Roger Stone Says Trump Knew About Epstein as Early as 2002
Legal filings and old records reveal Trump allies whitewashing his Epstein laundry even before the 2016 election
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For all the speculation about whether unreleased files reveal criminal predation by Pres. Donald Trump similar to that of Jeffrey Epstein, the more politically dangerous question may be when did Trump first recognize Epstein’s crimes?
Trump dropped Epstein when the first criminal investigation became public. But it’s yet to be established when Trump himself understood what Epstein was doing.
And a narrative spun by longtime Trump ally Roger Stone over the years implies, when you connect the dots, that Trump got the picture no later than 2002. Which, if true, would mean Trump kept the relationship going for years after. And kept quiet.
Two-thousand and two was the year Virginia Giuffre, née Roberts, left Epstein’s world. According to Giuffre, she saw Trump multiple times at Mar-a-Lago.
But according to Stone, Giuffre only saw Trump one time at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion. And, also according to Stone, the one, solitary time Trump was ever at Epstein’s mansion, Trump was so uncomfortable with the ratio of young girls there that he left after just 15 minutes.
But if Trump was only there once, and if Giuffre only saw Trump there once, those must have been the same occasion. Which could have happened no later than 2002, the year Giuffre left.
The White House says that Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2007.
Which means, according to Stone’s narrative, that Trump let Epstein keep using Mar-a-Lago for five years after witnessing that uncomfortable ratio, five years in which Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell continued to recruit young victims.
It’s worth noting that Stone’s narrative is riddled with mistakes, but that, in a way, is the point. The timeline of excuse-making for Trump includes evidence that he recognized what Epstein was for years while they remained close.
Stone’s messed-up narrative also demonstrates just how shambolic and sloppy the efforts have been to cover Trump’s Epstein tracks. Which, in all fairness, is understandable given how few outlets pushed back substantively on Stone and other Trump allies.
Those efforts to defend Trump ramped up dramatically in the run-up to his 2016 presidential run.
The Clean-Up Campaign
No one could have known during Trump’s first political campaign just how wildly his people lied for him generally, and definitely not in regard to Epstein. But it’s instructive to look back now because the history of lies isn’t reflected in today’s coverage of the continuing Trump-allied efforts at obfuscation.
When Stone published a book in October 2015 called “The Clintons’ War on Women,” he was known for his “dirty tricks” but hadn’t yet been literally convicted for lying. Stone gave Epstein a whole chapter tying him to former Pres. Bill Clinton.
That chapter contains the book’s one reference to Trump. It’s a hilarious effort to paint Trump as naive, an effort Stone would later revise in the opposite direction.
Elsewhere in the book, Stone erased Trump and Mar-a-Lago from the Epstein narrative. Not conspicuously at the time, but conspicuously now.
Stone continues today whitewashing Trump’s ties to Epstein, heedless of journalistic accounts to the contrary from long before the first criminal allegations.
But Stone’s effort to reframe that Mar-a-Lago story — he adds a new coda of Trumpian righteousness — manages to screw up the already mangled timeline about what Trump knew when and how long he stayed silent about it.
Trump’s lawyer, Alan Garten, can also be found repeatedly offering denials and dismissals revealed by time as false and also, on occasion, transparently false even in the moment.
Both men continue to back Trump, even as evidence mounts that his intimacy with Epstein was sufficient for Trump to suspect Epstein’s crimes long before he says he did. It was also early enough to have saved untold numbers of children the horrors Epstein would inflict on them.
Stone Throws in a Pool
In his 2015 book, Stone writes that Epstein’s “closest and dearest friend” was Les Wexner. Clinton, similarly, was a “close personal friend” of Epstein.
Stone devotes a chapter, Orgy Island, to Clinton’s relationship with Epstein. In doing so, Stone cites a deposition of Virginia Giuffre as placing Trump at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and calling Trump a “compete gentleman.” If such a deposition exists, I haven’t been able to find it1. Her deposition in 2016 actually says she doesn’t remember seeing Trump there all:
Giuffre testified that she only met Trump at Mar-a-Lago. But, based on his apparent confusion, Stone apparently felt compelled to do some Trump clean-up on Aisle Epstein. Here’s what Stone wrote in his book, presumably trying to shine a favorable light on his misapprehension that Giuffre saw Trump at Epstein’s Palm Beach home:
In her lawsuit deposition, Roberts [Giuffre] said she met billionaire Donald Trump once at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and that he was a “complete gentleman” and that she never saw him act inappropriately2. Trump turned down numerous invitations to Epstein’s hedonistic private island and his Palm Beach home. There is no evidence Trump did anything improper. “The one time I visited his Palm Beach home, the swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls,” Trump told a member of his Club Mar Lago [sic] “‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’” Unlike the Clintons, Trump cut Epstein and his underlings off the instant he heard about the Palm Beach investigation.
