That’s how close Trump and sex offender Epstein were

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Lerato Khumalo

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were close friends until 2004. But so far, Trump has remained unaffected by the allegations against his former intimate partner.

His former friendship with Jeffrey Epstein has often put Donald Trump in trouble. But so far it has never been proven that the US presidential candidate took part in the sex offender’s crimes. Epstein died under dubious circumstances in a New York prison cell in 2019 before he could be tried – according to official information, by suicide. Now there are new allegations against Trump and the question arises again: How close were Trump and Epstein actually?

Former model Stacey Williams now claims that Trump sexually harassed her in his New York high-rise in 1993. Trump is said to have groped her while Epstein watched, Williams told the Guardian. According to her own statements, the now 56-year-old was friends with Epstein when he took her to Trump Tower after a walk in early 1993. Trump greeted her, pulled her close and began groping her. She says he put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her hips and buttocks. Williams initially froze because she was confused about what was happening.

She also believes that Trump and Epstein smiled at each other. It was “a twisted game” between the two men, said Williams. “I had this terrible feeling in my stomach that it was somehow staged. I felt like a piece of meat,” she tells the Guardian. “It became very clear at that time that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together.”

Donald Trump’s team has not yet commented on the new allegations. Trump never denied that he was close friends with Epstein at the time. “Great guy, you can have fun with him,” Trump said of Epstein in a 2002 interview with New York Magazine. Like him, Epstein came from a wealthy New York background. According to Trump, the two had known each other for 15 years. “It’s even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do and that many of them are younger,” Trump said of Epstein at the time.

What Trump probably meant by that became clear just a few years later. In 2006, several teenagers testified in court interviews that Epstein paid them hundreds of dollars to give him massages at his Palm Beach mansion. He then sexually abused and raped her. But in a subsequent trial, Epstein got off lightly. In 2008, he pleaded guilty in Florida to some charges, but not to those under federal law. Epstein only went to prison for 13 months. He had agreed on this with the responsible prosecutor Alexander Acosta, who became labor secretary under Donald Trump in 2017.

This connection may be a coincidence, but the close relationship between Trump and Epstein at the time is well documented. As the Washington Post reported in 2019, Trump and Epstein had been dating since the mid-1980s. In 1985, Trump bought his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. In 1990, Epstein purchased a villa in the illustrious neighborhood. In the years that followed, the two regularly attended parties together, always accompanied by Epstein’s now convicted partner Ghislaine Maxwell. The British Prince Andrew is also said to have been a regular at these parties, according to the Washington Post. Following later rape allegations, he has since fallen out of favor with the royals.

Epstein himself only caught up with his machinations in 2019, when the New York prosecutor’s office indicted him and had him arrested. The businessman set up an illegal sex trafficking ring in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005, the indictment said. He is also said to have introduced minors to other men.