Trump was quick to try to insulate himself from the idea that those comments raise questions about his own knowledge of Epstein’s misconduct.
“And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know – none whatsoever,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday when travelling back from Scotland.
But Giuffre’s family has complaints and questions now, as does a lawyer who represented other Epstein victims.
And their decision to speak out casts a spotlight on the potentially troublesome timeline for Trump raised by his own comments.
It’s now evident that not only did Epstein hire a minor away from Mar-a-Lago to ostensibly serve as a travelling masseuse – something that had been the subject of court proceedings – but that Trump was aware Epstein had poached her and others and was concerned, for one reason or another.
The big question now is whether Trump was truly just upset because Epstein “stole” a low-level employee or employees, or he suspected something more nefarious about Epstein’s actions.
Asked on Thursday whether he knew why Epstein was taking women from Mar-a-Lago, Trump said no.
“No, I don’t know really why,” he told reporters at the White House.
“But I said if he’s taking anybody from Mar-a-Lago, he’s hiring or whatever he’s doing – I didn’t like it – and we threw him out. We said we don’t want him at the place.”
Epstein accusers’ allies start speaking out
Family members of Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most well-known accusers who died by suicide earlier this year, signalled for the first time on Wednesday that they want answers to these kinds of questions.
“It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions,” said the statement from Giuffre’s two brothers and her sisters-in-law, which was first reported by the Atlantic, “especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side … no doubt about it.’ “
A lawyer who has represented Epstein’s accusers, Spencer Kuvin, also told CNN News Central that he wants more disclosure of the Epstein files and that Trump’s answers appeared evasive.
“Notice that when he is first asked about it, he says, ‘I don’t know.’ And then he realises, his brain starts working and thinking through it, thinking they’re going to be able to figure this out and I don’t want to look stupid, so I better tell them,” Kuvin said, adding:
“That happens when someone’s trying to hide the truth.”
Kuvin added: “We now know from the words of the president himself that Virginia was right all along and that she was trafficked out of Mar-a-Lago.”
To be clear, Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
In response to the Giuffre family’s statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN that the president was “directly responding to a question posed by a reporter about Ms Giuffre — he did not bring her up.”
That’s true, but it doesn’t make his answer any less revealing.
“I think she worked at the spa,” Trump told reporters.
“I think that was one of the people, yeah. He stole her.”
Trump’s reported conversations about Epstein and young women
And while the 2002 Trump quote that Giuffre’s family cited about Epstein and “women on the younger side” is the most oft-cited one, it’s not the only evidence that Trump might have encountered red flags about him.
A Florida-based businessman told the New York Times in a 2019 interview that he raised concerns about Epstein’s conduct ahead of a 1992 “calendar girl” event.
“I said, ‘Look, Donald, I know Jeff really well, I can’t have him going after younger girls,’ ” the businessman, George Houraney, said.
The first Trump White House did not comment on that report.
Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone wrote in his 2016 book about a scene in which Trump talked about how Epstein’s “swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls”.
“How nice, I thought,” Trump said, according to Stone, “he let the neighbourhood kids use his pool.”
What Giuffre said about Mar-a-Lago
But aside from the reported Trump conversations about Epstein and young women or girls, there’s the timeline of his Giuffre disclosure.
There was some dispute during legal proceedings in the Epstein and Maxwell cases about whether Giuffre was 16 or 17 years old when she said Maxwell recruited her from Mar-a-Lago for Epstein.
Giuffre said she was 16 and it was a summer job, while Maxwell’s lawyers claimed Giuffre was 17 and she was hired in the fall, after her August birthday.
But Mar-a-Lago records cited in court documents suggest Giuffre’s employment was terminated in 2000, when she would have been a minor.
And Giuffre said Maxwell’s approach came shortly after she began working at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 – only about two or three weeks.
This exchange comes from her 2016 deposition:
Q: How did it come to pass that you were no longer working at Mar-a-Lago in two to three weeks?
GIUFFRE: I was approached by Ghislaine Maxwell.
Q: Okay. And how long had you been working at Mar-a-Lago when you were approached by Ghislaine Maxwell?
GIUFFRE: Roughly two to three weeks.
Did Trump know what Epstein recruited Giuffre for?
Another key question is about the job Giuffre was ostensibly poached for: did Trump know Epstein recruited her to become a masseuse?
In 2019 comments to the Washington Post, former Trump aide Sam Nunberg described asking Trump about his ties to Epstein as Trump was gearing up for his 2016 presidential campaign.
Nunberg said Trump had told him he had objected to Epstein recruiting a young woman who worked at Mar-a-Lago to give Epstein massages – a description that sounds similar to Giuffre’s situation.
“He’s a real creep, I banned him,” Nunberg said Trump told him.
Nunberg told CNN in an email Thursday that he didn’t know whether Trump was referring to Giuffre, specifically.
“I do not recall any name being mentioned nor would it have been a concern vis-a-vis any discussion with President Trump, as he was not involved in any way with the Giuffre lawsuit which was active at the time,” Nunberg said.
To the extent Trump knew Epstein recruited Giuffre for massages, that would be problematic.
Giuffre, after all, wasn’t just a minor at the time; she also wasn’t even a masseuse.
She served as an attendant in the Mar-a-Lago spa, according to her testimony.
Her legal team also noted that she wasn’t even qualified for a massage license under Florida law, which required one to be 18 years old or have a high school diploma or equivalent.
All of which raises the prospect that Trump might have been aware of not just an employee being poached, but a minor employee being poached for a specific type of job that didn’t seem appropriate for her.
How it all comes together in the timeline
And beyond that, there are the reported Trump conversations about Epstein and young females that bookend all of this.
Houraney’s account indicates he raised concerns about Epstein “going after young girls” eight years before the Giuffre episode.
If Houraney’s account is correct, Trump would seemingly have had reason to be suspicious about Epstein recruiting a minor Mar-a-Lago employee in 2000, whether for massages or anything else.
And Trump would go on, two years after he suggests he was alienated by this episode, to praise Epstein as a “terrific guy” and cite how Epstein “likes women on the younger side”.
Trump, the White House and Nunberg have also repeatedly referenced the idea that Trump fell out with Epstein because Trump learned he was a “creep”.
That includes Leavitt saying it was because Epstein was “being a creep to [Trump’s] female employees.”
But there’s no real clarity on what “creep” refers to.
And Trump on Tuesday baulked at providing clarity on that point.
When asked by a reporter what he meant by “creep,” Trump attacked the reporter’s media outlet while declining to answer the question.
“NBC? NBC, fake news,” Trump said.
“I don’t care. NBC’s one of the worst. What else do you have?”
Somewhat similarly, when Trump was asked after Epstein’s 2019 arrest about the reason the two of them had a falling out, he avoided a direct answer.
“The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly,” Trump said at the time.
None of it is a smoking gun. But the timeline and the president’s slow disclosures certainly suggest the questions about what he knew and when are legitimate and relevant.
And it doesn’t seem as though those questions are going away, now that those close to Epstein’s victims are pressing them.
