Trump’s comments on Epstein raise new questions about when and why they fell out
President Donald Trump this week spoke at length about his relationship with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, but his accounts raise new questions about when exactly the two fell out and why.
Trump said on Monday that his relationship with Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, soured because Epstein poached some employees after he explicitly warned him not to do so.
Trump on Tuesday went on to say that Epstein “stole” young women who worked at the spa at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
One of those workers, Trump said, was Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein accuser who said she was recruited by his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, when Giuffre was an underage teenager working as a locker-room attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000. Maxwell, convicted of sex trafficking minors and now serving a 20-year prison sentence, has denied the allegations. Giuffre died by suicide this past April at age 41.
“I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa, I think so, I think that was one of the people,” Trump first said when asked about Giuffre before going on to say more definitively, “Yeah, he stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, none whatsoever.”
According to Social Security records submitted to the court during Giuffre’s defamation case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Giuffre was employed at Mar-a-Lago Club LLC in 2000 and earned $1,866.50 during that calendar year. The duration and precise dates of her employment at Trump’s club remained in dispute when the lawsuit settled in 2017.
Giuffre — then known as Virginia Roberts — subsequently went on to travel extensively around the world with Epstein and Maxwell over the next two years, according to flight logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots that have been entered into court records in civil and criminal cases.
Trump’s comments came after the White House last week said Epstein was kicked out of Mar-a-Lago for being a “creep.”
Asked about the discrepancy between the White House’s reasoning for his split with Epstein and his own that it was over Epstein stealing his employees, Trump said on Tuesday “it’s sort of a little bit of the same thing.”
As he told reporters that Epstein poached young female staff, Trump said “people would come and complain, ‘this guy is taking people from the spa.’ I didn’t know that.”
“And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa.’ I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again and I said, ‘Out of here,'” Trump said.
But previous comments from Trump suggested his falling out with Epstein occurred several years later than that.
In 2002, Trump praised Epstein in a New York magazine profile of the now-deceased financier and convicted sex offender.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told the magazine. “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.”
Then in 2004, the two men were rivals over a property in Florida as reported by the Washington Post. Trump ultimately won the property at auction.
In 2019, when Epstein was arrested on federal charges, Trump said he hadn’t spoken with Epstein in 15 years.
“I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan. I was not, yeah, a long time ago, I’d say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.”
Asked at the time for the reason behind their falling out and why Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago, Trump responded: “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”
ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment on Trump’s explanations of his fallout with Epstein.
