At a Christmas get together in 1992, former mannequin Stacey Williams lately stated, Jeffrey Epstein launched her to Donald Trump. The late financier had been all in favour of her, she told The Guardian, they usually casually dated for a number of months.
“It grew to become very clear then,” Williams instructed the paper, “that he and Donald have been actually, actually good associates and spent quite a lot of time collectively.” On the time, Epstein was a New York social fixture however not but a determine of worldwide notoriety; Trump was an actual property developer and tabloid mainstay. Williams was in her mid-20s.
Just a few months later, Williams stated, she and Epstein have been on a stroll, and he urged that they go to Trump Tower. Moments after arriving, she claimed, she skilled what she took to be a “twisted sport” between the 2 males.
In response to Williams, Trump started groping her simply after greeting her. She stated he put his palms “throughout my breasts” in addition to her waist and butt. She stated she froze as a result of she was “deeply confused,” however that she believed she noticed Epstein and Trump smiling at one another.
“These accusations, made by a former activist for Barack Obama and introduced on a Harris marketing campaign name two weeks earlier than the election, are unequivocally false,” Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump marketing campaign, instructed The Guardian. “It’s apparent this pretend story was contrived by the Harris marketing campaign.”
Williams had beforehand recounted particulars of the allegation on social media and through a Zoom name on Monday organized by a bunch known as Survivors for Kamala. After the alleged incident, she stated on the decision, “Jeffrey and I left and he didn’t have a look at me or converse to me and I felt this seething rage round me, and after we obtained all the way down to the sidewalk, he checked out me and simply berated me, and stated: ‘Why did you let him do this?’”
The allegation comes simply weeks earlier than the presidential election, and some years after Epstein’s loss of life in a federal jail whereas awaiting trial on intercourse trafficking costs. Trump was then approaching the tip of his presidential time period, and the outcry over Epstein’s crimes—in addition to these of his affiliate Ghislaine Maxwell—prompted a recent spherical of inquiry into the long-running ties between the 2 males. In one in every of his most notorious remarks, Trump instructed New York in 2002 that he had recognized Epstein, a “terrific man,” for 15 years.
“He’s quite a lot of enjoyable to be with,” Trump stated. “It’s even stated that he likes lovely ladies as a lot as I do, and plenty of of them are on the youthful facet.”
The connection traces again, as with so a lot of Epstein’s connections, to Maxwell. Her father, the British media mogul Robert Maxwell, hosted Trump on his yacht, the Woman Ghislaine, when he was making an attempt to purchase the New York Publish in 1989 and make the corresponding social inroads. Ghislaine grew to become pleasant with Trump’s first spouse, Ivana, according to former Epstein enterprise affiliate Steven Hoffenberg. (Rumors of Trump’s affair with Marla Maples started circulating in 1990, and he and Ivana divorced in 1992.) Maxwell and Epstein started courting within the ‘90s, and Hoffenberg stated Trump was particularly keen on her.
