Trump says Epstein ‘stole’ young women who worked at Mar-a-Lago spa

Published On: August 1, 2025

By Eric Tucker and Chris Merkel of The Associated Press

Washington (AP) The newest development in President Donald Trump’s account of how his closely watched relationship ended years ago was his claim on Tuesday that Jeffrey Epstein took young ladies who worked for the Mar-a-Lago spa.

He confessed that Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent sex trafficking accusations, was one of the women.

Trump’s words built on his statements from the previous day, when he claimed that he had barred Epstein from his exclusive club in Florida twenty years prior due to his former friend’s theft of employees. He did not specify who those employees were at the time.

In a rare instance of tension within Trump’s tightly controlled political alliance, the Republican president has been criticized for his administration’s failure to reveal additional Epstein data following pledges of transparency. Even though some of his own supporters have spread conspiracy theories about the case, Trump has tried to quell inquiries about it, saying he is annoyed that people are still discussing it six years after Epstein committed suicide while awaiting prosecution.

The Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, recently conducted an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s imprisoned ex-girlfriend, inside a Florida courthouse; however, the details of the conversation have not been made public. Her attorneys said Tuesday that if lawmakers agree to meet further requirements and she is given immunity from any punishment for her testimony, she is willing to respond to additional questions from Congress.

While returning from Scotland on Air Force One, Trump expressed his displeasure that Epstein was transporting employees of his. He claimed that the women he had hired were removed from the spa; in other words, they were gone.

Trump remarked, “Listen, we don’t want you taking our people.” Trump claimed to have barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago when it occurred again.

He declined when asked if Giuffre was one of the workers Epstein had stolen, but he later admitted that he had.

Initially, the White House said that Trump had barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago due of his creepy behavior.

In the beginning of this year, Giuffre committed suicide. She said that when she was a teenager in 2000, Maxwell saw her working as a spa assistant at Mar-a-Lago and employed her as Epstein’s masseur, which resulted in sexual assault.

Giuffre is at the center of conspiracy theories regarding the case, despite the fact that her accusations were not included in Epstein’s criminal prosecution. She claimed that Epstein had forced her to have sex with strong males.

Maxwell is incarcerated in a federal prison in Florida for 20 years for collaborating with Epstein to sexually abuse girls. He has refuted Giuffre’s accusations.

The House Oversight Committee, which asked Maxwell for the interview, would not consider giving her the immunity she asked for, according to a representative for the committee.

Following the Justice Department’s abrupt announcement earlier this month that it would not be releasing any additional records from the investigation, which shocked conspiracy theorists, online sleuths, and members of Trump’s political base who had been hoping to find evidence of a government coverup, there is now a renewed and frantic interest in the Epstein story.

Since then, the Trump administration has made an effort to portray itself as being pro-transparency. For example, the department has called on judges to provide grand jury transcripts from the investigations into sex trafficking. The plea was denied by a Florida judge last week, but New York is still considering similar demands.