There is a lot going on here. But it’s important to note that Stone gives the impression Trump was cool with the pool scene and took action to sever Epstein only later, when cops were involved. As we’ll see, Stone would later revise this narrative.
It is true that Giuffre testified that Trump never flirted with her. But there’s no record of her calling Trump a “complete gentleman.”
According to Stone, Trump claimed he went only once to Epstein’s home. But that’s not the testimony of Epstein house manager Juan Alessi, who described his own chummy relationship with Trump in a 2009 deposition:
Q: He would come for a meal?
Alessi: He would come, have dinner. He never sat at the table. He eat with me in the kitchen.
Q: Did he ever have massages while he was there?
Alessi: No. Because he's got his own spa.
Q: Sure.
Stone said there’s no evidence Trump did anything improper, but a woman identified as Katie Johnson sued Trump for raping her and then defaming her, adding witnesses in later suits. The suit was later dropped, but the allegations were not retracted.
The rapes occurred, Johnson said, when she was 13. At Epstein’s New York home. Twice with Epstein present.
As for the pool story, it’s hilarious on its face: There’s nothing in Trump’s record to suggest he would admire anyone sharing a private pool with “neighborhood kids.” And when you include other accounts, the pool story truly doesn’t hold water.
Alessi was asked in a June 1, 2016, deposition about Epstein’s pool:
Q: Was the pool private?
Alessi: Very much, yeah. It was no access to the street. There was no access -- no view from any neighbors or anything like that.
In other words, the beautiful young girls — “neighborhood kids” — would have had no idea the pool even existed. Unless someone told them.
That’s the least of the problems for Stone’s unsourced account.
In 2019, The Spectator World offered a less Disney-esque account of Stone’s story, citing an unnamed source who knew both Epstein and Trump:
…Trump visited Epstein’s villa in Florida and saw some teenaged women or girls around the pool, topless. Supposedly, two of them later told a story about Trump ogling them and making sleazy comments about their breasts. Their account was given to someone who passed it on to Cockburn’s source. It was confirmed by the mutual acquaintance of Trump and Epstein. ‘Epstein has told me that story.’
Writer Michael Wolff has told a similar story (and may, for all we know, be the source for it). But remember, Stone claims Trump was only at Epstein’s house once, and that Giuffre saw him there. Therefore, in Stone’s telling, the one time Trump was at Epstein’s house must have been between late 2000, when Epstein and Giuffre first met, and 2002, when Giuffre left.
But Wolff says Epstein showed him pictures from the late 1990s of Trump at Epstein’s Palm Beach home, at the pool:
They were with Trump at Epstein’s Palm Beach house sitting around the pool with these young girls, and the young girls are topless. And in some of the pictures, they’re sitting in his lap. I mean, and, and then there’s one I especially remember where there’s a stain, a telltale stain and on the front of Trump’s pants, and the girls are pointing at him and laughing.
Also laughable is Stone’s recent addendum to the pool story, after his innocent, original version became increasingly implausible. In 2023, Stone posted a reworked version, adding two witnesses attesting to Trump’s moral umbrage.
Here’s Stone’s 2023 retelling (which perpetuates his false statement about Giuffre’s testimony):
Virginia Giuffre is among the victims who sued Epstein for his sexual abuse. In her lawsuit deposition, she said she met billionaire Donald Trump once at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and that Trump was a “complete gentleman” who she never saw acting inappropriately. Through her attorneys, Giuffre also said that Trump was the only significant public figure within Epstein's orbit who was helpful to her attorneys.
Trump turned down numerous invitations to Epstein’s hedonistic private island and his Palm Beach home. There is no evidence Trump did anything improper. Norma Foerderer, Trump's longtime personal assistant, told me that Trump thought Epstein was "creepy."
“The one time I visited his Palm Beach home, the swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls,” Trump told a member of his Club, Mar-a-Lago. “‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’” According to his personal security guard, Trump left Epstein's home within 15 minutes of arrival, feeling uncomfortable with the strange ratio of men to much younger women.
Never mind the obvious conflict that the pro-Trump accounts come Trump employees. But the notion that Trump, poolside with “beautiful young girls,” might lament the lack of additional dudes is obviously not credible to anyone alive in the last 40 or so years.
Stone doesn’t bother to reconcile how Trump went in 15 minutes from “How nice” to uncomfortable. But he must have been aware of Trump’s documented preference for strange ratios of men to much younger women.
A 1992 NBC video shows Trump and Epstein at a Mar-a-Lago party where Trump can be seen admirably managing his discomfort with the ratio created by the NFL cheerleaders there.
That same year, Florida businessman George Houraney wanted Trump’s backing for a “calendar girl” competition. So Trump hosted a party and asked Houraney to bring some of the young models. Ratio be damned.
