Trump Flies Epstein Air, aka the Lolita Express

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Epstein Rape Victim Was Passed on to Donald Trump by Ghislaine Maxwell
by Graha Lester
dailykos
Wednesday, June 09, 2021 at 8:07:57a MDT
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/6 ... ne-Maxwell



A woman who says that she was groomed and raped by Jeffrey Epstein as a teen-ager was passed on to Donald Trump by Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump then installed her in one of his apartments.

The woman’s name is Anouska De Georgiou. Her relationships with Epstein and Trump are both well known, but that it was Ghislaine Maxwell who transferred her from the former to the latter has been overlooked, despite the fact that the details were reported at the time in London’s Sunday Mirror (November 23, 1997, page 14).

According to an interview with De Georgiou that aired on Dateline NBC on September 20, 2019, she was groomed as a child by Epstein:

Ms De Georgiou grew up in an affluent family and attended school with Kate Middleton at the illustrious Marlborough College.

But telling of how billionaire Epstein bent her to his warped will, she told Dateline: "By the time I was being raped, it was too late."

She added that the sick financier's cronies and enablers would turn a blind eye to his brazen abuse of vulnerable young girls.

De Georgiou was twenty-years-old by the time she was subsequently introduced to Donald Trump by Ghislaine Maxwell. According to the aforementioned Sunday Mirror article, entitled “How suite! Trump’s Brit of all right”:

(Trump) met London model Anouska De Georgiou at a party in Manhattan. Several American millionaires already had their eyes on Anouska. But she was there with Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, who has introduced several of her attractive friends to the property developer. (Italics from the original).

Later in the article, the Sunday Mirror informs us that:

Trump flew Madam Maxwell and the model south to the sunshine state where all three enjoyed a happy weekend together. When they returned to New York, Anouska was installed in one of Donald’s many apartments there.

This all happened back when Trump was a Democrat, so clearly the article was not politically motivated. Note that De Georgiou was only one of several young women that Ghislaine introduced to Trump.

Epstein & Midelfart At Mar-a-Lago. Portrait of American socialite Jeffrey Epstein (1953 - 2019) and Norwegian college student (and future businesswoman) Celina Midelfart as they pose together during a reception (in honor of Tony Bennett) at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, March 19, 1995. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)


Midelfart & Epstein At Mar-a-Lago. Portrait of Norwegian college student (and future businesswoman) Celina Midelfart and American socialite Jeffrey Epstein (1953 - 2019) as they pose together during a reception (related to a charity ProAm tennis tournament) at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, February 22, 1997. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)


Donald Trump At The Beauty Ball. Property developer Donald Trump and Norwegian buisnesswoman Celina Midelfart attend the 23d annual Million-Dollar Beauty Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on April 6, 1998 in New York City, New York . (Photo by Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)


Valentine's Day Birthday Party for Ivana Trump. NEW YORK CITY - FEBRUARY 12: (L-R) Celina Midelfart, Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump attend Valentine's Day Birthday Party for Ivana Trump on February 12, 1998 at Chaos in New York City. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)


Blaine Trump Receives Marietta Tree Award for Public Service. (L-R) Celina Midelfart, Donald J. Trump, and guest attend a Citizens Committee of New York event, honoring Blaine Trump with the Marietta Tree Award for Public Service, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City on February 13, 1998. (Photo by John Calabrese/Penske Media via Getty Images)

Celina Midelfart is another woman who was associated first with Epstein and later with Trump. She was Trump’s date on the night he met Melania.

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How a British teen model was lured into Jeffrey Epstein's web: Anouska De Georgiou, who grew up in an affluent family, says she fell into Epstein's circle of abuse through well-connected friends.
by Sarah Fitzpatrick, Anna Schecter, Chelsea Damberg and Rich Schapiro
NBC News
Sept. 20, 2019, 3:29 PM MDT

Anouska De Georgiou was living a charmed life in the mid-1990s. A teenage model from an affluent family in London, she had a future as bright as her mega-watt smile.

But then De Georgiou got sucked into Jeffrey Epstein's orbit through well-connected friends. They met for the first time in London. In time she was being flown to Epstein's properties around the world, including his private island in the Caribbean, on flights he paid for.

The grooming, De Georgiou said, was subtle but persistent ⁠— and pervasive.

"By the time I was being raped, it was too late," De Georgiou, recounting the details of her experience for the first time, told NBC News as part of a months-long "Dateline" investigation.


Anouska De Georgiou says she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein at his homes all around the world. Courtesy Anouska De Georgiou

The abuse, De Georgiou said, spanned several years and locales. In addition to the estate on his private island, De Georgiou said Epstein preyed on her at his homes in New York and Paris.

"And in every location there was this microcosm of acceptance, of yes people, who acted like this was normal," De Georgiou said.

"If you're a young person walking into a mansion or someone's island and all the people who are present are acting as though this is OK and you're the only one who thinks it's weird, it's hard to say something," De Georgiou told Savannah Guthrie.

Epstein’s web of enablers are now at the center off a high-profile federal sex trafficking investigation.

Epstein, 66, was accused of sexually abusing and trafficking dozens [actually, many, many hundreds. See Netflix's "Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich."] of girls in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.

The focus of the probe shifted to his recruiters and other associates after he hanged himself in a federal jail cell in Manhattan last month.

Among those believed to be in the investigators' crosshairs is Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion.


Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Cipriani Wall Street on March 15, 2005 in New York City. Joe Schildhorn / Patrick McMullan via Getty Image

Maxwell’s association with Epstein has been chronicled for years. But new interviews with nearly two dozen Epstein accusers and multiple Maxwell acquaintances shed fresh light on the extent to which she and others allegedly abetted his sexual abuse of young women and girls.

Taken together, the accounts paint a portrait of a woman [Ghislane Maxwell] whose life appeared to revolve around finding a way to satisfy Epstein’s every whim, no matter how deviant.

“Jeffrey has the sickness but they worked together as a unit,” Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who says she was abused by Epstein and Maxwell for several years starting in the late 1990s, told "Dateline." “I was brought in by Ghislaine, and at that time, she was the main procurer for Jeffrey.”

Maxwell’s lawyers didn’t return requests for comment. In a 2016 court deposition, the British-born socialite denied knowing about or playing any role in Epstein’s alleged abuse.

Maxwell, 57, has vanished from public life. It’s unclear where she lives, what she does, or with whom she associates.

Her ultra-private existence marks a stark departure from her previous life as a high-flying socialite known for her vibrant personality and extraordinary connections.

The daughter of Robert Maxwell, a wealthy newspaper baron who died under a cloud of scandal, Ghislaine Maxwell was a fixture on the upper-crust social circuits in New York and London.

“She was friends with politicians and royals and because she was such a popular person and easy to get on with, people wanted to be in her presence,” said Lady Victoria Hervey, a British model and socialite who befriended Maxwell around 2000.

Maxwell and Epstein were already an item by then, Hervey said.

“When I met them, I met them as a couple, and they were the hot ‘it couple’ of New York. And I sort of always thought that they would end up together and be married,” Hervey told "Dateline." “People wanted to be invited to their events and dinners in their houses. They were like the most connected couple at the time in every city.”

But it was also around this time that Epstein was allegedly preying on young women and teenage girls — with Maxwell, several accusers say, acting as his chief recruiter.

Chauntae Davies says she was a 22-year-old aspiring masseuse when she was introduced to Maxwell by one of her massage teachers near the end of 2001.

“She and Jeffrey were already clients of his,” Davies said. “He reassured me that it was fine to take on this job.”


Chauntae Davies. NBC News

Davies said she was hired on the spot after a face-to-face meeting with Maxwell, and flown to Palm Beach that night.

Along the way, Maxwell made comments that Davies now recognizes as portending the sinister world she was about to enter.

Davies said Maxwell described her partner as a Ralph Lauren-type and asked if she had the same taste in men.

Davies said she wasn’t sure how to respond.

“I thought it was like a weird question but for me in my young naive brain, I thought she’s just wanting some reassurance that her boyfriend is hot,” Davies said. “I didn’t think he was hot but I just kind of laughed it off. I may have been over 18, but I was also very still young in my mind and very naive in a lot of ways and genuinely just wanted to see the good in people.”

Davies knew that she would be providing massages but felt insecure given her lack of experience.

Maxwell, Davies said, was quick to allay her concerns, saying all she had to do was follow Epstein's instructions.

Davies said Epstein raped her at his private island a few months later after a handful of massage sessions. He raped her two or three times more, she said. Over the next few years, Davies said, she continued to perform massages that resulted in her engaging in what she called nonconsensual sex with Epstein.

“I stopped fighting back,” Davies said. “I realized very early on he was going to do what he was going to do.”

Davies said she was receiving money from Epstein but she viewed it at the time as compensation for her massage services.

Davies said she would sometimes resist the invitations to visit Epstein but “Ghislaine would get on the phone or someone in their office and aggressively persuade me to go and give reasons why I should.”

“I wasn’t much of a fighter so I gave in very easily,” Davies said.

Giuffre’s entry into Epstein’s web follows the pattern of Davies and Benavidez.

A high-school aged spa attendant at Mar-A-Lago, President Trump’s private club in Florida, Giuffre was reading a book about massage therapy when she was approached by a woman on a quiet day in the summer of 2000.

“This beautiful, well spoken, well mannered woman with an English accent, prim and proper,” Giuffre told NBC News.


Virginia Roberts Giuffre. NBC News

The woman, Giuffre would soon learn, was Ghislaine Maxwell. She immediately referenced Giuffre’s book.

“It's so funny that you're reading a book on that because I know this older gentleman who's looking for a traveling masseuse,” Maxwell said, according to Giuffre. “He's super rich. He flies around everywhere. If you want, you can come by for an interview.”

Giuffre was thrilled about the offer but wasn’t sure she was up to the job due to her lack of training.

“Don’t worry about it,” Maxwell said, Giuffre told NBC News. “He’s got amazing abilities to help people out. That’s what he likes to do.”

Giuffre has described what happened next in lawsuits and to a British paper several years ago. But speaking in her first TV interview, she provided an extensive account of her first encounter with Epstein.

After entering his Palm Beach mansion, Maxwell led her up a staircase and into a sparsely-furnished room.

“There’s this man laying naked on a green massage table in the middle of the room,” Giuffre said.

Epstein looked up at Maxwell and flashed a smile signaling that Giuffre described as a “cheshire cat grin.”

“He smiled and nodded as in, like, approval,” Giuffre said.

Maxwell grabbed a bottle of lotion and instructed the young masseuse to “grab one side of Jeffrey” and “just follow what I do,” Giuffre said.

They worked over Epstein’s legs, his back, his neck. Then Epstein unexpectedly turned over, Giuffre said.

“That’s when they told me to take my clothes off. That’s when Ghislaine started to take her clothes off,” Giuffre said. “In an instant, I knew what was happening. This wasn’t the first time I’d been abused.”

Giuffre had come from a troubled home and said she had suffered sexual abuse in the past.

Giuffre said she stripped down to her panties but was ordered to remove those as well. “But before they did that, they both looked at my undies and snickered and they said, “Oh, you’ve still got little girl undies,” she said.

With the teenage girl fully nude, Epstein and Maxwell started giving her commands, Giuffre said.

“They asked me to lick his nipples and give him oral sex,” Giuffre said. “Ghislaine was, I like to say, roving around in between, doing the same things that she asked me to do for him while touching me in my private areas as well.”

“And then at the very end,” Giuffre said, “they instructed me to get on top of Epstein and that’s how the night ended.

Giuffre, now a 36-year-old mother of three, said she still grapples with the question of why she allowed the abuse to go on for so long.

“Jeffrey and Ghislaine's way of keeping us under his thumb, under his rule, under their control, were invisible chains,” Giuffre said. “And it was that constant - ‘We own the police. You can't run. You can't tell anybody. We'll never be held accountable for this.’"

The pair also leveled threats, Giuffre said.

