Jeffrey Epstein
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Trump’s History With Jeffrey Epstein: Here’s The Full Timeline
By Sara Dorn, Forbes Staff. Sara Dorn is a Forbes news reporter who covers politics.
President Donald Trump “knew about the girls” and “spent hours” with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims at the financier’s home, Epstein alleged in one of many newly released emails between 2011 and 2019 —which the White House blasts as all part of the Epstein “hoax”—the latest documentation of a connection between the two men that stretches back decades.
1980s
Trump and Epstein met around the time Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985, when Epstein was also living in Palm Beach, according to Trump, who told New York magazine in 2002 he had known Epstein for “15 years,” calling him a “terrific guy,” and adding “it is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
1992
Trump and Epstein were spotted laughing together at a party Trump threw at Mar-a-Lago, according to NBC footage of the event unearthed in 2019.
1992
At a “calendar girl” party at Mar-a-Lago where Trump invited just two other guests, Florida businessman George Houraney and Epstein, Houraney’s girlfriend at the time, Jill Harth, said Trump forcibly kissed and fondled her and restrained her from leaving a bedroom. Harth also said Trump crawled into bed with another 22-year-old woman at the party, according to a 1997 lawsuit Trump settled with Harth (he has denied her allegations), The New York Times reported.
1993
Trump flew on Epstein’s private jets four times in 1993, according to flight logs made public during Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial, The New York Times reported.
1993
Photos released by CNN showed Epstein attended Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples—his second wife—at the Plaza Hotel in New York. A few months before the wedding, another photo published by CNN showed Epstein and Trump together at the opening of the Harley Davidson Cafe in New York.
1993
Trump groped model Stacey Williams when Epstein brought her to Trump Tower, she alleged in a 2024 interview with The New York Times (Trump’s 2024 campaign denied the allegations as “unequivocally false” and politically motivated).
1994
Trump flew on one of Epstein’s private jets, according to the flight logs.
1995
Epstein reportedly called Maria Farmer—who has accused Epstein and Maxwell of sexual assault—to his New York office late at night, where Trump then arrived and “started to hover over” Farmer, who was in her mid-20s at the time, and “stared at her bare legs” before Epstein said, “No, no. She’s not here for you,” Farmer told the FBI, according to The New York Times.
1995
Trump took another flight on an Epstein jet, the flight logs say.
1997
Trump signed a note to Epstein in his book, “Trump: The Art of the Comeback,” that said “To Jeff—You are the greatest!” according to The New York Times.
1997
Trump took a seventh flight on one of Epstein’s jets.
1997
Trump and Epstein were photographed standing near each other at a Victoria’s Secret “Angels” party, according to a Getty image of Trump posing with model Ingrid Seynhaeve that shows Epstein in the background.
1999
A video released by CNN showed Trump and Epstein laughing and chatting with each other at another Victoria’s Secret event.
2000
Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort when she was recruited by Maxwell to work as Epstein’s personal masseuse and was groomed by Epstein and Maxwell to provide sexual services for Epstein and his wealthy circle, according to a deposition Giuffre gave that was made public in 2019.
2003
Trump allegedly gave Epstein a birthday card that said “may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to a July 2025 Wall Street Journal report, which the president denied and sued the paper over; The New York Times later reported Trump was on a list of contributors for the book of birthday cards that the letter allegedly appeared in.
2004
Trump and Epstein had a falling out when Trump outbid him for a Palm Beach mansion, according to a Washington Post report.
Pre-2006
Trump and Epstein appeared in a photo with singer James Brown, the Times reported (the photo is undated, but Brown died in 2006).
2010
Resurfaced video, posted to social media by the progressive outlet MeidasTouch, showed Epstein confirming he socialized with Trump and declining to answer when asked if he has ever socialized with Trump “in the presence of females under the age of 18.”
2011
Epstein told Maxwell in one of the emails released by House Democrats that Trump “spent hours at my house” with an unnamed victim and described Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked,” noting Trump “has never once been mentioned” in stories about Epstein’s controversies.