The guests were Trump, Epstein, Houraney, and 28 young models, the New York Times reported in 2019, resulting in a strange ratio of roughly 1:9.
In 2015, the Washington Post reported that Mar-a-Lago was a party destination in the late 1990s, between the second and third Mrs. Trumps. Here’s an excerpt about one Trump party, quoting a source that Stone arguably should have known about when he wrote his 2023 “strange ratio” post:
“It was 3-to-2, beautiful women-to-men,” recalled Roger Stone, a former adviser to Trump.
“That’s true,” Trump, laughed, stressing he was single at the time. “The point was to have fun. It was wild.”
The following year, 2016, one source who had known Trump for decades described Trump’s Palm Beach parties to the Washington Post. “There’s 100 beautiful women and 10 guys. Look, how cool are we?” said, yes, Roger Stone again, alleging a strange ratio of 10:1 with not a word about Trump’s discomfort.
(The 2016 Post story noted that, “In 1998, Trump invited Sean Combs, the rapper then known as Puff Daddy.”)
Stone now appears to have erased the pool story entirely. He told Newsmax last month that Giuffre said Trump was at Epstein’s Palm Beach house for “a charitable function,” adding, “Trump was there for 15 minutes,” presumably a vestigial detail from the security-guard story.
Stone’s confusion about Giuffre’s testimony even includes just last month referring to “a six-hour interview I did with Virginia Giuffre.”
If Giuffre ever did an interview with Stone, let alone six hours worth, I haven’t been able to find it. Searches of his own website show no reference to it.
There are other instances of Stone obscuring Trump’s ties to Epstein. In his book, he describes how Maxwell recruited Giuffre.
As Trump himself has now acknowledged, that recruiting happened at Mar-a-Lago. But in Stone’s book, Giuffre was “working as a towel girl at a local Palm Beach spa.” He does not name the club, Mar-a-Lago, where the spa was located and does not name the spa itself. Its name was “The Trump Spa.”
Likewise, Mar-a-Lago isn’t included when Stone inventories the places Maxwell scouted for victims. The Ft. Lauderdale bus station, Stone’s book says, is where Maxwell went hunting.
And despite documentary evidence to the contrary, Stone continues to peddle the myth that Trump only took one round-trip flight on Epstein’s plane.
Epstein’s own brother claims Trump flew on Epstein’s plane numerous times. And there are receipts. Flight logs put Trump on Epstein’s plane at least eight times.
It may mean nothing, but only three pages of brother Mark Epstein’s deposition have been released. The last line on the final released page reads: “Q. Were there girls on the plane?”
Maybe we’ll get Mark Epstein’s answer now that the House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed the Justice Department’s full Epstein files. Either way, there are other inconsistencies.
Stone claims Trump cut Epstein off “the instant he heard about the Palm Beach police investigation.” As Stone notes, the Palm Beach police filed a probable cause affidavit in 2006.
That conflicts with the White House claim that Trump severed ties in 2007. And in 2014, Trump reportedly told future campaign aide Sam Nunberg that he cut off ties with Epstein years before Epstein’s 2008 conviction.
Actually, there’s reason to question whether it was Trump himself who told police about Epstein. Their first tip came in late 2004. Anonymously.
As I’ve written, the timing of that tip syncs with the two men’s rivalry over a Palm Beach property. According to Wolff, the writer who interviewed Epstein, Trump feared that Epstein would raise flags about money-laundering if Trump bought it.
So, in Wolff’s words, “Epstein believed that Donald Trump went to the Palm Beach police and said, ‘Jeffrey Epstein has young girls at his house.’” This, again, was late 2004. Two years after the latest date Trump knew about the young girls.
Stone’s claim that Trump learning about the Palm Beach police caused the split also conflicts with Trump’s own claim that he cut ties after Epstein recruited multiple workers from Mar-a-Lago. The two accounts can be reconciled, of course, if Trump knew why they were recruited.
And Trump has other allies following his Epstein trail with a bucket. The New York Times reported in 2019 that “longtime Trump associates played down their closeness, saying that was simply how Mr. Trump treated any guest at his club.”
It’s unlikely anyone bought the portrait of Donald Trump: Humble Innkeeper, or Stone’s pool story, especially after Trump commuted Stone’s sentence the following year and then pardoned Stone. But when allies and hangers-on weren’t sufficient to sell his story, Trump had another resource: His employees.
The Lawyer
Alan Garten isn’t a household name, but it shows up often when the media spotlight puts Trump in the same bright circle as Epstein.
Less than a week before the 2016 election, Katie Johnson was going to give a news conference about her claim of being raped by Trump and Epstein when she was a minor. Then she bailed.
Johnson’s lawyer, Lisa Bloom, said her client got “numerous threats” that day and was “in terrible fear.” Garten was the Trump lawyer on record denying her allegations. But even then, Garten’s credibility on the Trump/Epstein narrative was shaky at best.