“Jeffrey was a mastermind at manipulation and so was Ghislaine,” Giuffre said. “They didn't just put a gun to your head and tell you, "If you don't do this you're gonna die." No. They used very quaint threats. One of the scariest threats that I ever had was that they told me they know where my little brother goes to school, and if I don't do what they say I know the outcome.”

Florida police caught on to Epstein’s behavior in the mid-2000s. But he ultimately struck a lenient 2008 deal with federal prosecutors that spared him the prospect of a long prison sentence.

Instead, he pleaded guilty to two state prostitution counts and served 13 months in a Palm Beach county jail in an arrangement that allowed him to leave for 12 hours a day, six days a week, on work release.

Despite her name appearing in news accounts tied to Epstein’s case, Maxwell glided past the scandal.

She remained a fixture on the New York social circuit, friends say, hosting parties that attracted a wide array of well-heeled guests

Maxwell transformed herself into a crusading environmentalist focused on protecting the ocean. She spoke before the United Nations and in a 2014 TED talk.

Pamela Ryckman, an author who befriended Maxwell in 2013 over what she says she believed was a shared passion for the environment and women’s empowerment, said there appeared to be two sides to her personality.

“On one hand, there was the very professional, earnest persona,” Ryckman said. “And yet at the same time, you'd find her in social situations and she was always pushing boundaries. She was always sort of saying something a little coy or a little bit sexual or touching people.”

“If you can have someone who behaves so differently from one environment to another, it makes it seem more likely that she actually had this double life, that she was able to manipulate and fool people into believing that she was who she seemed to be at any given moment,” Ryckman said. “She was a chameleon.”

But Maxwell would soon drop out of the public eye. Lady Victoria Hervey, Maxwell’s one-time friend, said she last saw her a year ago at a baby shower.

“She seemed totally normal, like the same as ever,” Hervey told NBC News. “She’s always so well put together and never seems affected by anything.”

Epstein was arrested in July. His suicide weeks later robbed his victims of the chance to see him held accountable for his alleged crimes.

But in late August, his victims were given the chance to tell their stories in open court.

Not long after, six women sat down together for an interview with NBC News, sharing their stories of abuse by Epstein and imploring investigators to pursue criminal charges against his enablers.

“There should be still some accountability for a lot of the people that were enabling Epstein,” Jennifer Aroaz, who says Epstein raped her when she was 15, told NBC News. “There are still people out there.”

Jennifer Araoz, 32, has alleged that the billionaire financier forcibly raped her when she was 15. Rolling Stone.

Giuffre said she was plunged into mourning following Epstein’s death.

“Not because the world lost a monster. I wasn’t mourning the death of this man,” Giuffre said.

“I was mourning the death of my ability to hold this man accountable.”

Speaking out for the first time, Rachel Benavidez said she was fresh out of massage school when she was recruited by Maxwell to put her training to work at a ranch in the New Mexico desert owned by Epstein.

The job got off to a smooth start, with Benavidez working on Maxwell. Known as the Zorro Ranch, the property was extraordinary, featuring a main house painted pink with elevator banks in the hallways and Italian frescoes in the pool area.


Rachel Benavidez. NBC News

Soon Benavidez was directed to massage Epstein. In time what had started as a dream opportunity massaging a pleasant and pretty woman turned into two years of abuse at the hands of Epstein, Benavidez said.

“I kind of liken it to the toad that’s thrown in the boiling water and jumps out immediately,” Benavidez said. "But I was more like the toad that was put in lukewarm water. And then all of a sudden it started boiling. And then you’re done.”

Epstein, Benavidez said, took advantage of her youth and her struggling financial state.

“Jeffrey was very manipulative,” Benavidez said. “He provided me with promises of continuing education and a clientele that's a world-class clientele. And that's kind of how he lured his tentacles into me.”

Her visits to the Zorro Ranch came to an end, she said, after she refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Benavidez said she confided in her sister Brandy many years ago. The sister, who was living with Benavidez at the time, confirmed to NBC News that she was told about the abuse by Epstein.


Zorro Ranch, one of the properties of financier Jeffrey Epstein, is seen in an aerial view near Stanley, N.M., on July 15, 2019.Drone Base / Reuters file

“She was inexperienced,” the sister said. “I don’t think she was sure how to set boundaries. She wanted opportunities and was trying to please clients.”

De Georgiou, the former British model, spoke out in court last month. But surrounded by her fellow survivors, she offered details of her experience with Epstein for the first time.

Her story is, in one way, strikingly different than that of many of Epstein's other accusers. She came from a life of privilege, growing up affluent in London.

Still, De Georgiou said, Epstein was able to identify and exploit her vulnerabilities as he treated her to his rarefied world.

“For me, I was involved in that kind of lifestyle growing up," De Georgiou said. "And so I thought I could cope. And I thought I could handle it."

De Georgiou said her grooming was carefully calculated. "It wasn't zero to 100 in one day. It was introduced piecemeal, along with constant emotional, financial reinforcement that this was the path, the only path,” she told NBC News.


Anouska De Georgiou. NBC News

She described a sick man who was equal parts captivating and frightening. “When Jeffrey would see me he would physically shake because he wanted to get at me," De Georgiou said. "And that was very unnerving."

She said she has largely moved past the pain and torment that plagued her for years, but one experience still haunts her.

While on Epstein's private island in the Caribbean, De Georgiou said, she saw a blonde girl that appeared even a few years younger than her teenage self.

"I wanted to say something," De Georgiou told NBC News. "I was in the ocean and she was on a paddleboard or something...and I wanted to say, 'You have to leave.' But I didn't."

She now runs a group home, called The Kintsugi Foundation, for women battling substance abuse and recovering from trauma.

From Social Butterfly to Saving Women’s Lives: Anouska de Georgiou & The Kintsugi Foundation
by John Lavitt
West Hollywood, CA (The Hollywood Times)
09/28/2019
https://thehollywoodtimes.today/from-so ... oundation/


Anouska de Georgiou and John Taylor Celebrating-Recovery. The Kintsugi Foundation’s launch party celebrates recovery with board members John Taylor of Duran Duran and composer Jonathan Elias

On September 28, 2019, as evening fell and Saturday night approached, the Kintsugi Foundation launch party was fully underway. From fancy mocktails and fine hors d’oeuvres to silent auctions and Tarot card readings, Anouska de Georgiou put to work the skills and talents she learned as an international socialite. However, today, the point is not the party itself, but the use of such a party to celebrate recovery.

The Kintsugi Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to helping women recover from trauma and substance abuse. As the founder of the Kintsugi Foundation, Anouska truly has put her money and time where her heart resides. Focused on giving back and saving lives, Anouska’s a prime example of recovery at work.

At the launch party, Anouska was joined and supported by fellow board members of the Kintsugi Foundation. The dedicated board members of the foundation are musician John Taylor of Duran Duran, music composer Jonathan Elias, artist Sarah Stitt, and recovery advocate Lindsey Glass. Together with Anouska, they celebrate the miracle of recovery. Indeed, the greater recovery community came out in force to learn about the Kintsugi Foundation and lend a helping hand.

The Kintsugi Foundation is today on a sober living house for women in West Hollywood founded by Anouska de Georgiou. The house offers residents extensive programming, including trauma groups, art therapy, music therapy, and guided meditation. The meaning of the word Kintsugi in Japanese is the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer with the understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

The goal of the Kintsugi Foundation is to help women who feel broken to find their authentic path, recovering from substance use disorder and the underlying trauma behind the addictions. As Dr. Gabor Maté explains, “The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain.” If you don’t treat the underlying trauma behind addiction, you are not treating the bleeding heart of the problem

At the launch party, many well-known sobriety luminaries mingled, including Leonard Buschel of the Reel Recovery Film Festival, actor Ed Begley, Jr., Director Alison Anders, and author Jay Westbrook. A raffle was held to help support the Kintsugi Foundation. The impressive raffle prize was a guitar played by Niles Rogers, then signed by Rogers and the legend herself, Cher. The raffle tickets were sold to help support the foundation’s work. Whoever ended up winning, went home with quite a prize!

In a bit of a family twist, the father-daughter creative team of John Taylor and Atlanta Taylor traded off DJ’ing duties, delivering the funk with big smiles and lots of love. Also, inside the house, Grace McGrade gave Tarot card readings to the excited guests. Doesn’t everyone like learning about their future?

In an inspiring moment, author Amy Dresner spoke in the garden about living in the house for many years and how important it was to her recovery. She told of being embraced and accepted by Anouska in a difficult period of her life. After Anouska gave birth to her daughter, Amy Dresner helped to take care of the infant for the first year. Laughing, Amy shook her head and said, “And I don’t even like kids.”

As the guests were leaving, everyone was surprised to receive a lovely gift basket with t-shirts and a Pam & Gela clutch. Indeed, the gesture proved to be one more example of the grace of Anouska de Georgiou and the spirit of the Kintsugi Foundation. After all, a social butterfly battling to save lives knows how to throw a party and treat her guests with a touch of class and style. In the end, such efforts are memorable, hopefully making the continuing success of the Kintsugi Foundation a priority moving forward.

"My healing came through that, that I could walk alongside these women and girls and be a witness to their suffering," De Georgiou said.

Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the other women, De Georgiou said she and her fellow survivors have developed a tight bond that has strengthened their resolve.

“No one else understands like somebody who’s experienced it,” De Georgiou said

“Jeffrey thought that we were disposable, and he threw us all away. And look who’s standing.”

Sarah Fitzpatrick

[admin]

Trump’s Warm Words for Ghislaine Maxwell: ‘I Just Wish Her Well’: The president’s comments about Ms. Maxwell, who is charged with luring girls into Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit, drew new attention to Mr. Trump’s friendship with Mr. Epstein.
by Ed Shanahan
New York Times
Published July 21, 2020
Updated Oct. 22, 2020


From left, Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in 2000.Credit...Davidoff Studios, via Getty Images

President Trump’s return to the White House podium on Tuesday to discuss the coronavirus pandemic took an unusual detour when he offered warm words for Ghislaine Maxwell, who is facing federal charges of helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit, groom and sexually abuse girls.

Mr. Trump’s comment about Ms. Maxwell, who was arrested in New Hampshire this month and is being held without bail in a federal jail in Brooklyn, came in response to a reporter’s question about whether he expected her to go public with the names of powerful men who have been accused in lawsuits of taking part in the sex-trafficking ring that Mr. Epstein allegedly ran.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said. “I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly.”

“I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach,” the president continued, referring to the Florida town where his Mar-a-Lago resort is and where Mr. Epstein had a home. “But I wish her well, whatever it is.”

Ms. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The remarks renewed attention on Mr. Trump’s ties to Mr. Epstein, who was arrested almost exactly a year before Ms. Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s longtime companion. Mr. Epstein was charged in a federal indictment with sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of girls and women at his mansion in Manhattan and elsewhere, including at his Palm Beach estate.

A month after his arrest, Mr. Epstein, 66, hanged himself in his cell at the federal jail in Manhattan where he was awaiting trial. Federal prosecutors said after his death that they would continue to investigate his associates.

After Mr. Epstein’s arrest, Mr. Trump sought to distance himself from the disgraced financier, who had avoided federal sex-crime charges under a widely criticized plea deal in 2008 that allowed him to plead guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting prostitution. (A furor over the plea deal ultimately caused Mr. Trump’s labor secretary, who negotiated it, to resign.)

Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House last July, said he knew Mr. Epstein “like everybody in Palm Beach knew him.”

But, the president added: “I had a falling-out with him. I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.” The circumstances of the rupture in their relationship have never been made clear.

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 years-long 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?’”

Last year, about a week after Mr. Trump sought to disavow his ties to Mr. Epstein, a video surfaced that captured the men enjoying themselves together at Mar-a-Lago in the company of dozens of N.F.L. cheerleaders.

At the event shown in the footage, which also happened in 1992, Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein can be seen watching and commenting to each other about women.

Mr. Trump, who was 46 at the time and dressed in a suit and a pink tie, appears to be in jovial spirits, laughing and warmly welcoming guests, including Mr. Epstein.

