Trump’s Reason for Dumping Epstein Depends on Whom (and When) You Ask
Despite his protests, there is a lot of evidence that Donald Trump was close friends with Jeffrey Epstein for more than a decade. There are many, many photos of them together. There’s a video of Trump making Epstein double over with laughter. There’s the reported birthday note that Trump allegedly wrote Epstein, which included a drawing of a naked woman and the line “May every day be another wonderful secret.”
For the past month, however, the president has tried to downplay his relationship with Epstein, who was charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex in 2019 and later found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial. While waving off whatever might be in the so-called Epstein files, Trump has been focusing on the end of their friendship as a way to distance himself from the disgraced financier. Trump has repeatedly touted to the press that Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago, seemingly as a way to commend himself for his good judgment. (He ignores the more than ten years of documented friendship they had prior to their falling-out and hasn’t specified exactly when Epstein was booted.)
The two reportedly stopped associating with each other in the early 2000s, but the exact reason — and year — is hard to pin down. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has repeatedly claimed Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago “for being a creep.” However, the story Trump himself is spinning makes their rift seem less about the possible victimization of young women and more about staffing concerns. As is often the case with Trump, the narrative here isn’t totally consistent. Here’s what we know about how and when their friendship ended.
Trump’s current version of the story revolves around a staffing dispute.
On July 28, during a meeting with U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, Trump was asked about his falling-out with Epstein.
“For years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help, and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place persona non grata.” The president added that he was “glad” he “threw out” Epstein.
The next day, Trump shared a similar story about his friend breakup. “People were taken out of the spa — hired by him — in other words, gone. And other people would come and complain, ‘This guy is taking people from the spa,’” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “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 them taking people.’ And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, ‘Out of here.’”
When reporters asked whether the employees poached by Epstein were young women, Trump conveniently responded, “The answer is yes, they were.” One reporter then asked if Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s most outspoken accuser, was one of the staffers the financier took from Mar-a-Lago. “I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. He stole her,” Trump said. “And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.”
Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, stated in a 2016 deposition that she worked at Mar-a-Lago, where her father was a maintenance manager, in the summer of 2000 as a 16-year-old. According to her, Epstein’s right-hand woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, approached her while she was working and offered her a job as Epstein’s masseuse. She alleged that she spent the next two years being trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell, forced to have sex with powerful men, including Prince Andrew.
They also might have fallen out over a real-estate war.
While he didn’t say when their falling-out happened, Trump has always maintained that he ended his relationship with Epstein prior to the financier’s 2006 arrest for procuring a minor for prostitution and solicitation of a prostitute. It could have feasibly happened in 2004, when Trump and Epstein reportedly got into a bitter battle over a prime piece of Palm Beach property. Joseph Luzinski, the trustee for the oceanfront estate called Maison de l’Amitie (the House of Friendship), recalled the men jockeying for the property to the Washington Post in 2019.
“It was something like, Donald saying, ‘You don’t want to do a deal with him, he doesn’t have the money,’ while Epstein was saying: ‘Donald is all talk. He doesn’t have the money,’” Luzinski said. “They both really wanted it.”
In the end, Trump won out with a bid of $41.35 million. The Washington Post, citing a Vice News article that is no longer online, reported that Trump left two messages for Epstein at his Palm Beach home following their real-estate showdown. That’s apparently the last known contact between the men.
Other people say Epstein was kicked out of Mar-a-Lago after an incident involving a young female staffer.
The employee-poaching narrative Trump has been leaning into lately bears a slight resemblance to a story that started circulating in 2007, after Epstein took a plea deal for his sex crimes. That year, “Page Six” received a tip claiming Epstein had at some point been banned from Mar-a-Lago. “He would use the spa to try to procure girls. But one of them, a masseuse about 18 years old, he tried to get her to do things,” a source told the outlet. “Her father found out about it and went absolutely ape-[bleep]. Epstein’s not allowed back.” Epstein denied being banned.
According to the New York Times, Trump told associates a similar story about their split sometime around 2009. The Times noted that the young woman in question was the daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member.
A similar story comes to us secondhand via the author James Patterson, who wrote a book about Epstein in 2017. In an interview with Graham Bensinger this May, Patterson recounted a conversation he had with a woman he once met on a plane who said she used to work at Mar-a-Lago.
“[Epstein] was inappropriate with the young girls,” the woman allegedly told Patterson after he asked if she had ever encountered him. “I went to Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump banned him that day.”
Ultimately, it seems most likely that the truth is somewhere in the middle of all of these accounts. Based on previous reporting, the shape is probably something like this: After the two men went toe-to-toe over a piece of real estate, Trump learned that Epstein had been inappropriate with the daughter of someone he deemed important and had him booted.
While there may be whiffs of the truth in what Trump has been saying recently, everything he says about Epstein should be taken with several handfuls of salt. This is all coming from a man who, in 2019, said he was “not a big fan” of Epstein and that he “was not somebody that I respected.” That is quite the 180 from a man who once told New York Magazine, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.” Sounds like a fan — and a friend — to me.
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