2015
Trump’s name appeared circled in Epstein’s “little black book” of 1,571 personal contacts, which spanned 97 pages of names, numbers and addresses of Epstein’s associates, including high-powered figures such as Prince Andrew and Ehud Barak, whose names were among about 38 also circled, according to a copy of the document published by Gawker in 2015.
2015
Writer Michael Wolff suggested in en email to Epstein he should either expose Trump if he lied in public about his ties to Epstein or “save him, generating a debt” if their relationship came under scrutiny.
2017
Epstein told former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in an email “your world does not understand how dumb [Trump] really is” while discussing how difficult it allegedly was for Trump’s then-lawyer Marc Kasowitz to find law firms willing to work with Trump.
2017
Kathy Ruemmler, former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, told Epstein “Trump is so gross,” to which Epstein replied he is “worse in real life and upclose [sic].”
2019
Esptein told Wolff in January, “of course [he] knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop,” suggesting Trump had knowledge of Epstein’s abuse of women, but stopping short of saying he was directly involved. Epstein also said “Trump asked me to resign” from his Mar-a-Lago club, but had “never a member ever.”
2019
Epstein and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon discussed Trump’s appearance in the U.K. with Prince Andrew, with Epstein writing that he found it “tooo funny.” Bannon said he couldn’t “believe nobody is making the connective tissue” with Epstein.
“I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Trump told reporters from the Oval Office in 2019 when Epstein was arrested. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
Why Were The Latest Emails Released Now?
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released emails provided by Epstein’s estate Wednesday, hours before Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., was sworn in and became the final signature needed on a petition to force a House vote on the release of the federal government’s files into Epstein. The House is expected to vote on the legislation next week. It will also need to be approved by the Senate and signed into law by Trump before the files could be released, however.
The accuracy of much of what Epstein alleged. He made multiple references in emails to information he claimed he had about Trump that has never been made public. While Epstein wrote in an 2011 email to Maxwell that Giuffre spent “hours” at his house with Trump, Giuffre said in a 2016 deposition she only met Trump “a few times” while working for him at Mar-a-Lago, and never saw Trump and Epstein together. In a series of 2015 emails between Epstein and former New York Times reporter Landon Thomas, Jr., the financier offered the reporter “photso [sic] of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen,” though it’s unclear if Epstein actually possessed the photos, and The Times reported Wednesday Thomas says he never received them. Epstein also suggested Thomas “ask my houseman about donald [sic] almost walking through the door leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door.” In various emails to Wolff, Epstein insulted Trump and proposed a series of what he described as “provocative” questions Trump should be asked. He referred to him as “dopey donald” and “demented donald” in a 2018 email to Wolff, suggesting Trump was engaged in shady business dealings and made false claims about his wealth and assets. “All a sham,” Epstein wrote. In 2018, Epstein wrote, “i am the one able to take him down,” in response to a text from an unidentified acquaintance claiming the media is “really just trying to take down Trump.” Other emails Epstein sent about Trump could be characterized as general observations and innocuous fodder about the president, while some indicate Epstein and his associates were digging for damning information about Trump. In June 2019, for example, Epstein’s accountant, Richard Kahn, told him he had just reviewed Trump’s federal financial disclosure, calling it “100 pages of nonsense,” noting several “interesting findings.” It’s unclear if Epstein responded.
Leavitt accused House Democrats of “selectively” leaking the emails to the “liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.” Trump accused Democrats of “trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown,” referring to the record-setting federal government shutdown that reached its 43rd day Wednesday. Trump has said previously he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because he “hired away” spa workers and “stole” Giuffre.
Key Background
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking minors to his wealthy friends and associates. Trump is among a long list of Epstein’s high-profile associates, including billionaire Les Wexner, Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton. Many of Trump’s MAGA allies have pushed conspiracy theories about Epstein through the years, including that he was killed, rather than died by suicide, and kept an alleged list of high-profile clients. The Justice Department has said no such list exists and reiterated that Epstein died by suicide.
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