Kelly Rissman – The Independent July 19, 2025

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were “best friends” who were “up to no good,” a model who dated the disgraced financier claims, as the president tries to distance himself from the Epstein case.

They were “best friends,” Stacey Williams, who dated Epstein for several months in the 90s, told CNN on Friday evening. Last October in an interview with The Guardian, Williams publicly accused Trump of groping her in Trump Tower in 1993 in front of Epstein. He has denied these allegations.

“That was his bro, that was his wingman,” she said of Trump to Epstein.

Throughout the four or five months she dated the financier, Trump’s name came up a lot, Williams recalled to CNN’s Brianna Keilar. “The only friend that he would mention every time we saw each other or had a phone conversation was Donald,” she said. “They were very close and they were up to no good.”

Stacey Williams. Click to enlarge

Williams later added that Epstein also often mentioned Ghislaine Maxwell, a socialite and Epstein associate who was convicted in 2021 on charges related to her role in a scheme to abuse minor girls with the financier.

The Independent has reached out to the White House for comment.

Keilar read the alleged birthday card Trump wrote to Epstein for his 50th birthday that the Wall Street Journal first published Thursday. Trump vehemently denied the allegations and has since sued the publication and its parent companies for defamation.

Williams started laughing when Keilar walked through Trump’s response to the bombshell report.

“Trump called that letter ‘fake.’ He said it was out of character for him because he never ‘wrote a picture’…in his life,” Keilar said, quoting Trump’s denial.

Asked whether she believes this letter sounds “out of character” to her based on her experiences with both men, Williams replied incredulously: “What, are you kidding me? I know what they were up to together. It happened to me.”

“I have the post assault postcard with a love note,” she added, referring to a postcard of an aerial view of Mar-a-Lago she says Trump sent to her agent later in 1993. In what appeared to be black Sharpie, according to The Guardian, the card read: “Stacey – Your home away from home. Love Donald.”

“I know what they’re up to together and I know what that means,” Williams told the network. “It’s very clear it wasn’t baking or fishing.”

Williams and Epstein started dating after the second time they met. It was at a 1992 Christmas Party at the Plaza Hotel that Trump threw, she recalled.

Months later, she and Epstein were walking down Fifth Avenue. The financier “was joking about how Donald thought I was hot…and wants to talk to you” before suggesting they visit Trump at his office, she recalled.

“So we went up to his office in Trump Tower and, within a couple of minutes, Donald was outside of his door and his hands were all over me. They were on my breasts, they were on my butt. They were on, you know, my hips up and down while the two of them just kept having a normal conversation,” Williams told Keilar.

They were discussing “irrelevant” things, such as how Williams was just featured on another cover of Sports Illustrated, she said: “They were back and forth smiling and grinning and carrying on a conversation while Donald ran his hands all over me.”

Assistants were walking back and forth while the incident occurred, she said.

“If it happens in a dark alleyway, you defend yourself. But when it’s hidden in its brazenness like that, which is Donald Trump’s forte, you go into shock,” Williams told the network. “So I froze and it was over very quickly. It was a few minutes.”

As she and Epstein got into an elevator to leave, she realized “Jeffrey’s energy had changed.” Williams recalled: “He was, he was like seething, he was enraged. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me.”

When they returned to Fifth Avenue, he blamed the incident on her. She remembered: “He looked at me and he just started yelling at me saying, ‘Why did you let him do that?’”

She had the same thought herself. “I remember thinking like, ‘Why did I?’ I felt like I was coming back into my body at that moment and I was confused,” she said.

When she first came forward with her assault accusations, Williams said she believed the incident was “coordinated” between the two men.

Pressed as to why what led her to that conclusion, she told the network that she was known in the industry to be “combative” with people who would harass her on the street or expose themselves. “Jeffrey was aware of that and I think he was excited,” she said.

“I think the gist in my mind, given what [Epstein] knew and the way it played out, was, ‘Hey, I’m gonna deliver this person to you who’s actually not gonna let you get away with what you do.’ And I did ’cause I froze,” she said.

Trump’s friendship with Epstein spanned the late 80s, 90s and early 2000s, and Trump’s phone number — and First Lady Melania Trump’s — were included in Epstein’s infamous leaked address books. Trump’s name also appeared seven times in passenger logs for Epstein’s planes.

The pair reportedly fell out in 2004, when Epstein and Trump both tried to buy a Palm Beach estate. The next year, the FBI began investigating Epstein for child sex trafficking. He pleaded guilty to a state charge of soliciting sex from a minor in 2008.

Trump distanced himself from his former friend after Epstein’s arrest in 2019, when Trump was president. He has previously denied the allegations made by Williams.

Williams’ comments come as the president tries to keep the Epstein case at an arm’s length. Last week, the Justice Department announced it had found no evidence to support the existence of a so-called “client list.” The department also said no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” months after it released “Phase 1” of the Epstein files in February and the attorney general said her team was reviewing a “truckload” of information.

The DOJ asked a court on Friday to unseal the grand jury transcripts in the Maxwell and Epstein cases. The grand jury testimony is a small portion of the thousands of documents related to the Epstein investigation and criminal case.

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