Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has reportedly been banned from using the spa services at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after pressuring an 18-year-old worker into having sex, according to a new report, following years of problematic behavior that included exposing himself to young spa employees.
Key data
Epstein’s close relationship with Trump allowed him the privilege of receiving visits from spa employees for massages and other services from the late 1990s and early 2000s, the report reported. Wall Street Journal Tuesday night.
Epstein was known to engage in sexually suggestive behavior and expose himself during dates, according to the newspaper, which cites unnamed Mar-a-Lago employees, and Trump was confronted about his behavior after an 18-year-old beautician told her bosses that Epstein had pressured her into having sex.
After a manager reported the allegation to Trump, the president agreed to have Epstein banned from using the spa’s services, and he was expelled in 2003, the report said. Journalalthough the incident was never reported to Palm Beach police.
A review of Epstein’s schedule by the Journalwhich was obtained by the FBI in 2009, found at least five other Mar-a-Lago spa employees listed, including Virginia Giuffre, a known sexual abuse victim, who committed suicide earlier this year.
When Trump has been asked over the years about why Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago and their friendship ended, he has given various answers, including that Epstein “stole” young women who worked for the spa, hiring them out, and that the two had a “feud.”
Continue reading: US Department of Justice says there are more than a million Epstein files; publication could take weeks
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Journal in a text message that the revelation about the 18-year-old beautician does not change the administration’s narrative that “President Trump did nothing wrong and kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for being nasty.”
Contraposition
A 2020 book titled The Grifter’s Club of a team of journalists from Miami Heraldone of whom now works at the Journalclaims that Epstein was, in fact, an official member of Mar-a-Lago, even though Trump claimed he never was. A footnote in the book says that its authors reviewed the club’s records and found that Epstein was a member until October 2007, although the Journal reported this week that he was not a member at the time of the 2003 incident. The Grifter’s Club It also claims that Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago in 2007, when he tried to pick up the teenage daughter of a club member. Sarah Blaskey, one of the book’s authors, said another club member told her that Trump “kicked Epstein after Epstein harassed a member’s daughter. The way this person described it, such an act could irreparably damage Trump’s brand, leaving Donald with no choice but to remove Epstein.” It is unclear whether the two incidents resulted in Epstein losing access to other Mar-a-Lago privileges.
Key context
The relationship between Trump and Epstein has come under increasing scrutiny this year and especially in the past two weeks, as the US Department of Justice releases thousands of documents from its files on Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. The first batch of files came out on December 19, offering never-before-seen pages detailing Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme and photos of the financier with high-profile figures, including Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, billionaire Richard Branson, the late CBS host Walter Cronkite, and others.
One document shows a never-before-seen photo of Epstein standing next to an unnamed woman and holding a $22,500 check apparently from Trump, an image found in a scrapbook that describes the moment as Trump “selling” a woman to Epstein.
Trump has never been formally accused of doing anything wrong in relation to Epstein, although other evidence of his ties to the financier has been uncovered, including emails in which Epstein claimed Trump “knew about the girls.” The DOJ has come under fire for releasing Epstein’s files due to the amount of redacted information in some documents and for temporarily removing an image of Trump from public access (it was later republished).
This article was originally published on Forbes US
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