Mr. Trump seems to be in his element. He moves from the dance floor to the sidelines and back. At one point, he points out a woman to Mr. Epstein and leans in to tell him, “She’s hot.”

At another point, Mr. Epstein doubles over laughing at something Mr. Trump whispers in his ear.

[admin]

Trump's Labor Secretary Acosta resigns amid Epstein case
by Nandita Bose
Reuters
July 12, 2019 10:50 AM MDTUpdated 4 years ago
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1U71UI/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta resigned on Friday amid fresh scrutiny of his handling of the sex abuse case against financier Jeffrey Epstein, becoming President Donald Trump's latest adviser to leave the administration in controversy.

Acosta, joining Trump at the White House before the president left for a trip to Wisconsin, said he did not want to be a distraction to the administration's work because of his leadership of the Epstein case more than a decade ago.

"As I look forward, I do not think it is right and fair for this administration's Labor Department to have Epstein as a focus rather than the incredible economy we have today," Acosta said.

Trump, who has fired numerous cabinet and other administration officials during his 2 1/2 years in the White House, said it was Acosta's idea to step down.

"Alex called me this morning and wanted to see me," Trump told reporters. "I just want to let you know this is him, not me."

Acosta's resignation is effective in seven days. Trump named Deputy Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella as the acting secretary of Labor.

Acosta has served in Trump's cabinet since April 2017 and from 2005 through 2009 was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. It was there that he handled Epstein's first case involving sex with girls, which resulted in a punishment that critics say was far too lenient.

"Mr. Acosta now joins the sprawling parade of President Trump’s chosen advisors who have left the administration under clouds of scandal and corruption, leaving rudderless and discouraged agencies in their wake. Taxpayers deserve better,” Democratic U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said in a statement.

Epstein, a billionaire hedge fund manager, pleaded not guilty to new federal charges in New York this week. Epstein had a social circle that over the years has included Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Britain's Prince Andrew.

Melania Trump, Prince Andrew, Gwendolyn Beck and Jeffrey Epstein at a party at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. DAVIDOFF STUDIOS/GETTY

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had called on Tuesday for Acosta to resign.


U.S. President Donald Trump announces the resignation of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta (R) before departing for travel to Milwaukee, Wisconsin from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 12, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Acquire Licensing Rights

DEFENDING HIS CASE

Acosta responded to the criticism on Tuesday with tweets saying Epstein's crimes were "horrific" and that he was glad prosecutors were moving forward based on new evidence and testimony that could "more fully bring him to justice."

On Wednesday Acosta held a news conference to defend his handling of the deal, which allowed Epstein to plead guilty to a state charge and not face federal prosecution. Acosta said Epstein would have had an even lighter sentence if not for the deal.

Acosta would not say if he would make the same decision regarding Epstein now, considering the power of the #MeToo movement that led to the downfall of several powerful men publicly accused of sex crimes by women.

U.S. prosecutors in New York on Monday accused Epstein, 66, of sex trafficking, luring dozens of girls, some as young as 14, to his luxury homes and coercing them into sex acts.

Democratic U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee who has called on Acosta to testify on the Epstein matter, said in a statement: "Secretary Acosta’s role in approving the extremely favorable deal for Jeffrey Epstein raises significant concerns about his failure to respect the rights of the victims, many of whom were children when they were assaulted."

The federal prosecutors in New York said they were not bound by the deal arranged by Acosta, which allowed Epstein to plead to a lesser offense and serve 13 months in jail with leave during the day while registering as a sex offender.

In February, a federal judge in West Palm Beach, Florida, ruled that the 2007 agreement violated the victims' rights. Epstein's case and Acosta's role in the plea deal had come under scrutiny earlier this year after an investigation by the Miami Herald.

The Epstein case came up during Acosta's Senate confirmation hearing but the Republican-majority Senate approved him in a 60-38 vote.

He is the latest top Trump administration official to depart under a cloud. The heads of the Interior, Justice, State and Health departments have also either been fired or resigned, among other top staff during Trump tenure so far.

Acosta, the son of Cuban refugees and the first Hispanic member of Trump's Cabinet, previously served on the National Labor Relations Board and in the U.S. Department of Justice under Republican President George W. Bush.

Reporting by Nandiat Bose; additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Writing by David Alexander and Jeff Mason; Editing by Bill Trott

[admin]

Teen models, powerful men and private dinners: when Trump hosted Look of the Year: In the early 90s, Donald Trump judged the world’s biggest modelling competition - since hit by allegations of abuse. This is how the people who were there remember it
by Lucy Osborne, Harry Davies and Stephanie Kirchgaessner. A special investigation
The Guardian
Sat 14 Mar 2020 02.00 EDT


Donald Trump, then 45, with contestants in the 1991 Look of the Year competition, the year he was a judge

On 1 September 1991, a large private yacht cruised towards the Statue of Liberty. It was a clear, breezy evening, and from the upper deck of the Spirit of New York, a golden sunset could be seen glinting off the Manhattan skyline. Downstairs, a party was in flow. Scores of teenage girls in evening dresses and miniskirts, some as young as 14, danced under disco lights. It could have been a high school prom, were it not for the crowd of older men surrounding them.

As the evening wore on, some of the men – many old enough to be the girls’ fathers, or even grandfathers – joined them on the dancefloor, pressing themselves against the girls. One balding man in a suit wrapped his arms around two young models, leering into a film camera that was documenting the evening: “Can you get some beautiful women around me, please?”

The party aboard the Spirit of New York was one of several events that Donald Trump, then 45, attended with a group of 58 aspiring young models that September. They had travelled from around the world to compete in Elite’s Look of the Year competition, an annual event that had been running since 1983 and was already credited with launching the careers of Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen and Stephanie Seymour. At stake was a life-changing prize: a $150,000 contract with the world’s then leading modelling agency, Elite Model Management, run by John Casablancas.

Trump was closely involved in Casablancas’s competition. In 1991, he was a headline sponsor, throwing open the Plaza, his lavish, chateau-style hotel overlooking Central Park, transforming it into the main venue and accommodating the young models. He was also one of its 10 judges.

In 1992, Trump hosted the competition again. On a similarly golden evening in early September that year, another group of contestants boarded the Spirit of New York, chartered for another Elite cruise. One of the girls on the boat was Shawna Lee, then a 14-year-old from a small town outside Toronto. She recalls how the contestants were encouraged to parade downstairs, one by one, and dance for Trump, Casablancas and others. Lee, an introverted teenager who loved to draw but hated school, was in New York for the first time. “A woman at the agency was pushing me,” she recalls. “I said to her, ‘I don’t see why me going down the stairs and dancing in front of those two has anything to do with me becoming a model. And she said, ‘No, you look great, take off your blazer and go and do it.’ So I walked down the stairs. I didn’t dance – I blew a kiss at them, spun around and walked away.”


Contestants wait to board the Spirit of New York yacht, September 1991. Photograph: Nina Berman/NOOR

Another contestant, who was 15 at the time, also remembers being asked to walk for Trump, Casablancas and other men on the boat in September 1992. She says an organiser told her that if she refused, she would be excluded from the competition. “I knew in my gut it wasn’t right,” she recalls. “This wasn’t being judged or part of the competition – it was for their entertainment.”

While Elite’s official brochure stated that contestants were aged between 14 and 24, all of those the Guardian has spoken to, competing in both years, were aged between 14 and 19. Some had come to New York with parents or chaperones in tow; others were alone. Many were away from their families for the first time. For them, the stakes were high, and the pressure to impress the judges great. As Casablancas had warned them at the outset of the competition, in a scene recorded by TV cameras: “You are going to be judged, constantly judged.” (In 1991 and 1992, the Elite contest was filmed for a 60-minute glossy television special, featuring interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, and later screened on Fox – an early foray into reality TV.) Casablancas was a powerful figure in the industry, and to many of the new crop of would-be supermodels, this seemed an opportunity too good to miss.

Three decades on, a very different picture of the competition is beginning to emerge. Over the last six months, the Guardian has spoken to several dozen former Look of the Year contestants, as well as industry insiders, and obtained 12 hours of previously unseen, behind-the-scenes footage. The stories we have heard suggest that Casablancas, and some of the men in his orbit, used the contest to engage in sexual relationships with vulnerable young models. Some of these allegations amount to sexual harassment, abuse or exploitation of teenage girls; others are more accurately described as rape.


Naomi Campbell and John Casablancas


Trump with John Casablancas, who ran the competition, at the 1991 Look of the Year awards, at Trump’s Plaza Hotel in New York


Casablancas speaking at a Look of the Year reception in 1991 at the Plaza Hotel, alongside Trump
Top left: John Casablancas with Naomi Campbell, who co-presented the 1991 Look of the Year finale. Photograph: Bettina Cirone/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images

No such allegations have been levelled against Trump, who at the time was dating Marla Maples, the woman who in 1993 became his second wife. But his close involvement in the contest raises questions for the president. Did he know that Casablancas and others were sleeping with contestants? Why would a man in his 40s, whose main business was real-estate development, want to host a beauty contest for teenage girls?

Epstein likes to tell people that he’s a loner, a man who’s never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. And yet if you talk to Donald Trump, a different Epstein emerges. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “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. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

-- Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery, by Landon Thomas Jr., New York Magazine

Journalists have scoured almost every corner of the 45th president’s life, but his friendship with Casablancas, and his involvement in Look of the Year in 1991 and 1992, have been largely overlooked. Yet the competition is more than a footnote in the Donald Trump story. In time, it would prove to be the foundation of his pivot into reality TV. He even married a former Look of the Year contestant: the current first lady, Melania Trump, narrowly missed out on a trip to New York in 1992, after coming second in the Slovenian heat.

When John Casablancas arrived in New York in 1977, aged 35, he quickly caused a stir. Branded “the snatcher” for poaching models from rivals for his Elite Model Management agency, he gained a reputation as a ruthless operator. Handsome and charismatic, the son of a former Balenciaga model and a wealthy Spanish banker, he formed the agency that became Elite in Paris in his late 20s. Within years of setting up shop in New York, Casablancas was generating millions of dollars in revenue each year, and ushering in the era of the supermodel. Glamorous friends flocked to Elite parties in fashionable clubs like Studio 54.

It’s not clear how Casablancas first met Trump but, according to several former models who encountered him during the 1980s, the businessman became a regular at his parties. With the opening of Trump Tower on New York’s Fifth Avenue in 1983, and the acquisition of the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in 1985, Trump had gained the reputation of a high-flying playboy in his own right. In 1987 he published The Art Of The Deal, and a flurry of publicity followed. “He sits atop a $3 billion empire,” proclaimed the Washington Post, “and seems to have a Midas touch.”

It was perhaps unsurprising that Trump, a New York celebrity who liked to date beautiful women, should come to know the city’s best-known model agent. “Trump was good with PR and that was something John liked,” says Jeremie Roux, who now runs System, a modelling agency he cofounded with Casablancas in 2009. “Good or negative press was all good to Trump.”

Patty Owen, an Elle and Cosmopolitan cover star, recalls seeing Trump at Elite parties as far back as 1982. “He would always be at the bar. That’s where he would stay and that’s where all the new models would hang out,” she says. “Whenever I saw him, I was always like: why does John have to invite him?” Barbara Pilling, also then an Elite model, told us Trump asked her out for dinner in the summer of 1989 at an industry soiree. She recalls Trump asking how old she was. “I said 17 and he said, ‘That’s just great – you’re not too old, not too young.’”


Stacy Wilkes on the Spirit of New York in 1991, with that year’s winner, Ingrid Seynhaeve. Photograph: Nina Berman/NOOR


Shawna Lee (second from right) with other contestants at the 1992 Look of the Year competition

Speaking to the Guardian, four former Elite models say that in the late 80s or early 90s, when they were teenagers, the agency required them to attend private dinners with Trump, Casablancas and sometimes other men. One was Shayna Love, an Australian model who was 16 when she came to New York for the first time in the summer of 1991. Recalling a dinner she attended, she says now: “It was presented as our duty as models at the agency. It wasn’t an invitation. It was like, you have to go and do this.” She says the dinner she attended, at which 10 or 15 models were present, was served at a long table in a private area of an upmarket restaurant. “I was at one end with John, and Trump was up the other end… surrounded by the other girls.”

