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‘DON’S BEST FRIEND’: HOW EPSTEIN AND TRUMP BONDED OVER THE
PURSUIT OF WOMEN  
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Nicholas Confessore and Julie Tate
December 18, 2025
The New York Times
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*
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*
*
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_ The Times interviewed more than 30 former employees of Jeffrey
Epstein, victims of his abuse and others who crossed paths with Mr.
Epstein and President Trump. The Times also obtained new documents
that illuminate their relationship. _

,

 

Jeffrey Epstein was a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be
with.” He and Donald J. Trump also had “no formal relationship.”
They went to a lot of the same parties. But they “did not socialize
together.” They were never really friends, just business
acquaintances. Or “there was no relationship” at all. “I was not
a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

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.
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.

The controversy has shaken Mr. Trump’s iron hold on his base like no
other. Loyal supporters have demanded to know why the administration
has not moved more quickly to unearth the convicted sex offender’s
remaining secrets. In November, after resisting months of pressure to
release more Epstein-related documents held by the federal government
— and facing an almost unheard-of revolt among Republican lawmakers
— Mr. Trump reversed himself, signing legislation that requires
their release beginning this week.

Mr. Epstein had a talent for acquiring powerful friends, some of whom
have become ensnared in the continuing scrutiny of his crimes. For
months, Mr. Trump has labored furiously to shift himself out of the
frame, dismissing questions about his relationship with Mr. Epstein as
a “Democrat hoax” and imploring his supporters to ignore the
matter entirely. An examination of their history by The New York Times
has found no evidence implicating Mr. Trump in Mr. Epstein’s abuse
and trafficking of minors.

But the two men’s relationship was both far closer and far more
complex than the president now admits.

Beginning in the late 1980s, the two men forged a bond intense enough
to leave others who knew them with the impression that they were each
other’s closest friend, The Times found. Mr. Epstein was then a
little-known financier who cultivated mystery around the scope and
source of his self-made wealth
[[link removed]].
Mr. Trump, six years older, was a real estate scion who relished
publicity and exaggerated his successes. Neither man drank or did
drugs. They pursued women in a game of ego and dominance. Female
bodies were currency.

Over nearly two decades, as Mr. Trump cut a swath through the party
circuits of New York and Florida, Mr. Epstein was perhaps his most
reliable wingman. During the 1990s and early 2000s, they prowled Mr.
Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and Mr. Trump’s Plaza Hotel, at least
one of Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City casinos and both their Palm Beach
homes. They visited each other’s offices and spoke often by phone,
according to other former Epstein employees and women who spent time
in his homes.

With other men, Mr. Epstein might discuss tax shelters, international
affairs or neuroscience. With Mr. Trump, he talked about sex.

“I just think it was trophy hunting,” Stacey Williams, who rose to
fame as a star of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions during the
1990s, said in an interview with The Times. In social media posts and
interviews with news outlets in recent years, Ms. Williams has
described how Mr. Trump groped her in 1993 at Trump Tower while Mr.
Epstein — whom she was then dating — watched. “I think Jeffrey
liked that he had this Sports Illustrated model who had this name, and
that Trump was pursuing me,” she said. Mr. Trump has denied her
account.

To shed light on their friendship, The Times interviewed more than 30
former Epstein employees, victims of his abuse and others who crossed
paths with the two men over the years. The Times also obtained new
documents that illuminate their relationship and scoured court
documents and other public records.

Many of the people interviewed by The Times asked to share their
stories anonymously, saying they feared for their safety at the hands
of supporters of Mr. Trump, a president who has deployed the might of
the federal government
[[link removed]]
to target and punish his political opponents. Some Epstein victims
have already received death threats for demanding a full accounting of
the government’s investigations, according to a statement released
by more than two dozen of them last month.

Over the years, Mr. Epstein or his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell,
introduced at least six women who have accused them of grooming or
abuse to Mr. Trump, according to interviews, court testimony and other
records. One was a minor at the time. None have accused Mr. Trump
himself of inappropriate behavior.

One of the women, who has never before spoken publicly about the
experience, told The Times that Mr. Epstein had coerced her into
attending four parties at Mr. Epstein’s home. Mr. Trump attended all
four, the woman said. At two of them, she said, Mr. Epstein directed
her to have sex with other male guests.