Two years prior, 2014, Garten had already said, publicly, multiple times, that the two men had no relationship outside Epstein’s visits to the Mar-a-Lago club. Never mind the 1992 video or multiple public accounts including statements from Trump himself.
In January 2016, Garten made the mistake of talking to Vice, which did a number on Garten unlike any other outlet has. Here’s just some of what Garten told Vice, and Vice’s debunking in the very same article:
Garten said Mar-a-Lago was Epstein’s “only connection” to Trump — Vice refuted this, citing an unnamed source, two New York magazine articles, reports of the two men attending a 2000 party of Conrad Black, and a 2002 Vanity Fair article.
Garten said Trump had never been to Epstein’s Palm Beach home — Vice refuted this with the 2002 Vanity Fair article naming Trump as a regular. (Never mind Stone’s book the year before alleging Trump was there at least once.)
Garten said Trump was not subpoenaed in 2009 — Vice refuted this by calling the lawyer who subpoenaed Trump, who then called Garten, who then emailed Vice: “I looked back at my records and saw that Mr. Trump was subpoenaed."
Garten said Trump had no connection to Maxwell outside of her appearances at Mar-a-Lago — Vice refuted this by posting a picture of the two “out on the town” in 1997, in New York City. It’s still available on the Getty Images website:
In 2016, during the campaign — and after his fisking by Vice — Garten again said that Trump and Epstein had “no relationship.” In fact, Garten claimed, “They were not friends and they did not socialize together.” Past tense, meaning: Ever.
Again, this was 24 years after nationally televised video showed the two men laughing and ogling cheerleaders. Fourteen years after Trump called New York magazine to brag about his “terrific” buddy.
Still, Garten repeated it in 2017, in the context of Giuffre’s lawsuit.
Two years later, Garten said Trump had banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2007, and that Epstein was never a member. (In fact, Epstein’s Mar-a-Lago account did exist, closed only in October 2007.)
Subsequent years have seen an avalanche of new evidence cementing the existence of an abiding, intimate relationship between the two men. Trump’s 50th birthday letter being just the most glaring new example of intimacy and shared secrets.
Of course, neither Garten nor Stone are taking point on damage control right now. That’s what the White House communications team is for. So how are they doing?
They — and Trump — have already been caught in multiple falsehoods, especially regarding the sprawling mystery of what Trump knew when. And what he did about it.
Just to pick one example, both the Trump White House and the media appear to be downplaying what it took for Trump to finally, allegedly, cut off Epstein.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said, “The fact is that The President kicked him out of his club for being a creep." What does that mean? According to Trump, it’s synonymous with recruiting workers from Mar-a-Lago.
Media accounts have described the “creep” incident as Epstein hitting on someone. But here’s what an attorney for some of Epstein’s victims said in a 2010 deposition:
I learned through a source that Trump banned Epstein from his Maralago Club in West Palm Beach because Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club…
No one’s asking Trump why his club didn’t report a sexual assault — probably because this account has been washed away by euphemistic phrases like hitting on or making a move.
But last week, Wolff said he’s been talking to White House officials. Unnamed, of course. But here’s what Wolff relayed in an interview with Charlie Rose3:
Rose: You talk to his aides. They have private conversations with you. What are they saying about this crisis and their leader?
Wolff: Probably the most telling conversation I had — which was, which was the other day — is, you know, listen, we’ve always known there was the bad boy stuff out there. But, this person said, now, suddenly, everybody is worried that it might be much badder than we thought.
If Trump’s aides are right to be worried, their boss’s “badder” stuff might well explain why even Trump’s own people haven’t been able to get his story straight for more than a decade.
I’m a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC — as co-creator of Up w/ Chris Hayes and senior producer for Countdown with Keith Olbermann — CNN, ABCNews, The Daily Show, Air America Radio, and TYT. My original reporting on Substack is made possible by a handful of paid subscribers. Thank you.
The first published version of this article mistakenly suggested that Stone might have misread Giuffre’s 2016 testimony. But as a commenter pointed out, Stone’s book came out in 2015, so it’s even less clear what source Stone thinks he’s referring to in his book.
This part is true. Giuffre testified that she never saw Trump act inappropriately.
One other quick point on the laughable topic of Trump being uncomfortable around a group of scantily clad girls: he owned Miss Teen USA ffs.
It should be noted that Trump has only ever sued large corporations for defamation of character. But he has never sued any of the dozens of women who have accused him of sexual assault for defamation. His response against those women is to accuse them of lying, or that the claims are a hoax made by people who hate him, etc. To be clear, it is not the accusations of sexual abuse that bother him. He has not and will never sue his accusers because they have nothing he wants: money. Besides, he already took by force what he wanted from them.