In the spring of 1991, Trump and Casablancas struck a business deal. Trump would sponsor Look of the Year’s final and host contestants at the Plaza, which would double as the headquarters. At the time, Trump faced significant financial pressures and was close to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but it didn’t seem to deter him. In the newly unearthed, behind-the-scenes footage of Look of the Year 1991, Trump makes a series of appearances alongside Casablancas, whom he describes as “my friend John”. At one point, Casablancas reveals how he and Trump struck their business partnership. “I had prepared for a long meeting with Donald Trump to explain to him why this was going to be a great success,” Casablancas tells the crowd. “In fact, I hadn’t finished my third sentence and he said: ‘I love the idea. Let’s do it.’”

Trump now disputes being friends with Casablancas. The president’s representatives told the Guardian that he denies it “in the strongest possible terms”. Trump, they said, “hardly knew him, spent very little time with him, and knew very little about him”.

Stacy Wilkes had never been anywhere like the New York Plaza when she arrived at Trump’s hotel with another contestant in September 1991. Then 16, she was living in Louisville, Kentucky, with her mother, who was struggling to make ends meet. The teenager would hold yard sales and mow lawns to make extra cash. “I was just so excited to be in a hotel,” she says. “To go from a poor part of Kentucky to a place like this – I felt like the little kid in Home Alone.” She recalls feeling out of place in a hotel where “everything was gold”.

The teenager had been selected as part of a sprawling international search, overseen by Casablancas, for “new faces”. Many contestants had come through feeder competitions after winning regional heats, or being spotted in malls and hotel lobbies or, in one case, on the beach. Casablancas had visited Wilkes’ local mall to host an Elite scouting event a year earlier, when she was 15. Her local agent had sent her to meet him, telling her what to wear and how to act. She says: “I was told to put my hair down in front of my face and then, like, whoop it around and look up at him.”

One year later, Wilkes was among those met at the airport by a scrum of photographers, and whisked into limousines – a supermodel welcome. “That was kind of neat,” she recalls. The contestants assembled beneath crystal chandeliers at the Plaza to meet Casablancas. He told them they would be judged over several days ahead of a gala evening, when the winner would be crowned. The girls would undergo makeovers and attend photocalls, donning spandex for an exercise routine in front of the Plaza. The behind-the-scenes footage shows Casablancas informing the would-be models that attention would be paid not just to appearance, but to “the way you are, your attitude, your personality, your sense of cooperation”.


John Casablancas, photographer Patrick Demarchelier and Gérald Marie, head of Elite’s Paris office and a 1991 Look of the Year judge.

First there was Harvey Weinstein, and then Jeffrey Epstein, two men so corrupted by their own power and money they thought it entitled them to sexually abuse any woman or teenager they lusted after. Now one of the icons of the world of modelling stands similarly accused of being a sex fiend. His name might not be familiar to those outside the beauty industry, but for decades Frenchman Gérald Marie, now aged 70, was the super-agent who decided, or torpedoed, the careers of supermodels. He even married one of the most famous of them all, Linda Evangelista. But a 60 MINUTES global investigation has uncovered more than a dozen former models with shocking accusations about him. They say he’s a predator who ritually abused and raped young women – including minors. As Tara Brown reports, the women are now demanding that Gérald Marie be held accountable for his depravity, and it seems prosecutors in France are finally taking notice.



-- Gérald Marie: Former models expose the ugly truth of the beauty industry, by 60 Minutes Australia

Donald Trump with contestants in the 1991 Look of the Year competition, the year he was a judge

At 16, Wilkes was one of the older contestants in Look of the Year. The 1992 Fox documentary reported that the average age was 15, and the film’s interviews make the youth of many contestants plain. Standing before the judges for the key swimwear round, the aspiring models are asked to tell the panel about themselves. “I sing and love animals,” says one girl, nervously. Another tells the judges: “I like big dogs and chocolate.” Later, during a photoshoot, a photographer instructs a 15-year-old to show more of her cleavage by pulling her bra lower. “More,” he tells her. “More. More.”

In 1991, there were 10 judges in total, eight of them men, including Trump, Casablancas, the celebrity magician David Copperfield, and the president of Elite’s European division, Gérald Marie. For the swimwear round, judges including Trump and Casablancas sat at a table in one of the Plaza’s palatial rooms, rating the teenage models. “I felt so uncomfortable, standing there in my bathing suit,” recalls Wilkes. She says that at one stage of the contest the judges said she should lose weight: “It felt like they were ganging up on me.”

The contestant who came third in 1991 was Kate Dillon, then 17[/size][/u][/b]. Dillon, who went on to become a successful plus-sized model, says that many of her fellow competitors were “from places that were very poor. I came from a family that had means, so it was something fun to do for a week to get out of school – but a lot of these girls were desperate.” She recalls various “after-hours” events over the course of the five-day competition. “It was very clear that there were opportunities to go out and party with Donald,” she says. The contestants were led to believe “that if you were nice to certain people, good things will happen to you, and I think that’s why girls were going out”.

Every time we changed, Trump would find a reason to come backstage

The behind-the-scenes footage seen by the Guardian shows brief snippets of the future president mingling with the Look of the Year models. At an evening reception, he seems to play the role of host, moving regally around the Plaza’s ornate rooms in a suit and tie, talking to VIP guests and contestants. “How’s the Canadian contestants?” he asks, before moving over to a handful of Canadian would-be models and introducing himself. At another point, he circulates on the top deck of the Spirit of New York as the boat prepares to depart. Wearing a billowing cream blazer, pink open-neck shirt and oversized baseball cap, Trump grins while posing for photographs and chatting to several girls. One tells him she is just finishing school.

Some former contestants recall him being there as they got dressed for events. “Every time we changed, it was like Trump would find a reason to come backstage,” Wilkes says. A Canadian contestant from 1992 recalls similar incidents. “He’d come by and say, ‘Hey girls, are we ready?’” she says. “I remember thinking, what have I got myself into?” Trump denies, “in the strongest possible terms”, behaving inappropriately with any Look of the Year contestants. His representatives say he was not aware of any predatory environment at the time.

Others, however, observed a disturbing side to the contest. Ohad Oman, a young reporter for a magazine in Tel Aviv, was sent to cover it in 1991 and 1992. He attended a number of the after-parties, and remembers seeing girls drinking alcohol. He recalls one particularly debauched party, telling the Guardian: “I saw girls sitting on guys’ laps, and I remember one guy putting his hand down a girl’s top. I remember thinking they were younger than me, and I was 17 going on 18.” (The legal drinking age is 21 in the US.)

Others who were present recall underage models being served alcohol at the contest. Trump’s representatives say he did not provide alcohol to contestants, or encourage any models, whether below the drinking age or not, to drink alcohol, stressing he “does not drink alcohol and does not encourage others to do so”.


A still from previously unseen footage of the 1991 Look of the Year finale

The finale of the 1991 competition was a glittering black-tie gala in the Plaza’s ballroom. Casablancas and supermodel Naomi Campbell presented, as 10 finalists went through a series of costume changes, walking across a stage decorated with columns of sunflowers. Trump sat on the front row alongside a roster of celebrities, his nine-year-old daughter Ivanka perched on his knee.

Ingrid Seynhaeve, an 18-year-old from Belgium, was crowned the winner. As the evening drew to a close, Seynhaeve was surrounded by photographers. Guests filtered out of the ballroom as a party got going in another of the Plaza’s grand rooms. In the newly uncovered footage, a man can be heard off-camera, saying: “Come on, babes. Let’s get some liquor in you.”

In the months before and after the contests, Elite sent several of its teenage models to Milan, New York or Paris on assignments, usually by themselves. Shawna Lee, the 14-year-old from Canada who felt pressured to perform on the Spirit of New York in 1992, had spent the previous summer in Paris, working for Elite. She recalls days at castings, and nights out partying, including at the legendary Les Bains Douches nightclub.

After one drunken night at the club, one of the first times she had drunk alcohol, she says a senior executive at Elite offered her a ride home on his motorbike. Gérald Marie, then in his early 40s, was head of Elite’s Paris office, a powerful figure in the fashion industry and a 1991 Look of the Year judge. Lee accepted the offer. “I was like, OK, sure, because I was always relying on whoever to get me home,” she says. But she alleges that, rather than taking her home, Marie brought her to his apartment and told her to come to his bedroom. Lee says she initially refused, asking about his wife. She says Marie responded: “Oh no, just come and sleep in the bed with me, don’t worry,” and she relented. “So I don’t know, I just went.”

Lee says the #MeToo movement has emboldened her to talk about what happened next. It was her first sexual experience. “I just froze,” she says. “I really didn’t know what to do.” Looking back 30 years later, she feels she was taken advantage of. “I just felt really pressured,” she says. “I was really young and I was manipulated.” She told a friend what had happened, and this soon got back to Elite’s agents. “They all knew something went down, but they downplayed it,” says Lee, who is now 42 and works as a makeup artist in Toronto. “It was just understood that it was in my best interest to walk away from it and brush it under the rug.”

Questions about Marie’s alleged mistreatment of teenage models are not new. In 2000, New York magazine reported that two of Elite’s senior women executives had pleaded with both Casablancas and Marie to stop sleeping with underage models, but had been ignored. (“We are men,” Marie reportedly said. “We have our needs.”) In 2011, the Elite supermodel and actor Carré Otis alleged that Marie had repeatedly raped her when she was a 17-year-old model in Paris in the 1980s. Two years ago, another Elite model, Ebba Karlsson, accused Marie of raping her when she was 21.

Marie did not respond to a formal letter from the Guardian, but in a brief phone call insisted he had never sexually assaulted any models, and denied the specific allegations levelled against him by Lee. “It’s absurd, I don’t know this person,” he said. “Allegations like this are becoming too easy to make. Frankly, it hurts.”


Trump with his nine-year-old daughter Ivanka at the 1991 Look of the Year final. Photograph: Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Other men closely involved in Look of the Year during this period have been accused of sexual misconduct by former contestants. Some allegations are contained in legal proceedings filed decades ago; others have been shared for the first time with the Guardian. The newspaper has decided not to publish some of these allegations, at the request of the women involved.

One allegation already made public concerns David Copperfield, an associate of both Casablancas and Trump, who judged Look of the Year in 1988 and 1991, and once dated another Elite supermodel, Claudia Schiffer. Two years ago, as the #MeToo movement reverberated through the entertainment industry, he was the subject of allegations by Brittney Lewis, a 17-year-old contestant in the 1988 Look of the Year, held in Japan. According to her account, published on the entertainment news website The Wrap, Copperfield invited her to a show in California after she had returned home to Utah. Lewis alleged that she saw Copperfield pour something into her glass and then blanked out, but says she retained hazy recollections of him sexually assaulting her in his hotel room. Copperfield stated on Twitter at the time that he had been “falsely accused” in the past, and was now having to “weather another storm”. He added: “Please for everyone’s sake, don’t rush to judgment.” In response to the Guardian’s questions about the alleged assault, his representatives said that the claims were false and seriously defamatory.

Several of the 1991 contestants recall Copperfield behaving in a way that now strikes them as inappropriate. Stacy Wilkes says Copperfield called the hotel room she was sharing with another 15-year-old contestant, inviting the other girl to his room. Another remembers translating a phone call from Copperfield into Spanish so he could invite a teenage contestant to his hotel room. Aimee Bendio, who was a 14-year-old Look of the Year contestant in 1991, says Copperfield and his assistant contacted her at her family home several times after she took part in the contest, “checking in to see how my career was going”. She says the magician invited her to his shows, offering to send a limousine, but she declined.

