifting, often contradictory accounts of his relationship with Mr. Epstein, one sporadically captured by society photographers and in news clips before they fell out sometime in the mid-2000s," the report said. "Closely scrutinized since Mr. Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell during Mr. Trump’s first term, their friendship — and questions about what the president knew of Mr. Epstein’s abuses — now threatens to consume his second one."
As the evidence continues to be released, it has revealed that "the two men’s relationship was both far closer and far more complex than the president now admits."
"Neither man drank or did drugs," the report explained. So, women became their vice.
“I just think it was trophy hunting,” said Stacey Williams, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition model during the 1990s.
She had previously described an encounter with Trump in which he groped her in 1993. Trump denies it, however.
Another individual who's never spoken out before, told The Times that Epstein "coerced her into attending four parties" at his home. Trump attended all of them.
"At two of them, she said, Mr. Epstein directed her to have sex with other male guests," the report said. It was reminiscent of an email released by Congress in November in which Epstein bragged he "gave" Trump a 20-year-old woman.
In another incident on Epstein's "Lolita Express" plane, Trump came onto another Epstein staffer, claiming he "could have anyone he wanted," the report said.
Another Epstein employee recalled Trump sending over "modeling cards" for Epstein to look at, like a menu.
Close to 20 women have publicly accused Trump of "groping, forcibly kissing or sexually assaulting them," the Times noted. Trump has denied this.
In Trump's 2004 book offering "business advice," The Times recalled that Trump's office phone rang with "the mysterious Jeffrey" on the other line. It never identifies a last name.
"A few times a week, the phone would ring in Mr. Epstein’s office in the Villard Houses on Madison Avenue. Mr. Trump would be on the line. On one occasion, recalled an Epstein assistant from the mid-1990s, Mr. Trump refused to give any name at all," the report continued.
The first assistant recalled that if she was working late, Epstein would poke his head out of his door to see if she was at her desk before putting Trump on speaker phone when he called. Trump "seemed to enjoy regaling Mr. Epstein with tales of his sexual exploits. And Mr. Epstein seemed to delight in how uncomfortable it made her to overhear them."
One call involved a discussion of pubic hair one woman had and whether it was enough for Epstein "to floss his teeth with." Trump recalled having sex with a woman on a pool table in another call, the assistant recalled. The speaker phone calls were recounted by others as well, the report said. A woman trafficked in the mid-1990s testified Epstein frequently put people on speakerphone while others were in the room.
A different assistant from the early 2000s recalled the speakerphone calls would pivot to discuss "pageants or modeling shows." Epstein had such a short attention span that an assistant said he would frequently leave the room while Trump was still talking.
The first former assistant kept handwritten notes from several months in 1994, including details of Trump visiting Epstein's office, despite a Trump spokesperson denying the claim over the summer. Some notes reminded the assistant to tell Epstein to return Trump's calls. One questioned whether Epstein was "flying to [Florida] tomorrow."
"Another recorded that a package would be arriving with an invitation to a Mar-a-Lago event," the report said.
Epstein's brother Mark confirmed the account. "He was in the office all the time back then," the brother told the Times.
George Houraney, who partnered with Trump for a 1993 beauty pageant, told The Times in 2019 that, aside from the pageant's partners, Epstein was Trump's guest at a Mar-a-Lago event promoting the pageant with a few contestants.
In a 1997 lawsuit, the second partner, Jill Harth, recalled Trump groping her under the table and cornering her in a room normally used by Trump's daughter, Ivanka. She said that Trump “forcibly kissed, fondled and restrained” her from leaving, The Times recalled. Before dawn, Trump then climbed into her bed uninvited and groped her again, the suit said. Trump denies the accounts.
"Harth said she withdrew her subsequent harassment lawsuit as a condition for settling the contract dispute. She went on to briefly date Mr. Trump," the report said.
A college student in her early 20s in the early 2000s recalled attending four parties at Epstein's mansion and that "Trump's presence stood out." She described him as "a household name, someone Mr. Epstein often bragged about to the women around him, but also seemed to compete with."
"Tina Davis, who modeled for Ford in the mid-1990s, said in an interview that her Ford booker instructed her to get dressed up and attend a Mar-a-Lago party in late 1994," The Times reported. She was told to "dress sexy." She was just 14.
“All the girls were really young,” Coleman's mother recalled to The Times. “Some of them could have been in training bras.”
At one point, Coleman's mother ran into Trump's second wife, Marla Maples, en route to the ladies room. Coleman recalled Maples telling her, “Whatever you do, do not let her around any of these men, and especially my husband. Protect her.”
Maples denied the comment, saying, “I would always protect young women in any way I could, but I am sure I didn’t specifically say that about my daughter’s father.”
A woman trafficked by Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s recalled at least six parties at Mar-a-Lago when she was 17. Epstein was at many of them. If he didn't go, he wanted to hear about her experience.
Zoë Brock, a New Zealand model, recalled boarding a bus with about 20 other young models and being given a special wristband. She was then handed a glass of "champagne, and I immediately felt not well,” Ms. Brock recalled, adding, “I thought my drink had been spiked.”
Stacey Williams, the swimsuit cover model, recalled being grabbed by Epstein on the street and dragged into Trump Tower. She was on his arm while Epstein spoke to Trump about real estate. Trump began fondling her. Once they left, Epstein was enraged she let Trump do it.
“I’m convinced that’s why he walked me in there,” she told the Times. “He thought I would punch him in the face or something. But I froze.” A current Trump representative called the story “unequivocally false.”
One woman recalled Epstein dropping the veiled threat that he'd filmed an encounter in which he and Ghislaine Maxwell had sex in front of her. She said that when it began she froze and wasn't sure if she could leave, the report said, "terrified that her parents and pastor would find out what had happened, she acquiesced" to Epstein's demands to keep coming to the mansion.
