Mr. Trump’s comments last year were a reversal from the opinion he expressed in 2002, when he told New York magazine that Mr. Epstein was a “terrific guy” whom he had known for 15 years.
“He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Mr. Trump said at the time. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Mr. Epstein was never a dues-paying Mar-a-Lago member, but Mr. Trump treated him like a close friend and the two men were photographed together at the club in the 1990s and early 2000s — Mr. Trump always wearing a tie, Mr. Epstein never wearing one. They also attended many of the same dinner parties in Manhattan.
George Houraney, a Florida businessman, described one episode in the two men’s yearslong relationship to The New York Times last year.
It was 1992, and Mr. Houraney had flown two dozen or so women in for what was supposed to be a “calendar girl” competition at Mar-a-Lago. The only guests, it turned out, were Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein.
Mr. Houraney, who at the time had just teamed up with Mr. Trump to host events at his casinos, was taken aback.
“I said, ‘Donald, this is supposed to be a party with V.I.P.s,’” he recalled. “‘You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?’”
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/nyregion/trump-ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein.html
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