A 14-year-old contestant says Copperfield contacted her family home several times afterwards

Magician David Copperfield on the Spirit of New York, 1991, the year he was a judge
Copperfield with former girlfriend Claudia Schiffer


Copperfield with former girlfriend Claudia Schiffer. Photograph: Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Maya Rubin, a 16-year-old contestant in 1991, says Copperfield approached her on the Spirit of New York. “I told him I’m from Israel,” she recalls. “He said to me that his mum always wanted him to marry a Jewish girl.” Months later, she says, the magician sent her a Christmas card. Copperfield categorically denies behaving inappropriately with any contestants at any time.

In the early 90s, Look of the Year contestants who secured modelling contracts with Elite were introduced to a fledgling financial advisory firm, Star Capital Management. It was run by an associate of Casablancas, David Weil. Housed at Elite’s Manhattan offices, and an official sponsor of Look of the Year, Weil’s company advertised its services in the 1991 competition programme with a photograph of a small girl dressed in adult clothing and jewellery, alongside the marketing line: “Just like you, we’re not just another pretty face.”

By the following year, Star Capital Management was handling millions of dollars earned by Elite’s models. The business soon caught the attention of federal authorities, who later accused Weil and his business partner of stealing at least $1.2m from their clients. In 1998, Weil pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges. He also pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of a 15-year-old model he had met at Look of the Year in 1992.

Weil was sentenced to serve weekends in prison for three months, and required to register as a sex offender for 10 years. Mark Lawless, a New York lawyer who brought a civil fraud case against Star Capital Management on behalf of the 1991 Look of the Year winner Ingrid Seynhaeve and others, says that when he inspected its office, he found an adjoining bedroom. One of the desk’s drawers, he recalls, contained “bullets and condoms”. Weil declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian.

Four years after Weil’s conviction, in 2002, Casablancas faced his own set of accusations in the civil courts. A former Look of the Year contestant, known only as Jane Doe 44, filed a lawsuit accusing him of repeatedly sexually abusing her, beginning when she was 15. The abuse began, according to the lawsuit, at Look of the Year 1988 in Japan, where Casablancas told Doe he was “falling in love” with her. At the end of the competition, the lawsuit states, “contestants drank and partied late into the evening” and Casablancas told the teenager to come to his hotel room. There, Casablancas sexually abused the girl “several times over the evening”. The abuse allegedly continued the following year; when the girl became pregnant, Casablancas told her “she would be having an abortion”. The abortion was allegedly “arranged and paid for” by Elite. Casablancas was 46 at the time.


John Casablancas with his third wife, Aline Wermelinger, in 1995; they met when she was a 1992 Look of the Year contestant. Photograph: The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

The lawsuit also alleged that Casablancas “engaged in a pattern of seducing, sexually exploiting and/or abusing minor girls, including girls as young as 14 or 15 years old”. But in 2003, the Los Angeles superior court dismissed the claims against him because he did not live in California, where it had been filed. At the time, a lawyer for Casablancas said the allegations were without merit.

Trump’s representatives have told the Guardian he denies in the strongest possible terms having any knowledge at the time that Casablancas allegedly engaged in sexual relationships with Look of the Year contestants, including those who were under the age of consent, or that Casablancas allegedly enabled others to exploit or abuse teenage models.

But Casablancas’ sexual interest in teenage girls predated this period. His marriage to his second wife, Danish model Jeanette Christiansen, ended in 1983 when it emerged that he was having an affair with a 15-year-old model, Stephanie Seymour. Casablancas, who was in his early 40s at the time, later described Seymour as a “woman-child”. He met his third wife, Brazilian model Aline Wermelinger, in 1992, when she was a Look of the Year contestant staying at Trump’s Plaza. They married the following year; Casablancas was 51 and she was 17.

By his own account, Donald Trump got to know financier Jeffrey Epstein in the late 1980s. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump famously told New York magazine in 2002. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” After Epstein was charged with the sex trafficking of underage girls last year, the president distanced himself, telling reporters he knew the financier “like everybody in Palm Beach knew him”, but hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” he said. Trump’s representatives told the Guardian that he had “kicked Mr Epstein out” of Mar-a-Lago for acting inappropriately towards staff.

Photographs of Trump with Epstein, who owned a house near Mar-a-Lago, were widely circulated in the wake of the financier’s arrest last year. Renewed attention was also given to a deposition by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who said she was first approached by Epstein’s friend, the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, while working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 1999.

Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein & John Casablancas, who ran a ‘modeling agency’ that Ivanka Trump signed up to aged 13, together in New York. 1989.

It also appears that Epstein had a Casablancas connection during the 1990s. According to a lawsuit filed in the US three months ago, in 1990 Casablancas sent a teenage model for her first “casting call” at a residential address on New York’s Upper East Side, to meet a “photographer” who, it turned out, was Epstein. The lawsuit states that Epstein ordered the 15-year-old girl to undress before taking photographs of her, pushing her against a wall and sexually assaulting her.

George Houraney, a businessman whose American Dream Calendar Girls beauty contest had been running in Las Vegas casinos since 1978, recalls encountering Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in January 1993. Houraney says that Trump asked him to organise a party that month with some of his pageant’s finalists, promising to invite heads of modelling agencies and prospective sponsors for his competition. “He had me fly in all these girls, and gave me a $30,000 budget for airfares and limos to pick them up at the airport,” he says. “The girls were all decked out, expecting to meet all these VIPs.” But after an hour at the party, Houraney says, there seemed to be only one other guest: Epstein. “I was like, ‘Donald, where are the guys? What’s going on here?’ And he said, ‘Well, this is it.’” Houraney says he realised “this is a Jeff Epstein party, basically”.

While suspicious of Epstein, Houraney was keen to have Trump as a business partner. A month earlier, in December 1992, Trump had met with Houraney and Jill Harth, who ran the pageant together. They were looking for a new sponsor for their contest, which each year saw models aged 16 to 22 compete to appear in wall calendars wearing bikinis and swimsuits while posing with classic cars. At dinner in the Plaza’s Oak Room, Harth, Houraney and Trump discussed moving the American Dream competition from Las Vegas to one of Trump’s casinos. “He wanted to build this into the biggest, the best thing that he could do. He was talking about television and pulling out all the contacts,” Harth later said. Eventually, the pageant was held at Trump Castle in Atlantic City in November 1993, but for one year only.

The partnership soured and ended in two lawsuits, but for Trump it was a prelude to a series of more lucrative ventures in the beauty business. In 1996, he secured what the New York Daily News described as “his most beautiful deal yet”. After months of negotiations, Trump acquired the Miss Universe Organization in a reported $10m deal that handed him control of three large, well-established pageants: Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA. Three years later, he founded Trump Model Management, poaching many staff from Elite.

For Wolfgang Schwarz, a veteran model agent in Austria who worked closely with Casablancas, and met Trump at the Plaza in the early 90s, Trump’s decision to establish his own agency was about him wanting his own private source for models. “If you have your own agency and you’re the owner, you can tell your bookers to make a party,” Schwarz says. “It’s easier than calling 15 agencies in New York.” Trump’s representatives say he entered the modelling industry because it was a “very profitable” business opportunity.


Kate Dillon, in behind-the-scenes footage from the 1991 contest


Casablancas with 1992 Look of the Year winner Mariann Molski, then 14. Photograph: Everett Collection/Alamy

The Miss Universe deal allowed Trump to realise his ambition of turning a pageant into an international televised event. In 1997, he sold a 50% stake in the business to CBS. Five years later, amid a slump in the Miss Universe ratings, Trump brokered a deal with NBC that led to the launch of The Apprentice in 2004.

The move into reality TV positioned Trump as a heavyweight tycoon with a significant media profile. In many ways, it was a natural progression from his involvement in beauty contests and pageants. Where once he had judged young models, whose hopes, rivalries and insecurities became TV storylines in Fox’s Look of the Year documentary, now he was ruthlessly separating aspiring business people into winners and losers.

Three decades on from the contests at Trump’s Plaza, it is striking to reflect on the diverging fortunes of those who attended. Many of the powerful men Casablancas brought on board to help judge the girls thrived in the years that followed. Gérald Marie is now the chairman of a prestigious model agency in Paris, Oui Management. Although Marie told the Guardian he had retired, his LinkedIn page lists his responsibilities at the “thriving newcomer” agency as scouting for and managing talent. Oui Management did not respond to our request for comment. David Copperfield remains a prominent entertainer, with a current residency at the MGM Grand resort in Las Vegas.

The fortunes of the teenagers who took part have been mixed. Some became successful models, Hollywood actors and TV hosts, while many more lived quieter lives. Ingrid Seynhaeve, the 1991 winner, became a face of Ralph Lauren and Dior, hosted Belgium’s Topmodel TV show, and continues to front high-profile campaigns. Other contestants we spoke to include a beautician, a stay–at–home mother, a makeup artist, a yoga teacher and a bus driver.

Ingrid Seynhaeve, 1991 "Look of the Year" winner; Mariann Molski, the 1992 grand prize winner; and Renee Jeffus, a 1989 finalist. LOOK OF THE YEAR, a new documentary which takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Elite modeling competition of the same name, will air on FOX, Tuesday, July 13 from 9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT.

In 1992, the crown went to one of Look of the Year’s youngest contenders: 14-year-old Mariann Molski. Months after her victory, a profile in the Chicago Tribune reported that the sporty high school student was “on the brink of a career of a kind that most young women only dream about”. While she had some success as a model, it is not clear what happened to her in the years that followed; US public records indicate multiple arrests for probation violations, alcohol offences and prostitution, though there is nothing to say she was ever charged. Molski’s current whereabouts are unknown, but she is believed to have been homeless in Arizona.

After years of financial mismanagement, Elite was forced into bankruptcy in 2004. The Elite brand continues to be used by two separate agencies, owned by different corporate entities. One is Creative World Management, which bought the New York division in 2004. It strongly distances itself from the Casablancas-owned firm and era, saying it “utterly” condemns the kinds of “deplorable behaviour” alleged to have taken place in the past.

The other inheritor of the brand is Elite World Group, which operates the successor to Look of the Year, a similar global contest for the next top young model, called Elite Model Look. It, too, distances itself from the Casablancas era. “We would have no tolerance for the conduct you’ve described,” the company told the Guardian. “Empowering our models and protecting their safety is our foremost priority.”


Donald Trump, then 45, with contestants in the 1991 Elite Look of the Year contest, the year he was a judge.


Donald Trump with contestants in 1991’s Elite Look of the Year

John Casablancas retired in Brazil in the early 2000s. He died in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, aged 70, long before the #MeToo movement heralded a new standard of accountability for powerful men accused of exploiting women and girls. He never got to see his old associate Donald Trump ascend to the White House, despite a cascade of allegations about Trump’s own treatment of women. There are now at least 25 sexual misconduct allegations against the president [Donald Trump], ranging from unwanted advances and harassment to serious sexual assaults. More than half relate to models or pageant contestants. Trump denies that he has ever behaved in a predatory or inappropriate fashion with any women or girls.

Speaking to the Guardian 30 years on, several former Look of the Year contestants feel that a #MeToo moment for the modelling world is long overdue. “The girls are young and they look at these agents like parental figures, and they’re not,” says Shawna Lee. “Anything they say goes, whether it’s ‘Go cut your hair’, ‘Go wear this dress’. It’s too bad that there were not more consequences for these men.”

After Look of the Year 1991, Stacy Wilkes returned to Louisville and quit school, despite having told the judges she would finish. “I thought that was the reason I lost,” she says, “so I might as well leave if I want to make it as a model. We were really broke, so I thought I’d try and make money for my mom, but it didn’t work out.” She is content with the path her life took, living in Louisville with her partner and three cats, but adds that women were raising concerns at the time and were ignored: “I think models from the 90s tried so hard, over and over, and nobody believed what we had to say.”

Kate Dillon, now a businesswoman living in Seattle, remembers the contest as one that “exploited women’s assets, women’s bodies. A lot of these girls were desperate. They thought modelling was about attracting men, which it isn’t.” There was a climate of opportunism, she says. “There’s no doubt that the men were like, ‘Yes, Look of the Year week, let’s make sure my schedule is clear to have chicks over to my apartment.’

