President Trump said Tuesday that Virginia Giuffre, perhaps the most well-known of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex abuse victims, had been a Mar-a-Lago spa employee whom the deceased sex offender “stole” from him.
“I think that was one of the people,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “Yeah. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us. None whatsoever.”
Giuffre has said Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former lover, recruited her as a teenager to be exploited by Epstein when Giuffre was working as a spa attendant at Mar-a–Lago.
Maxwell is currently serving 20 years in a Florida prison for sex trafficking crimes she committed along with Epstein.
Giuffre died by suicide in April.
She worked at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 and stated in court documents that Maxwell recruited her by initiating a conversation about a book on message therapy she was reading at the time. Maxwell invited Giuffre to become Epstein’s traveling masseuse and Giuffre said the two of them then groomed her to perform sexual services for wealthy men.
In unsealed court documents, Giuffre said Maxwell directed her to have sex with Prince Andrew, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, hedge funder Glenn Dubin, MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, modeling company founder Jean-Luc Brunel, as well as the owner of a large hotel chain and another prince, neither of whom she could name.
“There was, you know, another foreign president, I can’t remember his name,” Giuffre said in one deposition. “He was Spanish. There’s a whole bunch of them that I just – it’s just so hard for me to remember all of them.”
“My whole life revolved around pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy,” Giuffre said in the deposition. “Their whole entire lives revolved around sex.”
Giuffre was 16 in 2000 and left Epstein in 2002.
Richardson and Mitchell have denied ever meeting Giuffre, much less having sex with her. Prince Andrew, Mr. Dubin and Mr. Brunel have all denied having sex with her.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said he cut ties with Epstein because “he stole people who worked for me.” Mr. Trump said Epstein poached at least one employee from him after being warned not to do it again.
He offered no other details about his dispute with Epstein, who killed himself in a federal jail in New York weeks after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges in July 2019.
“That’s such old history, very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it,” Mr. Trump said, after a reporter asked him to put to rest questions about what led to the rift between the two men and Epstein’s exile from the president’s Palm Beach, Florida, club.
“But for years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate,” the president said.
“He hired help, and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that work for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again,” Mr. Trump said.
It has long been known that Mr. Trump and Epstein had been friends, but there have been various explanations about their falling out, which happened years before Epstein pleaded guilty to a Florida state charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.
Questions about the men’s relationship have been raised in recent weeks after Attorney General Pam Bondi reneged on a promise she and other Trump administration officials made to release investigative files about Epstein.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.