When Trump finally decided his pal Epstein was a creep…
He did it again. In an impromptu Q&A from the cockpit door of Air Force One, Donald Trump lied about an easily provable fact.
Aboard Air Force One while returning from Scotland, Trump said he was upset that Epstein was “taking people who worked for me.” The women, he said, were “taken out of the spa, hired by him — in other words, gone.”
“I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people,” Trump said. When it happened again, Trump said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.
Asked if Giuffre was one of the employees poached by Epstein, he demurred but then said “he stole her.”
The White House originally said Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because he was acting like a “creep.”
— “Trump says Epstein ‘stole’ young women from Mar-a-Lago spa, including Virginia Giuffre” by Chris Megerian and Eric Tucker
Borrowing a word or two from Captain Renault in Casablanca, our reaction might be “Shocked! Shocked!” As fearless columnists with access to Google noted almost immediately, Trump’s statement revealed more than he may have intended. First, it is important to recognize that there are several versions of the breakup between Trump and Epstein. One story involves a 2004 real estate auction where Trump outbid Epstein on a Palm Beach property both wanted. In that version, Epstein ended his association with Trump because Trump outbid him for a property once owned by Epstein’s patron, Leslie Wexner, the Victoria’s Secret billionaire. Trump claims he cut ties with Epstein because, after a 15-year friendship, he realized that the man he once called “terrific” was actually a creep. Shocked!
The stories Trump spreads are all sound fabricated. Any one could be true if there weren’t so many attempts to confuse one for the other. However, timelines don’t add up, facts refuse to match, and witnesses appear to contradict his assertions. If Trump’s latest statement is true, then his relationship with Epstein, which lasted into 2004, should have ended much earlier. Virginia Giuffre was lured by Epstein’s girlfriend in 2000. Trump’s use of the word “stolen” implied he considered Giuffre his property, upsetting her family, who reacted angrily to the remark. The truth is that Giuffre’s father worked as a maintenance worker for Trump at Mar-a-Lago and got his daughter a job there as a spa attendant in 2000. She was 16 at the time, and according to the civil complaint filed in the Southern District of New York in a 2019 lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, Maxwell had recruited her within weeks of her starting at the Trump spa.
For Trump to be believed, it took him more than 5 years to conclude that Epstein was using Mar-a-Lago to recruit young girls into his sex-trafficking scheme. During this time, Epstein and Maxwell were often seen in Trump’s company at Mar-a-Lago and in New York up to and until their “breakup” over the real estate deal. And, if it is true that Epstein broke off the relationship, Trump’s claim that the falling out was a result of the recruitment of spa workers came at the end of a long-festering case of moral indignation, especially considering the Wall Street Journal reporting of the birthday message Trump allegedly sent to Maxwell to be included in Epstein’s 50th birthday celebration in 2003.
All of the above renditions of the breakup serve a purpose that, perhaps, is more dangerous for Trump. In their 2020 book, “The Grifter’s Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and the Selling of the Presidency,” journalists from the Wall Street Journal and The Miami Herald reported a different version of the fallout and the timing of Epstein’s exclusion from Mar-a-Lago:
Trump barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after Epstein behaved inappropriately toward a club member’s teenage daughter, according to journalists from the Miami Herald and Wall Street Journal. The reporters included some information about Trump’s links to Epstein in their 2020 book, “The Grifter’s Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and the Selling of the Presidency.”
A Mar-a-Lago member told the journalists that Trump had “kicked Epstein out after Epstein harassed the daughter of a member,” Sarah Blaskey of the Miami Herald reported. “The way this person described it, such an act could irreparably harm the Trump brand, leaving Donald no choice but to remove Epstein.”
The incident happened around October 2007, (emphasis mine) when Mar-a-Lago’s registry listed Epstein’s account as “closed,” the Miami Herald reported.
- PolitiFact, “What we know about the Trump-Epstein falling out,” by Madison Czopek
Trump is attempting to distance himself from Epstein by the 2004 auction for a reason. Within a year of the sale, Epstein would be indicted by Florida state officials for solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution of minors. Epstein received a sweetheart deal later and pleaded guilty to a single charge of solicitation in 2007.