“What’s great is that we now have a language, and a precedent of young people saying: ‘No, I’m not going to let this continue’,” Dillon adds. “They would never accept being treated the way I was.”

[admin]

A Timeline of Donald Trump’s Creepiness While He Owned Miss Universe: From walking into a teen dressing room to joking about his obligation to sleep with contestants, Trump's a storied pageant creep
by Tessa Stuart
Rolling Stone
October 12, 2016
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... se-191860/


Donald Trump with 51 Miss USA contestants and 20 former Miss Universes in 2006. CURTIS/STARPIX/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Donald Trump was forced to sell the Miss Universe Organization – which also includes sister scholarship programs Miss USA and Miss Teen USA – in 2015 after his incendiary comments about Mexicans drove away broadcasters NBC and Univision. But Trump owned the pageant for nearly two decades, during which time he would have had the opportunity to come into contact with nearly 4,000 beauty queens.

On the heels of the damaging videotape on which Trump and former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush salivated over Days of Our Live actress Arianne Zucker, and joked about sexually assaulting women, came allegations that Trump entered the Miss Teen USA changing room where girls as young as 15 were in various states of undress.

Mariah Billado, Miss Teen Vermont 1997 told BuzzFeed, “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here.'” Three other teenage contestants from the same year confirmed the story. The former pageant contestants discussed their memories of the incident after former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon told Los Angeles’ CBS affiliate that Trump entered the Miss USA dressing room in 2001 when she was a contestant.

“He just came strolling right in,” Dixon said. “There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Others girls were naked. Our first introduction to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half-naked changing into our bikinis.”

Dixon went on to say that employees of the Miss Universe Organization encouraged the contestants to lavish Trump with attention when he came in. “To have the owner come waltzing in, when we’re naked, or half-naked, in a very physically vulnerable position and then to have the pressure of the people that worked for him telling us to go fawn all over him, go walk up to him, talk to him, get his attention…”

The Trump campaign did not offer a response to either story, but in a 2005 appearance on Howard Stern’s show, Trump bragged about doing exactly what the women describe. “I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else,” he said.

His position as the pageant’s owner entitled him to that kind of access, Trump explained, seemingly aware that what he was doing made the women uncomfortable. “You know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore I’m inspecting it… Is everyone OK? You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that,” he said.

(Billado told BuzzFeed she mentioned the incident to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who shrugged it off, saying, “Yeah, he does that.”)

Here are other “highlights” from Trump’s storied history as a pageant creep.


Miss Venezuela, Alicia Machado (L), 19, from the hometown of Maracay, won the 1996 Miss Universe Crown late 17 May in Las Vegas, Nevada.

1996
When he bought the Miss Universe pageant family, Trump told Stern in 2005, the pageant was “a sick puppy.” The relative hotness of contestants had seriously deteriorated in the preceding years, he explained to Stern, because the judges had begun placing a greater emphasis on brains over beauty. “They had a person that was extremely proud that a number of the women had become doctors,” Trump said. “And I wasn’t interested.”

The first Miss Universe crowned on Trump’s watch was Miss Venezuela, Alicia Machado. Hillary Clinton famously invoked Trump’s treatment of Machado during the first presidential debate. Machado remembers him calling her “Miss Piggy” because she gained weight and “Miss Housekeeping” because she’s Latina. Trump invited reporters to observe Machado exercising, against her protests. She told The New York Times earlier this year, “I was about to cry in that moment with all the cameras there. I said, ‘I don’t want to do this, Mr. Trump.’ He said, ‘I don’t care.'”

1997
The same year former contestants say Trump unexpectedly entered the Miss Teen USA dressing room, the reigning Miss Universe, Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee, recalls Trump asking her about the looks of his daughter Ivanka, who was co-hosting the pageant. “‘Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?'” Mahealani Lee recalls Trump saying.

Also that year, Miss Utah, Temple Taggart, recalls Trump kissed her against her wishes. “He kissed me directly on the lips. I thought, ‘Oh my God, gross.’ He was married to Marla Maples at the time. I think there were a few other girls that he kissed on the mouth. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s inappropriate,'” Taggart told The New York Times. She says he did the same thing a few months later at Trump Tower, where he had invited her to discuss her career. To succeed in the entertainment industry, Trump advised 21-year-old Taggart to lie about her age. “We’re going to have to tell them you’re 17,” she remembers Trump saying.

2005
The same year Trump bragged to Howard Stern about barging into the dressing room while the women were changing, he declined to say whether he’d ever slept with a contestant. “It could be a conflict of interest. … But, you know, it’s the kind of thing you worry about later, you tend to think about the conflict a little bit later on,” Trump joked. A few beats later, he rethought his stance, joking that, as the pageant’s owner, it might be his “obligation” to sleep with the contestants.


Donald Trump places a ribbon on Miss California USA Carrie Prejean during a press conference at Trump Tower May 12, 2009 in New York.

2009
Miss California, Carrie Prejean, recalled in her memoir the way Trump would pit the women against each other, asking them to rate each other’s looks on the spot.

Donald Trump walked out with his entourage and inspected us closer than any general ever inspected a platoon. He would stop in front of a girl, look her up and down, and say, “Hmmm.” Then he would go on and do the same thing to the next girl. He took notes on a little pad as he went along. After he did this, Trump said: “O.K. I want all the girls to come forward.” …

Donald Trump looked at Miss Alabama.

“Come here,” he said.

She took one more step forward.

“Tell me, who’s the most beautiful woman here?”

Miss Alabama’s eyes swam around.

“Besides me?” she said. “Uh, I like Arkansas. She’s sweet.”

“I don’t care if she’s sweet,” Donald Trump said. “Is she hot?” …

It became clear that the point of the whole exercise was for him to divide the room between girls he personally found attractive and those he did not. Many of the girls found the exercise humiliating. Some of the girls were sobbing backstage after he left, devastated to have failed even before the competition really began to impress “The Donald.”

Her recollection was boosted by an audio recording from the same year, obtained by TMZ, on which Trump can be heard asking the contestants for help picking out some of the best-looking women before the contest itself took place. “We get to choose a certain number [of contestants who will be guaranteed to make it through the first round]. You know why we do that? Because years ago when I first bought it, we chose ten people, I chose none and I get here and the most beautiful people were not chosen. And I went nuts. So we call it the Trump Rule.”

Later in the same tape, Trump can be heard talking up his son, Eric – who also served as the contest’s judge – to the assembled beauty queens: “I have a son, he’s very handsome; he’s 6-foot-6, and he was number one in his class in school.”

2010
Trump boasted to David Letterman that when he bought Miss USA, “I made the heels higher and the bathing suits smaller.”

2013
Cassandra Searles, Miss Washington 2013, recalls that when she was a contestant, the businessman demanded the women redo their introductions when they failed to look Trump in the eye. In a Facebook post this year, Searles called Trump a “misogynist” who “treated us like cattle” and “lined up so he could get a closer look at his property.” Other contestants from the same year, like Paromita Mitra of Mississippi, bolstered Searles recollection. Mitra commented, “I literally have nightmares about that process.

Miss Washington 2013 claims Donald Trump groped her, invited her to hotel room
by Brian Murphy
Miami Herald
October 15, 2016 Updated October 15, 2016 9:41 a.m.

Jessica Leeds, a businesswoman at a paper company, was sitting next to Donald J. Trump on a flight to New York in the early 1980s. She told The Times that he lifted the armrest and began to grope her. By McClatchy

A contestant in the 2013 Miss USA pageant alleges that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump groped her and invited her back to his hotel room.

Cassandra Searles, Miss Washington 2013, wrote a Facebook post in June outlining a series of complaints about Trump’s behavior. In the post, she included a picture of Trump standing in the middle of all the pageant contestants and tagged many of her fellow competitors in the post.

“Miss USA Class of 2013: Do y’all remember that one time we had to do our on stage introductions, but this one guy treated us like cattle and made us do it again because we didn’t look him in the eyes? Do you also remember when he then proceeded to have us lined up so he could get a closer look at his property? Oh I forgot to mention that guy will be in the running to become the next President of the United States. I love the idea of having a misogynist as the President. ... #HeWillProbablySueMe #iHaveWorseStoriesSoComeAtMeBro #Drumpf”

Yahoo! reported in June that other contestants complaints about Trump in the comments.

In an article about Trump’s history with the pageant, Rolling Stone reported that Searles added a comment to her original post.

“He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”

Trump owned the Miss USA pageant from 2002 to 2015, when he sold to WME amid controversy over his statements about Mexicans.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that two women claim Trump touched them inappropriately. In that story, a former Miss Utah claims that Trump kissed her on the month more than once when she was a contestant.

Trump denied the accusations to the Times.

The news comes less than a week after The Washington Post posted a video of Trump bragging about touching and kissing women without consent. Trump apologized for the comments, but has called it “locker room talk” in recent days and said he did not do any of the actions he was caught discussing.

This story was originally published October 12, 2016, 9:50 PM.

Searles added in a comment on her initial post’s thread, “He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”

2015
The 2015 Miss USA pageant was set to take place the first week of July – three weeks after Trump characterized Mexicans as rapists and criminals during his campaign kick-off event. One by one, the pageant’s hosts, judges, sponsors, and broadcasters dropped out. Trump was forced to sell the pageants to WME in September 2015.

Update, October 13th, 10:30 a.m. ET: The Trump campaign issued a statement to Rolling Stone categorically denying these allegations and questioning the political motivation behind reporting on them, adding, “Mr. Trump has a fantastic record of empowering women throughout his career, and a more accurate story would be to show how he’s been a positive influence in the lives of so many.”

[admin]

Woman suing Trump over alleged teen rape drops suit, again
by Josh Gerstein
Politico
11/04/2016 07:03 PM EDT. Updated: 11/04/2016 10:04 PM EDT

A woman who accused Donald Trump of raping her two decades ago when she was a 13-year-old aspiring teen model has again dropped a federal lawsuit over the alleged assaults.

The accuser, identified in the lawsuit by the pseudonym “Jane Doe,” was expected to appear at a news conference in Los Angeles Wednesday, but that appearance was abruptly canceled.

The lawyer who organized the event, Lisa Bloom, said Trump’s accuser had received threats and was too frightened to show up.

In the most recent suit, Trump’s accuser asserted that while she was exploring a modeling career in 1994, she attended a series of parties at the Manhattan home of prominent investor Jeffrey Epstein. She alleges that during those parties the real estate mogul tied her to a bed and raped her. She also claimed Epstein raped her during that series of gatherings.

The accuser’s lead attorney, Thomas Meagher of New Jersey, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He filed a one-page notice dismissing the case Friday evening in federal court in Manhattan. No explanation was given for the action.

Bloom did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Through his attorney, Trump had flatly denied the woman’s allegations.

“It is categorically untrue. It is completely frivolous. It is baseless. It is irresponsible,” Trump attorney Alan Garten told POLITICO in September. “I won’t even discuss the merits because it gives it credibility that it doesn’t deserve.”

“I don’t think I ever had a case where I even suspected a woman was making a false accusation,” said former Suffolk County sheriff and prosecutor Andrea Cabral.

According to Suffolk County District Attorney John P. Pappas, the problem with sexual assaults is underreporting, “because victims fear they won’t be believed. The overwhelming majority of such allegations are grounded in truth.”

Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said, “There may be a variety of legal reasons our office cannot proceed with prosecution; that does not mean the allegation is false.”

False accusations do in fact happen, but again, rarely. Various studies estimate between 2 percent and 10 percent nationwide.

But since only rapes reported to police can be deemed false, some analysts put the number much lower and say that a “false” accusation may actually be a true one recanted because a survivor doesn’t want a trial.

-- The myth of ‘false accusations’ of sexual assault, by Margery Eagan, Boston Globe

Doe named Trump and Epstein as defendants in the suits and says they knew she was well under 17 — the age of consent. “I understood that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old,” she wrote.

