The most recent explanation from President Donald Trump for his falling out with serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein involved his Palm Beach neighbor "poaching" employees from the Mar-a-Lago spa.
The president told reporters on July 31 that he wasn't sure why Epstein would do such a thing.
"No, I don't know really why, but I said if he's taken anybody from Mar-a-Lago, he's hiring or whatever he's doing, I didn't like it. And we threw him out."
The extraordinary scrutiny of the president and any purported involvement with Epstein has come after the Justice Department announced July 7 that it had carefully examined 300 gigabytes of evidence it held but found no reason to believe that Epstein was murdered, that he blackmailed anyone or that any third parties were involved in his crimes.
It also said it would not be releasing anything further to the public.
Jeffrey Epstein case hasn't gone away for Donald Trump
Trump continues to attract the spotlight about his association with Epstein, who lived within 2 miles of Mar-a-Lago. Trump said in 2019 that it had been 15 years since he'd been in contact. That would have been around the time Trump got into a bidding war with Epstein over a Palm Beach mansion.
It doesn't line up with the year — 2000 — that the late Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts) was lured to Epstein's house by Ghislaine Maxwell. When asked in 2016 whether he was a member of the Mar-a-Lago Club in 2000, Epstein asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. In the deposition, he answered "Fifth" to almost every question.
Trump said she was "stolen" from his private club. Giuffre was one of the most prominent Epstein survivors to speak publicly about the sexual abuse she suffered at Epstein's homes, including the mansion on El Brillo Way on Palm Beach.
Her family said in a scathing statement July 30 that they objected to Trump's characterization that she was "stolen" from Mar-a-Lago because it objectified her.
“It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side … no doubt about it,’ " the family's statement said. "We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.”
Ghislaine Maxwell spots Virginia Giuffre outside Mar-a-Lago spa in 2000
What happened that first day in 2000 that Giuffre (known as Virginia Roberts then) met Epstein after Ghislaine Maxwell spotted her reading a book about massage therapy at Mar-a-Lago?
Roberts has said she was either 15 or 16 when she sat outside the Mar-a-Lago locker room outdoors in the summer of 2000 as she looked at the first book she'd ever read about massage therapy.
Virginia Roberts was working to get her general equivalency diploma after having attended four high schools in Palm Beach County, including Royal Palm Beach, Wellington and Forest Hill, according to her school transcript included in court documents. And she'd just come back home after running away from foster care and being held by Miami sex predator Ron Eppinger until he was arrested.
Her father, Sky Roberts, who worked maintenance at the estate, has testified that he had helped her get a job there. He hoped for better things for his daughter.
"I was hoping she would be happy," Sky Roberts, who would work at Mar-a-Lago for several years, testified in a deposition. "That way she could, you know, go back and forth to work with me."
He said they would have lunch together when she worked there.
Maxwell tells Roberts she'd 'have to pass the interview'
Epstein house manager Juan Alessi was driving Maxwell when they spotted Roberts from the driveway at Mar-a-Lago. He testified that he'd been waiting for Maxwell "to come out of the massage." It's not clear whether she'd been having a massage that day, but Alessi said that he had parked, then didn't see Maxwell for about an hour.
Then Alessi saw Maxwell speaking with Roberts that afternoon but couldn't hear what they said.
Roberts testified that she'd been working only two to three weeks at the spa when Maxwell approached.
When they spoke, Roberts said, it was just "chitchat" about "you know, the body and the anatomy and how I was interested in it."
Maxwell said she knew somebody who was looking for a traveling masseuse, but Roberts pointed out that she wasn't licensed. Maxwell said not to worry, that Roberts would get to travel, and that she would make "good money, get an education and you'll finally get accredited one day."
"We can help you along the way, if you pass the interview," Maxwell told her.
Virginia Roberts' first visit to Epstein's house
Maxwell ended the discussion at Mar-a-Lago by giving Roberts her phone number. Roberts promised to call once she had asked her father whether she could visit Epstein.
"I ran over, actually, to see my dad, talked to him. He said it would be OK," Roberts testified. "I used the phone from Mar-a-Lago to call her and tell her I was allowed to come over."
Sky Roberts testified that when his daughter brought it up, he said, "Well that's great, you know, because learning new jobs is all about life."
Roberts' father gave her a ride to El Brillo Way between 4 and 5 p.m. that day after she finished work. He said Epstein came out of the house to speak with him.
"He was very cordial, very nice," Sky Roberts said. He was never invited into nor did he go into Epstein's home.
Inside, Virginia Roberts told the BBC in 2022, Epstein lay down naked and Maxwell taught her how to massage him.
"Through that time, they were asking me questions about who I was," she said. "They seemed like nice people, so I trusted them, and I told them I'd had a really hard time in my life up until then — I'd been a runaway, I'd been sexually abused, physically abused. … That was the worst thing I could have told them because now they knew how vulnerable I was."
Giuffre died from suicide in April at age 41 at a ranch in Australia. She had been estranged from her husband and not allowed to see her children.
Epstein died the same way in his jail cell in Manhattan in 2019, awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell was convicted of conspiracy to sex trafficking childen and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022. She'd been serving her sentence in a Tallahassee prison until right after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed her about Epstein. Then she was moved to a prison camp with a lower level of supervision in Texas.
Holly Baltz is an editor at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Virginia Giuffre met Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago - what happened
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