So, the president’s claim that he disposed of Epstein as a result of the Giuffre affair rings hollow. What makes these matters worse is the current bruhaha concerning the interview of convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche. In Ms. Giuffre’s 2016 Deposition civil complaint naming Maxwell as her trafficker, Giuffre’s testimony is damning against both Maxwell and Epstein. It includes many accounts of sexual abuse with many underage young girls and women during the 2000 and 2005 timeframe, after which Giuffre escaped Epstein and Maxwell’s clutches:
In a past interview with the Miami Herald, Giuffre said Epstein had lost interest in her sometime in 2003 because she was “too old for him.”
She convinced him to pay for her to get training to become a professional masseuse. She told reporters that Epstein arranged for her to take a class in Thailand, but it came with a condition: She was instructed to pick up a Thai girl he had arranged to come to the States.
She went to Thailand, where she met her now husband and escaped with him to Australia, where she still lives.
The history of Virginia Roberts Giuffre has been well documented over the years since her father took her to Mar-a-Lago for her first real job. Her life has been laid bare, so much so that, given her testimony in cases involving Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew, one might think the president should easily remember her history at Mar-a-Lago and answer recent questions about the Epstein files accurately. The man who boasts about his lack of curiosity, brags about how little he reads and studies, yet considers himself an intellectual, could find no clever way to talk about the girl who was excited to come work as an attendant at his spa. Instead, he chose to speak of her as stolen property. He made sure that even in death, she could be used as an excuse to distance himself from the friend he called a creep.
But the timelines tell a different story: that for years after Giuffre was taken and abused by both his friends, records show that he was as friendly with Maxwell as he was with her boss. Both were seen with the Trumps through at least 2004 until Epstein felt Trump had stolen something from him, a mansion down the road in their Palm Beach playground. There were two phone calls made between the men after the auction. The “creep” called Trump a crook, and the friendship supposedly ended. However, there are credible reports that the split occurred nearer 2007, when Epstein had been indicted and had become toxic. It would make sense that Trump’s recounting of those days would be enhanced if he could fix the time of his fallout with a convicted sex trafficker as far back in his personal history as possible.
Meanwhile, in 2004, it would take Giuffre another year to escape from her groomers who trafficked her to wealthy men in New York, Paris, at a ranch in New Mexico, and on his private island off the coast.
To Donald Trump, Giuffre, who had committed suicide in September 2024, could no longer be a threat to him, and, better yet, could be used as justification to distance himself from Epstein and his damned files:
Trump was quick to try to insulate himself from the idea that those comments raise questions about his own knowledge of Epstein’s misconduct.
“And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know — none whatsoever,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday when traveling back from Scotland.
The accepted tale of the two friends brought together by fate and their mutual attraction to young, beautiful women tends to underrate just how much alike they were — how their predilections were so closely matched. Hidden in the shadows of Epstein’s files are the numerous accounts by credible women of Trump’s own abuse of women. They shared a grooming routine that was made possible by their riches and their brazenness, which ensnared young and vulnerable women. Trump, we mustn’t forget, was charged and found guilty of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in 2024. He admitted to paying hush money for a tryst with Stormy Daniels, had an illicit affair with Karen McDougal that led to an abortion, and was charged by a 13-year-old “Jane Doe” in California with rape that included as defendants Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. That case was mysteriously dropped after the alleged victim’s lawyer explained the reason for its sudden cancellation:
“Jane Doe has received numerous threats today as have all the Trump accusers that I have represented. She has decided she is too afraid to show her face. She has been here all day, ready to do it, but unfortunately she is in terrible fear. We’re going to have to reschedule. I apologize to all of you who came. I have nothing further.”
Trump’s misconduct has been public knowledge that had begun as far back as 1970:
Since the 1970s, at least 25 women have publicly accused Donald Trump of rape, kissing and groping without consent; looking under women’s skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. Trump has denied all of the allegations. He has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to the media and on social media, and has made lewd comments about women, disparaged their physical appearance, and referred to them using derogatory epithets.
- Wikipedia, citing NBC, BBC, and authors Michael Shear and Eileen Sullivan
If there was a falling out between the two, the reasons provided by the president in retellings that go back over 20 years seem more like an attempt by him to distract from their similarities by pretending they were different by degree- one simply a playboy sowing wild oats, the other a predator.
This week’s news of a private meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell and her subsequent transfer to a low-security prison in Texas only deepens the concern about what is in the files now in possession of Trump’s DOJ. But, in any case, whatever new information they hold could only confirm what we already know about the “terrific guy,” his pal, and the wonderful secret they shared.
These two are “peas in a pod,” more alike than not.
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
