'Terrific guy, he's a lot of fun to be with': What Donald Trump once said about Jeffrey Epstein

The Department of Justice released files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein Thursday evening and once the disgraced financer and sex offender is once again in the headlines. While the documents contained many of his contacts, flight logs and evidence that the government amassed against him, they also included the names of his victims and associates.

He was accused of running a "vast network" of underage girls for sex. Epstein died in a New York prison cell on 10 August as he awaited, without the chance of bail, his trial on sex trafficking charges.

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Jeffrey Epstein and Trump bond

In 2002, Jeffrey Epstein was known only as a mysterious financial whiz with a private island and a roster of A-list friends, being friendly with him was something to boast about, according to a report in Washington Post.

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine that year for a story headlined “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.” “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.” The remarks of Trump came after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.

Alan Garten, an attorney for the Trump Organization, had said Trump had “no relationship” with Epstein, the report said. Epstein visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and posed for photos there with Trump in 1997 and 2000. Epstein’s voluminous personal address book — leaked by an Epstein employee in 2009 — contained 14 phone numbers for Trump, his wife, Melania, and members of his staff, according to media reports.

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The relationship between Trump and Epstein appears to have cooled by 2007. In an interview, Alan Garten said Jeffrey was never a member of Mar-a-Lago and Trump prohibited him from visiting the club around that time.

“He banned him from stepping foot on the property,” Garten had said. He had said Trump’s private attorneys were not contacted during the more recent investigation of Epstein, which resulted in a 14-page federal indictment.

Woman alleges Trump groped her in front of Epstein

A former model alleged in a CNN interview in 2024 that she was groped by Donald Trump in the 1990s. Stacey Williams says the incident occurred in 1993 after disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who she says she was in a relationship with at the time, brought her to meet Trump at Trump Tower in New York City.

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“The second he [Trump] was in front of me, he pulled me into him, and his hands were just on me and didn’t come off,” Williams told the broadcaster.

The Trump campaign had denied the claim, noting that the former model originally shared the story at an event called "Survivors for Kamala", in support of Trump's rival, the Democratic White House nominee Kamala Harris.

"These accusations... announced on a Harris Campaign call two weeks before the election, are unequivocally false," Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

"It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign to distract from the deeply concerning and newly unearthed allegations that the Second 'Gentleman,' Doug Emhoff, 'forcefully slapped' his ex-girlfriend.'"