WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump says his falling out years ago with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was prompted by his former friend's recruitment of Trump's Mar-a-Lago spa staff, and that one of the people who accused the disgraced financier of sex trafficking had been a Mar-a-Lago employee.
Trump told reporters that the staff Epstein "stole" from him worked in the spa and staffers included Virginia Giuffre, a former attendant at his Palm Beach resort who said in a unsealed deposition for a defamation lawsuit against Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell that she was forced as a teenager to have sex with powerful men. Among the men Giuffre said she was directed to have sex with was Prince Andrew of Britain, according to a lawsuit. Prince Andrew has denied the allegation.
Giuffre died by suicide in April of this year. She is the only person Trump has named since he attested he'd ended his friendship with Epstein. He said he did so because the deceased multimillionaire, who was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges at the time of his 2019 death, "stole" workers from his businesses.
Trump acknowledged on July 29 that some of the staffers at the Palm Beach spa were young women. He first declined to provide the detail, telling reporters who were on a flight with him from Scotland, "Everyone knows the people that were taken."