In an email among those released by Congress in November, Mr. Epstein
boasted that he “gave” Mr. Trump a 20-year-old woman whom Mr.
Epstein dated in the 1990s. During a flight together in the early
1990s, Mr. Trump came on to another Epstein employee traveling with
them, telling her that he could have anyone he wanted, according to a
different Epstein worker who learned of the incident. A separate
Epstein employee from that era recalled that Mr. Trump would
occasionally send over modeling cards for Mr. Epstein to peruse, like
a menu.

Mr. Epstein, who claimed he required three orgasms
[[link removed]]
a day, exploited or abused hundreds of women and girls before dying in
what was ruled a suicide. Mr. Trump does not stand accused of sexually
abusing a minor. But over the course of his friendship with Mr.
Epstein and beyond, he left a trail of alleged abuse and assault, many
details of which began to surface publicly during his successful 2016
presidential campaign.

Close to 20 women have publicly accused Mr. Trump of groping, forcibly
kissing or sexually assaulting them — behavior that he once bragged
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he could get away with because of his celebrity but later denied
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ever engaging in. In 2023, the writer E. Jean Carroll won a $5 million
civil judgment against Mr. Trump for sexual abuse and defamation.

In response to a detailed list of questions from The Times, the White
House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, issued a statement: “This
fake news story, which is not worth the paper it’s printed on, is
just another stale regurgitation of decades-old false allegations
against President Trump. The truth will remain the same no matter how
many times The New York Times tries to change it. President Trump did
nothing wrong, and he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for
being a creep.”

It is unclear what new information may emerge under the new law passed
by Congress. The statute allows the Trump administration to withhold
records that identify victims, including images of child sexual abuse,
or documents that are otherwise classified. His appointees can also
hold back records that could jeopardize an active federal
investigation — such as a new inquiry ordered
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by Mr. Trump into Democrats associated with Mr. Epstein. In a
statement in late November, a group of Epstein accusers wrote,
“Other than redacting victim names, we want all the files
disclosed.”

Mr. Trump has denied knowing of Mr. Epstein’s abuse of underage
girls. But in a tranche of emails released in November, Mr. Epstein
suggested otherwise. In a 2019 message to the journalist Michael
Wolff, he wrote of Mr. Trump, “of course he knew about the girls as
he asked ghislaine to stop.” The full context of Mr. Epstein’s
remark is unclear.

In a 2010 deposition, Mr. Epstein was asked if he had ever socialized
with Mr. Trump with girls under 18. As he did more than three dozen
times during the deposition, Mr. Epstein invoked his constitutional
right not to answer.

“Though I’d like to answer that question, at least today, I’m
going to have to assert my Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendment rights,
sir,” he replied [[link removed]].

SEX TALK AND OFFICE HOURS

Sometimes the phone would ring in Mr. Trump’s office at Trump Tower.
The caller — “the mysterious Jeffrey,” as Mr. Trump described
him in a 2004 book of business advice — never gave a last name, nor
did he need to, Mr. Trump wrote. 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 White House spokeswoman declined to say whether Mr. Trump’s book
was referring to a different Jeffrey. But the two talked at least
three times a week during the mid-to-late 1990s, according to a second
Epstein assistant from that period.

The first assistant, who often worked late, recalled that sometimes,
when the office emptied out, Mr. Epstein would check to see that she
was at her desk and put Mr. Trump on speaker. Mr. Trump, she said,
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.

She remembered one call in the mid-1990s on which the two men
discussed how much pubic hair a particular woman had, and whether
there was enough for Mr. Epstein to floss his teeth with. On another,
Mr. Trump told Mr. Epstein about having sex with another woman on a
pool table, the former assistant said.

A woman known in court records as Jane Doe, whom Mr. Epstein
trafficked during the mid-1990s, beginning in her early teens,
testified in Ms. Maxwell’s criminal trial in 2021 that Mr. Epstein
often put famous friends on speakerphone in front of other people.

The calls with Mr. Trump continued through the later years of the
men’s friendship, according to a third former employee, who worked
for Mr. Epstein on and off through most of the 2000s and also recalled
him putting Mr. Trump on speaker. They would talk about pageants or
modeling shows or which countries’ women were in vogue in the
fashion world. Sometimes, the third employee said, Mr. Trump went on
so long that Mr. Epstein — whose attention span was famously short
— would leave the room while his friend was still talking.

