An image of US President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, along with the words “President Trump: Release All the Epstein Files”, is projected onto the US Department of Commerce headquarters in Washington, DC, on July 18, 2025. — AFP pic

WASHINGTON, July 21  — Donald Trump’s past ties with Jeffrey Epstein are under scrutiny after the US president slammed a Wall Street Journal report that he sent a lewd letter to the infamous sex offender as “fake news.”

AFP looks at the pair’s relationship as the Trump administration also faces demands to release all government files on Epstein’s alleged crimes and his death.

Parties and private jets

Trump, then a property mogul and self-styled playboy, appears to have known Epstein, a wealthy money manager, since the 1990s.

They partied together in 1992 with NFL cheerleaders at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to footage from NBC News, which shows the pair talking and laughing.

The same year, Epstein was Trump’s only guest at a “calendar girl” competition he hosted involving more than two dozen young women, The New York Times reported.

In a display of their close ties, Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least seven times during the 1990s, according to flight logs presented in court and cited by US media.

He has denied this, and in 2024 said he was “never on Epstein’s plane.”

In 1993, according to The New York Times, Trump allegedly groped swimsuit model Stacey Williams after Epstein introduced them at Trump Tower – a claim the president has refuted.

Separate from his links to Epstein, Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by around 20 women.

In 2023, he was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming American journalist E. Jean Carroll in a civil trial.

‘Terrific guy’

Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s main accusers who died by suicide this year, said she was recruited into his alleged sex-trafficking network aged 17 while working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in 2000.

Giuffre claimed she was approached there by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was jailed in 2022 for helping Epstein sexually abuse girls.

Trump seemed to be on good terms with Epstein during this time, praising him as a “terrific guy” in a 2002 New York Magazine profile.

“He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said.

In 2003, according to a Wall Street Journal report, Trump penned a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday featuring a drawing of a naked woman, with his signature “Donald” mimicking pubic hair.

His apparent message – Trump dismissed the letter as a “fake thing” – read: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

‘I wasn’t a fan’

The pair reportedly had a rupture in 2004 as they competed to buy a waterfront property in Florida, which Trump eventually snagged.

The two men were hardly seen together in public from that point. Trump would later say in 2019 that they had a “falling out” and hadn’t spoken in 15 years.

Shortly after the property auction, police launched a probe that saw Epstein jailed in 2008 for 13 months for soliciting an underage prostitute.

He was arrested again in 2019 after he was accused of trafficking girls as young as 14 and engaging in sexual acts with them.

Trump, then serving his first term as president, sought to distance himself from his old friend.

“I wasn’t a fan,” he told reporters when the charges were revealed.

In 2019, Epstein was found hanging dead in his prison cell awaiting trial. Authorities said he died by suicide.

Since then, Trump has latched onto and fueled conspiracy theories that global elites including former president Bill Clinton were involved in Epstein’s crimes or death.

Those same theories now threaten to destabilise Trump’s administration, despite his attempts to dismiss the saga as a “hoax” created by political adversaries. — AFP