Two earlier suits were filed over the same alleged events.

The first suit over the alleged rapes was filed in federal court in Riverside, California, in April by someone acting without an attorney and using the name “Katie Johnson.” That suit named both Trump and Epstein as defendants, alleging that the two men held Johnson as a “sex slave” and repeatedly forced her to engage in sexual acts against her will.

Subsequent news reports raised doubts about who filed the suit. Johnson claimed she had just $300 in assets and that she was living at a home in Twentynine Palms, California, but Radar Online reported neighbors said the home had been foreclosed upon and vacant since its owner died last year.

U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee dismissed that case in May, ruling that Johnson’s complaint didn’t raise valid claims under federal law. Gee, an appointee of President Barack Obama, noted that the suit cited a criminal statute that doesn’t give rise to civil damages and that the civil statute Johnson cited only applies to actions based on “race-based or class-based animus.”

Another version of the suit was filed in federal court in June, but withdrawn in September after apparently never being served on the defendants.

The case was refiled later that month.

The second and third iterations of the complaint accused Trump of only a single act of rape, but said he had “sexual contact” with the accuser on three other occasions. A declaration from an anonymous witness attached to the later suits continued to accuse Trump of four acts of rape or sexual assault.

A lawyer for Epstein declined to the comment on the lawsuits.

About a decade ago, Epstein came under investigation by local and federal authorities near his Palm Beach, Florida, home over allegations that he solicited underage girls to have sex with him at that residence and another on an island he owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to two state felony charges relating to prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. He served only 13 months before being released but was required to register as a sex offender.

[admin]

Her Cheekbones (High) Or Her Name (Trump)?
by Jennifer Steinhauer
New York Times
Aug. 17, 1997

SHE seems to have this modeling thing down. There are the sexy outfits (when you show up for an interview wearing a floor-length see-through white dress, you tend to turn heads). There is the denial that she exercises and the chowing down, eating a nice-sized lunch in front of a reporter, proving that she is not a wacky dieter.

And there are the banalities, stated in studied, contraction-free sentences. ''I live for the moment,'' said Ivanka Trump, the daughter of, well, you know. ''I do not fear the future because I think every experience makes you stronger. I am the kind of person who has no regrets.''

One should hope not. Miss Trump is 15 years old.

She has spent her life hiding from the cameras that haunted Donald and Ivana Trump through messy divorces, high-flying deals and scandal-ettes, but now she is seeking her own limelight with a modeling career that has recently included a walk down a Paris runway, a Seventeen magazine cover and an advertising campaign for Tommy Hilfiger.

And on Wednesday, Miss Trump -- heretofore a fashion-world curiosity -- will make her live television debut before many millions as co-host of the Miss Teen USA pageant, a kind of national coming-out for the latest Trump to cross over into popular culture. The two-hour Miss Teen USA broadcast on CBS has traditionally won high ratings, a reflection of Americans' fascination with the schmaltzy world of beauty pageants.

To hear Miss Trump tell it, her modeling career is built on the strength of her cheekbones alone. She had always wanted to be a model, she said, and when she turned 15, she ''came of age'' and simply walked into Elite Modeling, one of the most prestigious agencies in the world, showed her 5-foot-10-inch form and made a deal. Well, not quite.

It seems that Monica Pillard, the president of Elite, had been eyeing Ivanka since she spotted her on her father's lap four years ago, when Mr. Trump was a judge of a new-talent contest for the agency.

Mr. Trump and Elite have a longstanding, informal relationship. Ms. Pillard served as a judge in the Miss Universe pageant, which is jointly owned by Mr. Trump and CBS, as is the Miss Teen USA pageant. John Casablancas, Elite's founder, is a friend of Mr. Trump's, and Elite has held events at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Executives from other modeling agencies raised an eyebrow over the notion that Miss Trump -- who is sweet-tempered, well spoken but still chubby in the cheeks with baby fat and a long way from a diva in terms of comportment -- would be on catwalks and magazine covers if not for her famous last name.

''If she walked into my agency, I would not sign her as a model,'' said Michael Flutie, the owner of Company Management. ''I like girls to be exceptionally editorial, which is more of an ability than a look. I don't think she has that edge.''

He added: ''If John F. Kennedy Jr. did a Calvin Klein show next season, it would get tremendous attention, but that doesn't make him a model, and the same thing is true with Miss Trump.''

Miss Trump is in Elite's celebrity division, sharing the roster with Jenny McCarthy, Drew Barrymore and Ashley Judd, who draw attention to an agency but are not really part of the supermodel fast track.

Even so, Miss Trump has already attracted would-be boyfriends of a type that are part and parcel of the model's life. ''She has these rockers calling her up and asking for dates,'' Mr. Trump said. ''Top names. Won't tell you who. And there is zero chance they are going to be dating her. That's taken care of.''

Audrey Roatta, a senior assistant to Ms. Pillard at Elite, insisted that Miss Trump would have been chosen as a model even without her name. ''She would be a model, and she would be with Elite,'' Ms. Roatta said. ''She understands that of course her name helped in the beginning to get her foot in the door. She's not stupid. But she also knows that she will be treated like any other model when it comes to clients.''

As for Miss Trump, she said over a plate of tomatoes and mozzarella at the self-service cafe at Trump Tower last week: ''Modeling is what people like; it is not family oriented. People like me for me, not for who my parents are. It is about outer beauty.''

She has a girl-next-door quality, and when she is not being coached into sound bites by her handlers, she reveals how charming and difficult the age 15 can be. She chews on a thumbnail. She touches her blond mane of hair self-consciously. She is extremely polite and seems considerate -- she takes her own empty plate to the trash, without expecting people to wait on her.

Fashion and the runway world have been a shared Trump family interest for many years. Miss Trump's mother, Ivana Trump, took her to Todd Oldham and Ungaro shows when she was as young as 8. Mr. Trump also is fond of fashion shows and took her along to Calvin Klein and Versace shows when she was a child.

But both parents and Miss Trump said that they have never pushed her to model, and Mrs. Trump even said she discouraged it.

''I really do prefer mathematics over modeling at age 15,'' Mrs. Trump said in a telephone interview from a houseboat on the Cote d'Azure last week. ''She is only allowed to do it on weekends and holidays and absolutely not during the school year.'' Miss Trump, who goes to a private boarding school in Connecticut (she wouldn't name it), said she would ultimately like to attend business school.

Mrs. Trump is not against the modeling profession, having dabbled in it herself. ''Modeling is better than going to nightclubs or watching television,'' she said. ''I never push my children in anything.''

Mr. Trump is equally circumspect. ''This is an interesting case,'' he said over his speaker phone, which was not on a boat but rather in his office. ''I am only modestly in favor of this because I understand that that life is a very fast life, and at that age it is always a risky proposition.''

Miss Trump said she appreciates her parents' support, but she seems not to make the connection between the family's fame and her career.

Many designers like celebrities as well as models to walk their shows, because it creates a media buzz.

''In a show, you can use anybody in the world with a name,'' said Jerome Bonnouvrier, the president of DNA Model Manangement. ''Lady Di could be in a fashion show, because they are a business and social event, and they like people to recognize people.''

Miss Trump is certainly not the first to capitalize on a name. Isabella Rossellini broke into the business largely because her parents were Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, although it was her own beauty that ultimately landed her in many cosmetics advertisements.

Both Mr. Bonnouvrier and Mr. Flutie of Company Management expressed concern that Miss Trump's celebrity may have pushed her into a world that she may not be ready for. ''I am often approached by celebrities on behalf of their daughters,'' Mr. Flutie said. ''And I do not encourage girls under 17 to pursue a professional career in modeling.''

Miss Trump's girl-next-door quality is why Seventeen magazine booked her for its May cover. ''She is a teen-ager, she has a fresh look and readers can relate to her,'' said Donna Rubinstein, the model editor of Seventeen. ''She may look like someone a reader knows.''

The cover portrays Miss Trump as a fresh-scrubbed youth with flowing hair. Although her mouth is pursed in a pout, the image was far more innocent-looking than the way she appeared in the Thierry Mugler couture show in Paris last month. Dressed in a batlike black dress with a gold corset, she seemed like a nervous little girl dressed in her mother's craziest outfit.

Maureen Reidy, the president of the Miss Teen USA pageant, said Miss Trump represented an ideal role model as a host of the event. ''In my mind there is no one more perfect for this,'' she said. ''She is 4.0 student, does a lot of philanthropic activity and is on her way to supermodel stardom.''

Miss Trump seems excited about the pageant, because of the time she will be spending around other girls her age with the same soaring ambitions and oddly mature locution. ''I'm a teen-ager in the fashion industry, and I have made friends with the girls in the pageant,'' she said. ''It has been a legitimate bonding experience.''

A correction was made on Aug. 24, 1997: An article in the Styles pages last Sunday about Ivanka Trump, a model who is the daughter of Donald J. Trump and Ivana Trump, misstated the given name of the president of the Elite Model Management Corporation, Misscq Trump's agency. She is Monique Pillard, not Monica. The article also included an erroneous reference from the agency to its events. They have never been held at the Trump Tower.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected] more

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 17, 1997, Section 1, Page 45 of the National edition with the headline: Her Cheekbones (High) Or Her Name (Trump)?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

[admin]

Trump’s Past RESURFACES and He CAN’T STOP IT This Time
MeidasTouch
Jan 14, 2024

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas continues his investigative series on Donald Trump’s disturbing past making critical connections.



Transcript

Miss North Carolina 2006, Samantha Holvey tell her Story with Donald Trump



[Don Lemon] is it normal to see men in dressing
rooms at pageants and the and the owner
of a pageant

[Samantha Holvey, 2006 Miss N. Carolina] no no the um the director of the North
Carolina South Carolina Louisiana and
Alabama pageants it's very much a family
atmosphere um she doesn't even go
backstage when the girls are getting
ready only the female chaperones are
allowed backstage in the dressing rooms
um with the girls I've never had an
experience where there were men or D
dors or anything like that walking back
in the dressing rooms yeah

[Don Lemon] as I
understand there uh you have an
experience of something that happened
the night before the
pageant

[Samantha Holvey, 2006 Miss N. Carolina] well not the night before the
pageant but um when we were in New York
City on the media tour they were doing a
book launch at Trump Towers for the
universal Beauty um book and they had a
bunch of former Miss usas and Miss
universes and all 51 of us and we did
the Red Carpet and that was tons of fun
and then they lined us all up and Trump
went down the line and he shook your
hand and um you know looked you over
looked you up and down head to toe um I
was just checking everybody out

[Don Lemon] and you
thought; you
felt?