Maria Farmer, an artist who has said she was sexually assaulted by Ms.
Maxwell and Mr. Epstein during the mid-1990s, told The Times in 2019
[[link removed]]
that Mr. Epstein had once summoned her to meet Mr. Trump at the
Villard Houses office. Mr. Trump leered at her, she said, before Mr.
Epstein informed him that “she’s not for you.”

This summer, a spokesman for Mr. Trump denied that the president
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had ever set foot in Mr. Epstein’s office. The first former
assistant, though, recalled Mr. Trump meeting there briefly with Mr.
Epstein at least several times during the mid-1990s. Her account was
supported by Mark Epstein, Mr. Epstein’s brother, who said that
Jeffrey had told him that Mr. Trump visited him frequently.

“He was in the office all the time back then,” Mr. Epstein said in
an interview with The Times.

Daily handwritten notes kept by the first former assistant and
reviewed by The Times suggest that Mr. Trump was a regular presence in
Mr. Epstein’s life. The notes, spanning several months in late 1994,
have not been previously reported.

Some pages contain instructions to call Mr. Trump or return his call.
One note reminded the assistant to call Mr. Trump’s office to see if
he was “flying to Fla tomorrow.” Another recorded that a package
would be arriving with an invitation to a Mar-a-Lago event.

On one page are instructions about invitations for an upcoming party.
Mr. Trump was to be invited — but only if his ex-wife Ivana, with
whom Ms. Maxwell was friendly, declined.

Their relationship was riddled with undertones of envy and disdain.
Mr. Epstein seemed to hold a low opinion of his friend’s business
acumen, according to the former employees and others who knew him. On
one occasion around 2001, the third former employee said, Mr. Epstein
was annoyed after Mr. Trump called him. He later told the employee
that Mr. Trump was short on cash and wanted a ride on Mr. Epstein’s
plane.

During the early years of their friendship, Mr. Trump was racing
toward a reckoning over the billions of dollars he had borrowed to
assemble his struggling empire
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including casinos, hotels, an airline and a yacht. According to former
Epstein employees, Mr. Trump seemed attracted to the financier’s
wealth and business network.

It is unclear whether Mr. Epstein — who ostensibly specialized in
offering tax and estate planning for wealthy clients — helped Mr.
Trump navigate his financial problems. But in his 2020 memoir of
representing Epstein victims, “Relentless Pursuit,” the Florida
lawyer Bradley J. Edwards wrote that Mr. Epstein had claimed to some
young women that he had bailed his friend out of bankruptcy.

Even as he dismissed Mr. Trump’s deal-making, Mr. Epstein — who
could be socially awkward at other people’s parties — seemed to
admire his friend’s brash confidence and access to higher realms of
nightlife and celebrity. He frequently mentioned his friendship with
Mr. Trump, according to several accusers, telling one he had a bedroom
reserved at Mar-a-Lago. Even after they fell out, Mr. Epstein kept a
framed photo of himself
[[link removed]]
with Mr. Trump and his future third wife, Melania, on a credenza in
his Upper East Side dining room.

THE PARTY CIRCUIT

A few years into Mr. Trump’s friendship with Mr. Epstein, Ivana
Trump filed for divorce. Mr. Trump’s affair with Marla Maples, a
former pageant contestant, was running hot and cold. In 1992, he
invited NBC to Mar-a-Lago to shoot video
[[link removed]] for a feature
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about his post-divorce life on the talk show “A Closer Look.”

“I love beautiful women, I love going out with beautiful women and I
love women in general,” he said in the footage.

The cameras captured him and Mr. Epstein at the Palm Beach estate,
surrounded by cheerleaders from the Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills.
In the video, Mr. Trump grabs a smiling woman from the rear and pats
her on the behind; in another clip, he appears to point toward women
on the dance floor, and Mr. Epstein doubles over laughing at something
his friend
[[link removed]]
has whispered.

In January 1993, Mr. Trump held another party at Mar-a-Lago, this one
to kick off a beauty pageant he was bringing to Atlantic City with two
business partners, George Houraney and Jill Harth. Two dozen or so
potential contestants were flown in to meet Mr. Trump. The only other
guest at the party, Mr. Houraney told
[[link removed]]
The Times in 2019, was Mr. Epstein.

During dinner that night, Ms. Harth alleged in a 1997 lawsuit, Mr.
Trump groped her under the table, then cornered her in a bedroom
normally used by his daughter Ivanka and “forcibly kissed, fondled
and restrained” her from leaving.

Later, in the predawn hours, she alleged in the suit, Mr. Trump also
sneaked into a bedroom being used by a 22-year-old contestant.
Climbing into her bed uninvited, he groped her, too, according to the
suit.

Mr. Trump has denied the allegations by Ms. Harth, who declined to
comment. The pageant partnership later fizzled, leading Mr. Houraney
to separately sue Mr. Trump in 1995 for breach of contract. Ms. Harth
said she withdrew
[[link removed]]
her subsequent harassment lawsuit as a condition for settling the
contract dispute. She went on to briefly date Mr. Trump.

According to Mr. Epstein, he and Mr. Trump partied at his house, too.
In a 2015 email exchange with Landon Thomas Jr., then a Times
reporter, he recounted a moment when Mr. Trump was so focused on young
women swimming in his pool that he walked into a glass door. Mr.
Epstein also referred to the 22-year-old contestant from that night in
1993, indicating she had pictures of “donald and girls in bikinis in
my kitchen” and providing her email address.

The emails, among those released by Congress last month, came as Mr.
Trump led in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr.
Thomas, who had once pitched Mr. Epstein on a sympathetic profile,
said he was being approached by people who thought he had “juicy
info on you and Trump.”

It is unclear whether the photos Mr. Epstein referenced exist. The
former contestant could not be reached for comment. The Times is
withholding her name because she has not publicly come forward with
her own account of the events. (Mr. Thomas has said he never received
any photographs; he left The Times in 2019 after disclosing that he
had solicited a charitable contribution from Mr. Epstein.)

In November 1993, Mr. Trump’s chosen pageant contestants flew in
from around the world for a week of events at his properties in New
York and Atlantic City. At one point, Ms. Harth said in her lawsuit,
Mr. Trump demanded that she provide him with “access” to a
17-year-old Czech contestant. The suit does not say if she complied or
if Mr. Trump met the contestant.

Toward the end of the week, the contestants joined Mr. Trump for a
press luncheon at the Plaza. One contestant, Béatrice Keul, then a
bank employee and part-time model from Switzerland, said in an
interview with The Times that during the event, one of Mr. Trump’s
employees asked her to meet privately with him in a suite upstairs.
Almost as soon as she arrived, Ms. Keul said, Mr. Trump began groping
her, kissing her and trying to lift her dress. “I yelled, I
screamed, I pushed him,” she said. “He didn’t want to give
up.”

She said she was withholding some details of what happened because she
had been subject to anonymous threats. Ms. Keul first described
aspects of the episode to The Daily Mail last year
[[link removed]].
A friend, Pascal Claivaz, told The Times that Ms. Keul recounted the
episode at the Plaza to him around 2004. Ms. Keul also provided The
Times with pictures of documents corroborating her participation in
the pageant and of herself with Mr. Trump.

Before the private meeting, she was also approached by Mr. Epstein.

“I’m Jeffrey. I’m Don’s best friend,” she recalled him
saying. She was confused at first, Ms. Keul said, because he didn’t
seem to be affiliated with the pageant. She didn’t understand why he
had been allowed into the press luncheon. “He said, ‘Don likes you
very much,’ and that they were organizing parties at Mar-a-Lago and
he would love me to join,” Ms. Keul said. He would take care of her,
her flights, her hotel. “You just need to pack and come to the party
at Mar-a-Lago,” she recalled him saying.

When Ms. Keul demurred, Mr. Epstein tried other tactics — going on
about the wealth he kept in Swiss banks, then about famous friends
with whom he could arrange meetings.

“Epstein knew exactly what he was doing,” she said. “He had a
hunting method. It was a routine.”

The first of Mr. Epstein’s former assistants interviewed by The
Times said that on dozens of occasions in the mid-1990s, the financier
instructed her to call a pageant winner from somewhere in the world
and invite her to visit him in Florida. His standing offer, the
assistant said, was an all-expenses-paid trip and $5,000 in cash to go
shopping on Worth Avenue, Palm Beach’s famed shopping destination.

In December 1993, not long after the pageant, Mr. Trump married Ms.
Maples at the Plaza. Photos show Mr. Epstein in attendance
[[link removed]].
But the parties continued.

‘DRESS SEXY’

In the early 2000s, guests mingled in the library or dining room of
Mr. Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion as their host held court. The
women were beautiful and numerous. The men were older and few.
Occasionally, one of the women would head toward the bedrooms. One of
the men would shortly follow.

One woman, then a model and college student in her early 20s living in
Manhattan, said she attended four parties at the mansion. She cannot
recall the names of most of the men she met at the gatherings, not
even those Mr. Epstein directed her to “take care of” at two of
them. Recruited by Ms. Maxwell and then abused by Mr. Epstein, she
buried her shame and kept their secrets for years. But Mr. Trump’s
presence stood out, she told The Times. He was a household name,
someone Mr. Epstein often bragged about to the women around him, yet
also seemed to compete with.

“It was like a pissing contest — who had the most women,” she
recalled. She requested anonymity to describe her experiences in
detail, saying she feared for her family’s safety after Mr. Trump
said some of his critics could be executed for sedition
[[link removed]].

To people in the modeling business, men like Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein
were a familiar part of the scene: wealthy men who used their money,
clout and personal connections in fashion to meet the young women who
worked in the industry. “Two days a week, you’d be at a model
dinner at a restaurant,” said Heather Braden, a model and filmmaker
[[link removed]]. “And
there’d be these men we didn’t know.” Ms. Braden, who now lives
in Utah, said she often saw Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein at the same
parties or dinners during the 1990s in New York and South Florida,
including at Mar-a-Lago, which Mr. Trump converted to a members’
club in 1995.

Each man cultivated relationships that in turn put them in proximity
to young women in the industry. Mr. Epstein exploited his close
relationship with Les Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret,
sometimes
[[link removed]]
telling women he could get them meetings or bookings. Photographers or
camera crews captured Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump together at
Victoria’s Secret events in 1997 and 1999.

Mr. Trump befriended the Hawaiian Tropic founder Ron Rice, who told
The Boston Globe
[[link removed]]
that he would send models and pageant contestants to Mar-a-Lago for
parties at Mr. Trump’s request, and John Casablancas, the founder of
Elite Model Management, whose Look of the Year contest Mr. Trump
sponsored and helped judge in the early 1990s.

For Mar-a-Lago gatherings, groups of models were sometimes bused in
from Miami, often with help from Mr. Trump’s friend Jason Binn, a
co-founder of the society magazine Ocean Drive. Mr. Binn did not
return calls and emails seeking comment.

Tina Davis, who worked with Ford Models 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. Just 14 and new to Miami, she
was told to “dress sexy,” according to her mother, Sandra Coleman,
who had accompanied her to Florida. Eight or nine other models came
along on the bus. “All the girls were really young,” Ms. Coleman
recalled in an interview. “Some of them could have been in training
bras.”

When they arrived at Mar-a-Lago, Ms. Coleman said, her daughter was
promptly handed a glass of champagne. She took it away, but waiters
kept offering more. Each time one of the middle-aged men at the party
approached her daughter, Ms. Coleman would walk over and introduce
herself as Ms. Davis’s mother.

During a trip to the bathroom, they ran into Mr. Trump’s new wife,
whom they had met earlier. Ms. Maples clasped her hands, Ms. Coleman
recalled, and looked her in the eye. “Whatever you do, do not let
her around any of these men, and especially my husband,” she told
Ms. Coleman. “Protect her.”

Ms. Maples denied making the comment. “I would always protect young
women in any way I could,” she said, “but I am sure I didn’t
specifically say that about my daughter’s father.”

Mr. Epstein was a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago parties. A woman who
said Mr. Epstein trafficked her in the late 1990s and early 2000s
recalled attending at least a half-dozen of the parties, beginning
when she was 17 and modeling during the winter fashion season in
Florida. Mr. Epstein showed up at several of them, too. He always
seemed to know about events happening at Mar-a-Lago, she said, even
when he did not attend, and was always curious about her experiences.

The invitations typically came from Mr. Binn and Ocean Drive, bidding
the models “to be Donald Trump’s guest at Mar-a-Lago,” according
to one invitation she shared with The Times. The parties were
open-bar, and no one checked IDs, she said. Mr. Trump was “always
all over” them, she recalled.

The woman provided a picture of herself and a friend with Mr. Trump at
Mar-a-Lago. She said she did not remember whether she was still 17 at
the time of the picture. She has not previously spoken publicly about
meeting the future president, and asked for anonymity because she
feared retaliation from him or his supporters.

During the 1990s, both Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump also forged ties with
an up-and-coming modeling agency known as Next and its co-founder
Faith Kates, who would become one of the industry’s major figures.

Mr. Epstein was sometimes seen around Next office meetings, according
to Ms. Braden, who was represented by an agency that merged with Next
in the early 1990s. (After Mr. Epstein’s death, several former
employees
[[link removed]]
told The Daily Beast that they had seen Mr. Epstein around the Next
offices or taken calls from him; after he was arrested in Florida for
soliciting underage girls, he also donated money to a charity founded
by Ms. Kates.) Mr. Trump attended Next parties in New York, according
to a former model who was represented by the agency in the late 1990s
and said she once found herself seated near Mr. Trump at the
agency’s holiday dinner.

The agency also sometimes sent models to parties at Mar-a-Lago. Zoë
Brock, a New Zealand model who worked for Next in Miami, said she was
pressured by the agency to attend one of Mr. Trump’s parties in
1998, when she was 24. When she balked, a representative of the agency
offered to pay her a few hundred dollars to attend.

Not long after, she said, she boarded a bus with 20 or so other
models. At Mar-a-Lago, each woman was given a red-and-white striped
wristband, advertising them, Ms. Brock felt, as “meat.” None of
the other guests — chiefly men in tuxedos — wore the wristbands.
The women were made to line up and meet Mr. Trump.

“I had a glass of champagne, and I immediately felt not well,” Ms.
Brock recalled, adding, “I thought my drink had been spiked.”

It was Ms. Kates who had brought her client Ms. Williams to the 1992
dinner where she first met Mr. Epstein, some months after she made her
Sports Illustrated debut. And it was Ms. Kates who brought her to Mr.
Trump’s annual holiday party at the Plaza that fall, where she ran
into Mr. Epstein again — and where Mr. Trump also vied for her
attention, praising her recent spread in the swimsuit issue, Ms.
Williams said.

“I think they were trying to get as high up the chain of models as
far as they could,” Ms. Williams said. “They wanted the biggest
prize, the most famous model.”

But it was Mr. Epstein — not Mr. Trump — to whom she gave her
number. One day the following year, as they strolled down Fifth
Avenue, Mr. Epstein proposed visiting his friend in Trump Tower.

The real purpose of the visit, Ms. Williams later came to believe, was
[[link removed]]
to play a game. As the two friends stood talking in Mr. Trump’s
waiting room, she said, the real estate developer pulled her toward
him and groped her breasts, waist and buttocks.

Mr. Epstein acted like nothing had happened. After they left, though,
he flew into a rage, berating Ms. Williams for letting Mr. Trump touch
her.

“I’m convinced that’s why he walked me in there,” she said in
a recent interview. “He thought I would punch him in the face or
something. But I froze.” (A Trump representative previously called
her allegations “unequivocally false.”)

Ms. Kates departed Next in November, after emails released by Congress
indicated that she and Mr. Epstein had remained close for years after
his 2008 plea deal on charges of soliciting a minor.

A Next spokeswoman declined to answer questions sent by email, instead
sending a statement that the agency “has never had a business
relationship with Jeffrey Epstein or Donald Trump.”

Ms. Kates also declined to answer specific questions. “Neither Faith
nor anyone associated with Next ever brought clients to parties or
dinners for any inappropriate purpose,” a spokesman for Ms. Kates
said.

The woman who attended four parties at Mr. Epstein’s mansion in the
early 2000s said she had first met Ms. Maxwell at a show during New
York Fashion Week in 2000. Ms. Maxwell presented herself as a wealthy,
well-educated mentor, taking her to lunch and charity events.
Eventually, she offered to introduce her to a friend, Mr. Epstein. She
said Ms. Maxwell told her that he could help her achieve her dream of
modeling for Victoria’s Secret. The three met at Mr. Epstein’s
mansion that fall and talked about her career.

On a second visit, she recalled, Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell began
touching each other, and then her. She froze. “I don’t know if I
could have moved if I wanted to,” she said. Expecting an apology,
she returned for a third visit. Instead, she said, Mr. Epstein warned
her that cameras in the mansion had recorded their encounter. He
insisted she come to parties there. Terrified that her parents and
pastor would find out what had happened, she acquiesced.

The women at the four parties she attended didn’t seem to know one
another. The other men arrived individually. She recalled meeting Mr.
Trump at one of the parties. She showed The Times a handwritten
address book she kept in those years, containing Mr. Trump’s name
and two of his phone numbers. Mr. Trump did not act inappropriately
with her, the woman said.

The woman said she hoped the Justice Department would release redacted
documents relating to her interview with the F.B.I., which took place
in New York City in the summer of 2020, she said, and in which she
mentioned Mr. Trump’s presence at the parties. That same year,
according to documents the woman provided, she was interviewed about
Mr. Epstein by representatives of the Epstein Victims’ Compensation
Program, and later received a settlement. Another victims’ fund,
handling claims against JPMorgan Chase to settle allegations that the
bank ignored warnings about Mr. Epstein’s abuses, also approved the
woman for a settlement.

She has since filed paperwork to join a Florida lawsuit by more than
30 women — most under pseudonyms — alleging that the F.B.I. failed
to properly investigate reports of sex crimes and child sex
trafficking by Mr. Epstein dating to 1996. Government lawyers have
asked a judge to dismiss the case.

“The government knew about Epstein. They were aware of his sexual
abuse of minors and young women,” said Jennifer Plotkin, a lawyer
for the women. “And because they did nothing, hundreds and hundreds
of women were abused over 20 years.”

Ms. Maxwell is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for
conspiring with Mr. Epstein to traffic underage girls. Last July, the
deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, traveled to Florida to
interview her. She acknowledged Mr. Trump’s social relationship with
Mr. Epstein but said she had never seen the president behave
inappropriately. A week later, she was transferred to a minimum
security prison. Her lawyers are now seeking to overturn her
conviction.

REWRITING HISTORY

In the early 2000s, Mr. Epstein — now extraordinarily wealthy and
well connected — seemed to grow less content with the anonymity he
had carefully drawn around his life and business. In 2002, practically
inviting public scrutiny, he arranged to fly with former President
Bill Clinton and a celebrity entourage on a humanitarian trip to
Africa. Details of the trip were soon shared with The New York
Post’s Page Six. Not long after, New York magazine published
[[link removed]] the first major
profile of Mr. Epstein. Mr. Trump provided the headline quote:
“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.”

But sometime in the subsequent years, their friendship soured. Exactly
when, and why, is unclear. After the allegations against Mr. Epstein
slowly began emerging into view in the mid-2000s, accounts Mr. Trump
and his representatives gave of their relationship — and its end —
began to molt and morph. Mr. Epstein was kicked out of Mar-a-Lago for
being inappropriate with a masseuse
[[link removed]], or with
the daughter of a member
[[link removed]].
Mr. Trump had banned him for poaching employees, or for being a creep.

The first public signs of a breach came in 2007, with an anonymous
Page Six item, right as Mr. Epstein was negotiating a plea deal to
resolve the first federal and state charges against him. Mr. Epstein,
The Post reported, had been banned from Mar-a-Lago for soliciting “a
masseuse about 18 years old.” The item appeared to refer to Virginia
Giuffre, who said she was recruited by Ms. Maxwell from the Mar-a-Lago
spa just shy of her 17th birthday — back in 2000, when Mr. Epstein
and Mr. Trump were still close.

Several years after the Page Six item, when Ms. Giuffre had gone
public
[[link removed]]
with her allegations, Mr. Epstein wrote to Ms. Maxwell expressing
surprise that Mr. Trump had not gotten more attention, writing that
his friend had “spent hours at my house” with Ms. Giuffre. Ms.
Maxwell replied that she had been thinking about the same thing. In
depositions in 2016 — with Mr. Trump a leading contender for the
world’s most powerful public office — Ms. Giuffre said that Mr.
Trump had never had sex with her, and that she couldn’t remember
seeing him in Mr. Epstein’s homes. She died
[[link removed]] by
suicide this April.

In 2009, Mr. Edwards, the lawyer representing a group of Epstein
victims, set out to depose Mr. Epstein’s circle of powerful friends.
In his book, Mr. Edwards wrote that Mr. Trump quickly agreed to a
phone call. Mr. Epstein was merely a business acquaintance, he told
Mr. Edwards. He could not recall exactly why Mr. Epstein had been
removed from Mar-a-Lago. He said he had last seen him at a business
meeting at Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach home sometime before the
allegations came to light.

