How Trump and 'terrific guy' Jeffrey Epstein's party boy friendship ended badly
Parties. Models. Mansions.
They danced with cheerleaders at Mar-a-Lago and dined with celebrities in Manhattan. Trump flew on Epstein's private jet between New York – where they lived blocks apart − and Florida, where they owned mansions 2 miles from each other. Their lives intersected over decades, with Epstein once claiming he introduced Trump to his third wife, Melania.
'Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were both horny rich guys with an eye for young models,' Michael Gross, author of the 1995 book 'Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women,' told USA TODAY. Now, their friendship plagues Trump's second term in the White House.
More: Who is Ghislaine Maxwell? DOJ turns to Jeffrey Epstein's ex-partner.
Trump hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing in the Epstein case, but he is among the dozens of politicians, actors and tech leaders connected to the billionaire who was first convicted in 2008 of paying teenage girls for sex acts and accused in 2019 in a sprawling sex trafficking scheme. Epstein died before he went to trial on those charges.
Though dead nearly six years, Epstein now dominates Trump's agenda amid a tornado of outrage since the White House and Department of Justice tried to close the book on the case after the president and his closest allies – including the attorney general and the FBI director – spent years claiming Democrats had suppressed evidence of an Epstein 'client list' and a wider child abuse conspiracy.
More: Can Trump pardon Ghislaine Maxwell? When does Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator get out?
"We already know almost everything there is to be known about the Epstein files. The story isn't Epstein anymore. It's Donald Trump talking about Epstein," says Mike Rothschild, author of "The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything."
Trump's MAGA movement has rebelled after being promised lurid Epstein revelations by the very officials who now say there are none.
On July 22, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, sent the House of Representatives on an early summer recess to prevent passage of a bipartisan measure forcing the DOJ to release its Epstein documents.
"The GOP is so intent on not talking about Epstein and not releasing any details, it makes you wonder if there is something they don't want released," Rothschild said. "It starts driving you toward conspiracy theory."
More: Trump's Epstein problem grows: Even his voters want more files released
On July 22, Trump said the Epstein furor was 'sort of a witch hunt,' and railed against the media, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
One day later, the Wall Street Journal and CNN reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump in May that he was named multiple times in the government's files on Epstein.
But long before Epstein's conviction and questions about who might want his secrets buried, he and Trump were charter members of a decadent New York party scene.
When Donald met Jeffrey
Epstein and Trump met, it's believed, in 1990 when Epstein bought a mansion 2 miles from Trump's Mar-a-Lago club and estate.
Born seven years and a borough apart in New York, Epstein was from Brooklyn and Trump from Queens. They partied hard, but neither drank alcohol.
Trump was living loud in 1990. He had divorced his first wife, Ivana, with whom he had three children, and was dating model Marla Maples. Epstein was rich and single, a former high school teacher running his own financial advisory firm.
Trump was known for hosting parties at the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time, that attracted rich men and younger women.
'If they were checking IDs, it was to make sure the girls were young enough,' Gross, who's known Trump for more than 40 years, said jokingly.
It wasn't enough to simply invite models to events: Trump started his own agency and Epstein invested in one.
Trump launched Trump Models in 1999. It represented Melania Knauss, who would later become his wife, and signed on teen models such as Alexia Palmer.
More: Speaker Mike Johnson to shut down House early amid Jeffrey Epstein drama
Epstein would later invest in Jean-Luc Brunel's MC2 modeling agency. Brunel had been banned from his former agency in Europe after accusations of abuse.
Trump and Epstein were 'representative of a type that has nibbled at the edges of the modeling business. If you're in the market for women as sex toys, a higher echelon of that is models. They are, by definition, beautiful women. They also are beautiful young women,' Gross says. 'You can go from there.'
Brunel was suspected of transporting girls or young women for Epstein. In 2022, less than three years after Epstein's death, he died by suicide in a French jail.
'Rhythm is a Dancer'
In July 2019, after Epstein's arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, Trump said in the Oval Office that he was 'not a fan' of the financier. But it wasn't always that way.