[Samantha Holvey, 2006 Miss N. Carolina] I felt uh very dirty um it was very
creepy it's kind of like when you're at
a bar and a creepy guy is checking you
out that's that was the experience for
me

[Ben Meiselas] That was Samantha Holvey, 2006 Miss North
Carolina. I'm Ben Meiselas from the MeidasTouch
Network. We've been doing a deep
dive into Donald Trump's background and
trying to connect dots in a cohesive way
where there's all this disparate
information that we're tying it together
here so I've seen a lot of comments and
I want to go and discuss Donald Trump's
past right now using these beauty
pageants that he owned as a way to EXP
exploit women and young girls the next
video I want to share with you is from
Tasha Dixon who competed as Miss Arizona
in 2001 here's what she describes that
Donald Trump would do to the uh women
who were participating in this
competition play this clip



[Tasha Dixon] he just came
strolling right in there was no second
to put a robe on or any sort of clothing
or anything um some girls were topless
other girls were naked as Miss Arizona
2001 Tasha Dixon competed in the missusa
pageant Donald Trump owned the contest
along with Miss Universe and Miss Teen
USA for 19 years our first introduction
to him was when we were at the dress
rehearsal and half naked changing into
our bikinis to have the owner come
walting in when we're naked or half
naked in a very physically vulnerable
position and then to have the pressure
of the uh you know the the people that
work for him telling telling us to go
Fawn all Fawn all over him go walk up to
him him talk to him and Dixon has strong
opinions about what she thinks were
Trump's motivations I'm telling you
Donald Trump owned the pageant for the
reason to utilize his power to get you
know around beautiful women Dixon who
lives in West Hollywood was 18 at the
time who do you complain to he owns the
pageant so there's no one to complain to
everyone there works for him the year
she competed the theme was empowering
women and after hearing recent audio of
trump talking about women she decided to
speak out I miss Arizona so I Veer more
on the conservative side um but I just
like
to choose what's right Dixon tells me
she hadn't heard the stern audio before
we did reach out to several 2001
contestants and those that responded
declined to be interviewed we did
however receive a statement from former
Miss California 2009 Carrie praon bowler
she said to us in a statement to paint
Mr Trump as someone who would purposely
walk into a women women's dressing room
and ask women to come and press him is
the most disgusting accusation so far Mr
Trump has empowered me as a woman has
given me career opportunities and
defended me during my reign as Miss
California USA in The Newsroom Serene
Branson kcal9 news you may recall this
from the
2016 campaign Alicia machados she was
1997 this is the 1997 interview she was
the 1996 Miss Universe and uh during
this live interview on CBS Donald Trump
started mocking her weight she had a
very powerful response to him during
this live interview play this clip



For
the first time in the history of the
pageant viewers can actually participate
there'll be a a question up and the
viewers can actually call in and vote uh
let's let's bring up the question it
says should a pageant title holder be
required to maintain her physical
appearance during her reign
why do you think this is an important
question the viewers would care about
well it's something that really has come
up over the last year and Alicia has
done an incredible job she really has
turned out to be one of the great miss
universes I will say and she had a
little problem during the Middle where
she gained a little weight I don't think
so yeah she's probably right I don't
think so okay and so let's let's talk
about that debate because you know it's
interesting uh the viewers are going to
make a a decision today and they're
going to vote in uh one way or the other
Alicia do you think that that should
matter because after all you were voted
in as being the most beautiful woman in
the world I am the most beautiful woman
in the world I certainly don't 20b or no
pounds I am the most beautiful woman in
the world do you not think that it's
important to maintain a certain look
during that year yes of course but I
think uh all woman in the world have a
problem with the weight and I I think
maybe I had some problem with this but
I'm I'm fine now and I
think uh 15 pound is nothing with 20
years old and I think the most important
for the next Miss Universe and then is
no more dinners no more lunch no more
breakfast and no more when you travel
diplomatic dinners and parties I think
what Donald's talking about and I think
most people agree that there is a look
to miss and more time for go to the gym
it's very important because when you
have when you are miss univers you don't
have time for nothing right Donald how
do you think that this this this Miss
Universe will be different from the
others well I don't know that it's going
to be different we have many beautiful
women and it's actually incredible I was
over there today and the women are
magnificent and so I don't think it's
going to be different it's going to be
more of the same and it's going to be
terrific and then you may recall the
Fallout from this Hillary Clinton
brought this up in 2016 because one of
the things that she was warning about is
that Donald Trump's Behavior against
women was not just abhorent and
disgusting and criminal but that it
would also from a policy standpoint have
an impact as well Hillary Clinton was
saying for example Donald Trump based on
the way he treats women wouldn't
hesitate to take away women's
Reproductive Rights but here's a series
right here of just a a montage if you
will a super cut of what went down in
2016 play this clip





this Venezuela you
are the new Miss Universe
and some people when they have pressure
don't eat and some people when they have
pressure eat too much like me but like
Alicia and she had a little problem
during the Middle where she gained a
little weight I think so yeah she's
probably right I don't think so okay
Donald Trump called you Miss Piggy yes
Miss Piggy Miss housekeeping how did
that make you
feel so sad congratulations your
citizens of the United
States
Donald she has a name where did you find
her name is ala Machado and she has
become a US citizen and you can bet
she's going to vote this November okay
good and then when Donald Trump made
statements and by comparison to what
Donald Trump's saying right now these
statements almost seem tame based on how
hateful his rhetoric is now and these
statements were so hateful When Donald
Trump made statements saying that
Mexican immigrants crossing the border
are killers rapists and Drug Runners
there was a boycott against uh the
beauty pageants and then Donald Trump
ultimately said that he was going to
skip the missusa pageant and here's how
some of the women who were running the
pageant uh responded and celebrated that
Trump wasn't going to be there play this
clip
uh we saw that Donald Trump announced on
Twitter he would not be here for The
Pageant tonight how
does I knew it was
be and I'm sorry something interrupted
me I'm just I'm wondering if that
changes anything um as far as the
pageant goes tonight or as far as the
the brand of The Pageant tonight right
you know the as I said two or three
weeks ago this pageant is an opportunity
to about be about the women and the city
and that's what we're focusing on and uh
uh you know what it's it's it's good for
us that we're just focusing full steam
ahead it hasn't really changed because
that's all we've been doing for the last
few days and and I know that there's a
big campaign going on out out west and
we're focusing here uh in Louisiana and
then there's of course Donald Trump's
own word regarding Miss Teen USA and how
Donald Trump said that and he confirmed
that he would show up when the girls
when the teenage girls were naked and he
would inspect their bodies while they
were naked this is Donald Trump in his
own words on Howard Stern bragging about
it play this clip



well you could also
say as the owner of the pageant it's
your obligation to do that so so you
have done that now tell me well I'll
tell you the funniest is that I'll go
backstage before show yes and everyone's
getting dressed and ready and everything
else and you know no men are anywhere
and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the
owner of the pageant and therefore I'm
inspecting it you know I'm inspecting I
want to make sure that everything is
good the dress is everyone okay you know
they standing there with no is everybody
okay and you see these incredible
looking women and so I sort of get away
with things like here's an article from
the Independent Donald Trump boasted
about meeting semi- naked teenagers and
beauty pageants Mr Trump said on Howard
Stern's radio show that you just heard
in 200 five that he could get away with
walking into the dressing room to
inspect beautiful women Donald Trump
used to stroll right into the dressing
room of beauty pageants while the
contestants some of whom were teenagers
were naked or half-dressed a former
model has claimed Tasha Dixon was 18
when she competed in the missusa pageant
winning the State Crown our first
introduction to him was when we were at
the dress rehearsal and half naked
changing into our bikinis Miss Dixon
told CBS he just came strolling right in
there was no second to put robe on or
any sort of clothing or anything some
girls were topless other girls were
naked she added that people who worked
for Mr Trump pressured the women to fawn
over him go walk up to him talk to him
get his attention while still not fully
dressed Miss Dixon added the situation
made them feel awkward and physically
vulnerable four women who competed in
the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant
also said the Republican used to walk in
some of the girls were as young as 15 so
there there's another uh data point on
that right here um this is Donald Trump
on The Wendy Williams Show when he was
asked what he has in common with Ivanka
and what Ivanka has in common with him
Donald Trump said the following play
this clip we want to know a little bit
more about you guys so we play this game
here it's called fave five I'll ask the
question Ivanka you answer first and
then Dad you answer also okay Ivanka
what's the favorite thing you have in
common with your father either real
estate or golf Donald with your daughter
well I was going to say sex but I can't
relate that here's a photograph by the
way of Donald Trump uh Ivanka when she
was a little girl Eric when he was just
a boy and Jeffrey abstein and John
Casablancas who I did another story on
here um here
is uh a video right here of Donald Trump
this one uh this is his deposition that
was taken in the eege Carol Case where
he's asked about a video where he was on
the hot mic saying that uh because he's
rich and famous he grabs women by their
genitals and sexually abuses them um and
Donald Trump responded that either
unfortunately or fortunately this is
what rich men are able to do play this
clip and you say and again this has
become very famous in this video I just
start kissing them it's like a m maget
just kiss I don't even wait and when
you're a star they let you do it you can
do anything grab them by the [ __ ] you
can do anything that's what you said
correct well historically that's true
with stars it's true with stars that
that they can grab women by the [ __ ]
well that's what it's if you look over
the last million years I guess that's
been largely true not always but largely
true unfortunately or
fortunately and you consider yourself uh
to be a star
I think you can say that yeah and this
is from a federal court order that was
just issued this past week in New York
federal court by judge Lewis Kaplan who
explained that the jury in the last eing
Carol trial found by a preponderance of
the evidence that Mr Trump sexually
abused Miss Carol and injured her in
doing so his conduct was willfully
negligent or reckless in doing so or he
acted with a conscious disregard for
Miss Carol rights and Miss Carol was
entitled to compensatory and punitive
damages for sexual abuse of about $2
million consequently the fact that Mr
Trump sexually abused indeed raped Miss
Carol has been conclusively established
and is binding in this case that's from
a federal judge um and here is Donald
Trump at the young Republicans
Club about a month ago uh in New York at
a very fancy restaurant called chianis
and Donald Trump makes up the story that
a military General told him that the
most corageous thing this military
General has ever heard was When Donald
Trump mocked the woman he sexually
abuses that's what Donald Trump was
telling to the young Republicans here
play this
clip but I went onto that stage just a
few days later and a general who's a
fantastic general actually said to me
sir I've been on the battlefield men
have gone down on my left and on my
right I stood on Hills where soldiers
were killed but I believe the bravest
thing I've ever seen was the night you
went onto that stage with Hillary
Clinton after what happened and then
that woman asked you the first question
about it and I said locker room talk
it's locker room talk what the hell what
are you talk locker
room that was not a
great going going back to the statement
that you heard earlier in this video
from Hillary Clinton Donald Trump's
conduct not just abhorent disgusting
criminal in nature um but also the real
world ramifications of it as well to his
victims of course who he has created
unimaginable suffering to this country
and as Hillary Clinton said here's what
he's going to do play this clip of
Donald Trump bragging about what he did
and what he calls is a miracle play this
clip because for 54 years they were
trying to get roie way terminated and I
did it and I'm proud to have done it
they wanted to get it back right you
wouldn't be have that there would be no
question nobody else was going to get
that done but me and we did it and we
did something that was a miracle thank
you for watching this video let me know
what you think in the comments

[admin]

Jeffrey Epstein victims sue FBI, allege coverup
by Jonathan Stempel
Reuters
February 14, 2024
12:00 PM MST Updated 5 days ago
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/ar ... ge-coverup

[x]
U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein appears in a photograph taken for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services' sex offender registry March 28, 2017 and obtained by Reuters July 10, 2019. New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services/Handout via REUTERS./File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights,

NEW YORK, Feb 14 (Reuters) - A dozen victims of Jeffrey Epstein filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing the FBI of covering up its failure to investigate the late financier, enabling this sex trafficking to continue for more than 20 years.
The victims, using Jane Doe pseudonyms, said the FBI received credible tips as early as 1996 that Epstein trafficked young women and girls, yet failed to interview victims or share what it knew with federal and local law enforcement.

Victims said the FBI finally began a probe in 2006, but ended it two years later after Epstein pleaded guilty to a Florida prostitution charge, and kept ignoring tips until his July 2019 arrest. Epstein committed suicide a month later.

"As a direct and proximate cause of the FBI's negligence, plaintiffs would not have been continued to be sex trafficked, abused, raped, tortured and threatened," the complaint said.

"Jane Does 1-12 bring this lawsuit to get to the bottom -- once and for all -- of the FBI's role in Epstein's criminal sex trafficking ring," it added.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wednesday's complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan seeks damages from the U.S. government, the only defendant.

It cited a Dec. 5, 2023, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where FBI Director Christopher Wray was asked why the FBI didn't do more. He promised to "get with my team and figure out if there is more information we can provide."

The number of Epstein's victims is believed to be well over 100.

Victims previously reached approximately $500 million of settlements, before deducting legal fees and costs, with a program funded by Epstein's estate and with two of Epstein's banks, JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N), and Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE).

It is unclear whether the 12 plaintiffs received compensation from those settlements. Their lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case is Doe 1 et al v United States, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 24-01071.

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis