Ties to Jeffrey Epstein....

Trump’s Ties to Jeffrey Epstein: Everything We’ve Learned

(This is an edited version)

By Margaret Hartmann

hile Jeffrey Epstein’s black book contained a staggering number of A-listers and high-society pals, perhaps the biggest question surrounding this year’s release of a tranche of Epstein court documents was what they would reveal about Donald Trump.

The hype reached a fever pitch on January 3, 2024, when Mark Epstein claimed that before his brother died in jail while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, he told him he knew secrets that could blow up the presidential election between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

“Here’s a direct quote: ‘If I said what I know about both candidates, they’d have to cancel the election.’ That’s what Jeffrey told me in 2016,” Mark Epstein told the New York Post.

Wild stuff! But Mark Epstein said he didn’t know what information his brother was referring to. And while Trump was mentioned in both old court documents and the batches released in 2024, there was no smoking gun.

Trump has repeatedly denied any Epstein-related wrongdoing. Yet questions about Trump’s ties to Epstein persist, as the convicted sex offender is a conspiracy-theory fixture and former model Stacey Williams recently claimed Trump groped her as his friend watched. Here’s a running list of everything we’ve learned about Trump’s relationship with Epstein.

Williams said that during a 1993 walk with Epstein, who she was dating, he suggested they stop into Trump Tower to visit Donald. She said on the call:

Moments later, Trump was greeting us. And he pulled me into him, and started groping me. He put his hands all over my breasts, my waist, my butt. And I froze. And I froze because I was so deeply confused about what was happening because the hands were moving all over me yet these two men were like smiling at one another and continuing on in their conversation. 

She said Epstein berated her afterward, and she came to feel that the groping was part of a “twisted game” between the two men. A short time later, Trump sent Williams a postcard from Mar-a-Lago via her agent. The Guardian published a photo of it on October 23.

Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the story, telling The Guardian: “These accusations, made by a former activist for Barack Obama and announced on a Harris campaign call two weeks before the election, are unequivocally false. It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign.”

Trump began palling around with Epstein in the late ’80s, but the depth of their friendship is a subject of debate.

Footage unearthed by NBC News in 2019 shows the two men joking around and ogling women during a party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in 1992.

Williams said that she met Epstein in 1992 and it was clear that “he and Donald were really, really good friends.” She said that while she was dating Epstein, he “mentioned Trump frequently. He was clearly a close friend and they were spending a lot of time together.”

Trump and Epstein were also photographed together in 1992 and 1997. The now famous image below shows Trump and then-girlfriend Melania Knauss partying with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago on February 12, 2000.

In 2002, the mogul told New York, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

There is no evidence that Trump ever visited Little St. James, Epstein’s residence located in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Epstein allegedly trafficked and sexually abused women and girls there, which is why it was nicknamed “Orgy Island,” “Pedophile Island,” and “Island of Sin.”

Trump has denied that he ever visited Epstein’s island. But he’s been happy to fan similar unfounded conspiracy theories about about his political rivals. When asked in 2019 if he believes the Clintons were involved in Epstein’s death, Trump answered:

I have no idea. I know he was on his plane 27 times, and he said he was on the plane four times. But when they checked the plane logs, Bill Clinton, who was a very good friend of Epstein, he was on the plane about 27 or 28 times, so why did he say four times?

And then the question you have to ask is ‘Did Bill Clinton go to the island?’ because Epstein had an island that was not a good place as I understand it, and I was never there. So you have to ask, ‘Did Bill Clinton go to the island?’ If you find that out, you’re going to know a lot.

Like Trump, Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane. But none of the Epstein flight logs list either former president as passengers on Virgin Islands-bound flights. A Clinton spokesman said the former president “has never been to Little St. James” and his office has repeatedly said he “knows nothing” about Epstein’s “terrible crimes.”

Trump has claimed that he and Epstein had a “falling out” years before the financier was first arrested in Palm Beach in 2005 after being accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex. (Though dozens of other underage girls accused Epstein of sexual abuse at the time, because of a 2008 plea deal, he served only 13 months in jail in a work-release program.)

There are reports that a battle over a choice Palm Beach property ended the Trump-Epstein friendship, but it’s unclear what exactly came between the two. Days after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019, Trump downplayed their relationship while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. He said he merely “knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” adding, “I had a falling out with him. I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”