Even so, in early 2015, as Mr. Trump began exploring a presidential
bid, stories about Mr. Epstein’s widening legal troubles still
referred to Mr. Trump as his friend. Mr. Trump and his representatives
became more aggressive. Mr. Epstein was merely “one of thousands of
people who has visited Mar-a-Lago,” Alan Garten, Mr. Trump’s top
aide and lawyer, told BuzzFeed News. He was even more definitive the
following year. “There was no relationship between Jeffrey Epstein
and Donald Trump,” Mr. Garten told
[[link removed]]
Fox News. “They were not friends, and they did not socialize
together.”

When a reporter from The Associated Press asked
[[link removed]]
Mr. Trump about Mr. Epstein in 2015, he responded elliptically. “He
was certainly a man about town, and because of the fact that it is a
small island, he got to know a lot of people,” Mr. Trump said,
referring to Palm Beach. “When I started reading about the different
things and then things were proven, that’s a different planet,
that’s a different world.”

Interviews and public records, however, indicate that Mr. Trump at
times had interacted socially with women who accused Mr. Epstein and
Ms. Maxwell of grooming or abuse. The federal case against Ms. Maxwell
described her role in grooming three victims under the age of 18
between 1994 and 1997. One of them, a woman known in court records as
Jane Doe, alleged in a separate, civil complaint that Mr. Epstein had
taken her to visit Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 1994, when she was about
14.

“This is a good one, right?” Mr. Epstein said, elbowing Mr. Trump
playfully, according to the complaint. Mr. Trump smiled and nodded,
and the two men chuckled, the victim said. Her case ended in a
settlement with Mr. Epstein’s estate. In 2021, testifying at Ms.
Maxwell’s trial, she said she competed in Mr. Trump’s Miss Teen
USA pageant.

Jack O’Donnell, who ran the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City for several
years and later wrote a critical book about Mr. Trump, recalled in an
interview that Mr. Trump once arrived at the casino after midnight one
Sunday in September 1989 with Mr. Epstein and three young women. A
state gambling inspector recognized one of the women as the tennis
star Gabriela Sabatini, who at 19 was too young to legally enter the
casino. In a call that Monday, the inspector told Mr. O’Donnell that
all the women looked “very young,” he said. Soon after, Mr.
O’Donnell called Mr. Trump to flag the issue.

“Yeah, Jeffrey likes them young,” Mr. Trump said, Mr. O’Donnell
recalled in a recent interview. “Too young for me.” Mr.
O’Donnell previously described the episode in Slate; the White House
called his account a fabrication. Efforts to reach Ms. Sabatini were
unsuccessful.

Whatever the cause of their later falling-out, Mr. Epstein remained
obsessed with Mr. Trump. In the years after their last known contact,
he exchanged hundreds of emails with others mentioning his former
friend. As Mr. Trump’s political career took flight in the
mid-2010s, Mr. Epstein’s umbrage seemed to grow. Even as he
maneuvered to regain influence within Mr. Trump’s world, he mocked
and criticized him in private, calling him “nuts” and “evil
beyond belief,” according to the emails released by Congress.

He resented Mr. Trump’s efforts to distance himself, the emails
show. His older, smoother former friend seemed untouchable, while he
was enveloped in scandal once again, as more and more victims came
forward with their accounts of abuse. In an interview taped by Mr.
Wolff in 2017 and published by The Daily Beast last year, Mr. Epstein
described what he said was Mr. Trump’s technique for trying to bed
the wives of friends. Mr. Wolff asked how he had such intimate
knowledge of Mr. Trump. “I was Donald’s closest friend for 10
years,” Mr. Epstein replied
[[link removed]].

In emails, he hinted to friends that he could take Mr. Trump down. He
didn’t say how.

Reporting was contributed by Rebecca R. Ruiz, Matthew Goldstein, David
Enrich and Steve Eder.

 

_NICHOLAS CONFESSORE_
[[link removed]]_ is New York-based
political and investigative reporter for The Times and a staff writer
at the Times Magazine, covering power and influence in Washington,
tech, media and beyond. He can be reached at
[email protected]_
[[link removed]]_._

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[[link removed]]
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