Epstein accuser claims she met Trump in disgraced financier's office in ‘troubling encounter'
Artist Maria Farmer said she urged the FBI to look into people in the disgraced financier's social circle, including the president, after the alleged encounter in the 90s, she told The New York Times.
Farmer and her younger sister Annie, who testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking trial, have spoken publicly about their ordeal with Epstein before. But her account now sheds light on how the Epstein files could contain material that is 'embarrassing or politically problematic' to the president, the Times reports.
Farmer's account is among 'the clearest indications yet' of how Trump may appear in the Epstein files, the Times notes, though the White House disputed the alleged encounter.
'The president was never in [Epstein's] office,' said White House communications director Steven Cheung. 'The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep.'
It follows a turbulent few weeks for the Trump administration after MAGA outrage over the Epstein files boiled over last week. Despite campaigning on a promise to release the files, Trump's Justice Department announced in July that no further evidence in the case would be released, unleashing turmoil among the president's MAGA supporter base.
The president last week agreed to release select grand jury testimony of the case, which experts say is unlikely to produce much, if anything, to satisfy the public's appetite for new information about Epstein's crimes.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail awaiting a sex trafficking trial in August 2019.
Farmer was in her mid-twenties when she claimed she met Trump in 1995, shortly after Epstein hired her to do artwork.
One night, she received an unexpected call from Epstein, who requested she come by his offices in Manhattan.
According to Farmer's account to the Times, Trump was there and 'started to hover over her.'
Farmer said that 'she recalled feeling scared as Mr. Trump stared at her bare legs,' the newspaper reported. 'Then Mr. Epstein entered the room, and she recalled him saying to Mr. Trump: 'No, no. She's not here for you.''
Epstein and Trump then left the room, according to Farmer, and she claimed she heard Trump comment that he thought she was 16 years old.
The White House disputed Farmer's account.
After the encounter, Farmer said she had no other 'alarming' interactions with Trump, nor did she witness him engage in inappropriate conduct with any other girls or women.
Farmer filed a lawsuit at the end of May alleging that the federal government failed to protect her and other victims of the convicted pedophile and his madam, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Farmer told the Times that she has long wondered how her complaints about Epstein between 1996 and 2006 were handled by law enforcement agencies.
She told the newspaper that she raised Trump's name with authorities on two occasions because of the alleged encounter and 'because he seemed so close' to Epstein.
Trump has never been accused of any wrongdoing in the Epstein case.
Farmer, who did not testify at Maxwell's trial, was sexually assaulted by Epstein and his madam at his Ohio estate in 1996. Farmer later learned that her younger sister Annie, then 16, was molested by Maxwell and Epstein at his New Mexico ranch that same year.
When Farmer discovered her sister had also been assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell, she reported the sex offender to the FBI.
'There is certainly more to know,' Annie Farmer told The Independent in an interview last year. 'I don't know whether we will ever learn more about that but I don't think we know everything.'
The president has sought to distance himself from the sex offender, with whom he had a friendship from the late 80s until the early 2000s.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published the text of a note that was allegedly penned by Trump to Epstein as part of a 50th birthday card. The note itself was framed with the silhouette of a naked woman, with the contents alluding to a 'secret' that Trump wrote the two men shared.
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