In 1992, Epstein joined Trump for a party at Mar-a-Lago, where a video shows Trump chatting and laughing next to Epstein. Trump sways to the Eurodance hit 'Rhythm is a Dancer,' as the pair hang with cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins.
Later that year, Trump and Epstein would again meet at Mar-a-Lago, at an invite-only event for a 'calendar girl' competition organized by George Houraney, according to The New York Times. The Florida businessman had created the event at Trump's request.
"At the very first party,' Houraney told the Times, 'I said, 'Who's coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.' It was him and Epstein.'
Epstein moved into one of the largest private homes in Manhattan in 1995, a townhouse previously owned by billionaire Victoria's Secret owner Les Wexner. Trump was 1 mile away in a penthouse at Trump Tower.
'Terrific guy,' he famously told New York magazine in 2002 for a story that called Epstein an "international money man of mystery."
'He's a lot of fun to be with," Trump said. "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
'I sort of get away with things'
When his modeling agency never quite took off, Trump turned to beauty pageants. In October 1996, he bought Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA.
In a 2005 interview with Howard Stern, Trump bragged about his access to contestants, some of whom were as young as 14.
'I'll go backstage before a show and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else and no men are anywhere …. I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it,' Trump told Stern.
'The girls are standing there with no clothes on, and so I sort of get away with things like that,' he said.
Tasha Dixon was competing in the Miss USA pageant in 2001 in Gary, Indiana, when she, a former Miss Arizona, met Trump. He walked in, she told CNN, as contestants changed into their bikinis.
The theme that year was empowering women.
"Who do you complain to? He owns the pageant,' she said.
As Trump approached his third marriage − and alleged affairs, which he denies, with an adult film star and a former Playboy playmate − court testimony shows his friend Epstein was abusing teenagers.
Sometime in the summer of 2000, a 16-year-old Mar-a-Lago locker room assistant was recruited into Epstein's circle by Epstein's procuror and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. She would later accuse Epstein and Maxwell of years of sexual abuse. Virginia Giuffre died by suicide last April at the age of 41.
A lenient 2008 plea deal Epstein received from state and federal prosecutors in Florida included restitution to 36 victims. A 2019 federal indictment cited "dozens" of victims.
The breakup
In 2003, The Wall Street Journal reported, Epstein received a leather-bound volume of tributes from friends for his 50th birthday. A lewd message in the book was attributed to Trump, the paper reported. It ended: 'Happy Birthday − and may every day be another wonderful secret.' (Trump denied writing the letter and has sued The Wall Street Journal over the report.)
A year after Epstein turned 50, Trump, in his book "Trump ‒ How to Get Rich," described a call from a person he called "the mysterious Jeffrey."
"As mysterious as Jeffrey is, he's one of the few people I know who can get by on just a first name," Trump wrote. "My staff never asks for a last name in his case, which in a way puts him up there with Elvis."
But that year, Epstein and Trump fell out over an oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach called Maison de l'Amitie − the House of Friendship. Trump outbid Epstein for the estate, paying $41 million, and in 2008 flipped it for $95 million to a Russian billionaire.
Other reports say they broke after Ghislaine Maxwell solicited the daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member and her father complained to Trump.
'The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep," said White House Communications Director Steven Cheung.
Maxwell is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking a minor to Epstein for sexual abuse. After her 2020 arrest, when asked if Maxwell might cut a deal with prosecutors, Trump said: "I just wish her well." On July 24, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as a criminal defense lawyer for Trump, flew to Florida to meet Maxwell at a women's prison.
'Boring stuff'
Trump and Epstein appear to have not spoken for 15 years before his death.
As Epstein continues to dog his presidency, Trump says he's bewildered by the attention.
'I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody," he told reporters. "It's pretty boring stuff.'
Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focusing on health and wellness. She is the author of "Stepping Back from the Ledge: A Daughter's Search for Truth and Renewal," and can be reached at ltrujillo@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Inside the rise (and ugly fall) of the Trump-Epstein friendship
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