In 2002, Trump told New York Magazine, “I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. 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.” A 1992 NBC tape shows the two men laughing and pointing as they appear to discuss young women dancing at a Mar-a-Lago party, and photographs show them together at other events in the 1990s and 2000s.
On July 9, 2019, a day after Epstein was charged with sex trafficking, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan.” Reporters asked at least four times what caused the falling out, and Trump did not answer before aides ushered them out. Three days later he said, “The reason doesn't make any difference, frankly.”
In 2025, Trump gave a reason: he said Epstein had hired away people who worked for him at Mar-a-Lago, and suggested Virginia Giuffre, who worked at Mar-a-Lago in 2000, was one of them. “He stole people that worked for me,” he said. The Washington Post has reported that the two men competed in 2004 for a Palm Beach mansion, and accounts of why Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago differ: a 2020 book says Epstein hit on a member's daughter, while the White House says Trump “kicked him out of his club for being a creep.”
Justice Department files released in December 2025 included a 2020 email from a federal prosecutor stating that Trump was listed as a passenger on Epstein's jet at least eight times between 1993 and 1996. The email does not accuse Trump of wrongdoing, and Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein's crimes.
Correction (October 14, 2026): This entry was previously dated July 15, 2024 and filed under the 2024 campaign; the denial it describes was made on July 9, 2019, so the date and period have been corrected. The 2002 quote previously joined two sentences with an ellipsis and dropped the words “It is even said that”; it is now verbatim. We removed claims we could not source: that Epstein's contact book held 14 phone numbers for Trump, that Virginia Giuffre said she saw Trump at Epstein's Palm Beach mansion, and that Trump has “never” explained the falling out (he gave an explanation in 2025). The flight count was updated from seven, the number reported from Maxwell's trial, to the at least eight flights in the prosecutor's email. Dead links were replaced.