Former model Stacey Williams said Donald Trump groped her at Trump Tower in 1993 while her then-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein watched on in what she described as “some sort of twisted game.”
As the clock ticks down to the Friday deadline to release the remaining Epstein files, the 57-year-old former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model opened up to The Daily Beast Podcast about her brief relationship with the late sex offender when she was in her twenties and he was in his forties.
Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump in 1997—Williams says Epstein often spoke about Trump when they dated. Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images
Williams told host Joanna Coles that she met Epstein at a dinner party with other models, “and that’s how I started dating him, which led to, obviously, months later, him walking me into Trump Tower to be groped, assaulted by Donald Trump while the two men stood there and walked and talked as it was happening.”
Epstein and Trump were close friends for many years until a bitter falling-out, supposedly over Epstein poaching Trump’s staff.
In retrospect, Williams said, it made sense why Epstein kept directing her toward Trump Tower while they were out on a walk and convinced her to “just drop by and see him.”
Stacey Williams at a Sports Illustrated promotional event in1996—she says the incident at Trump Tower took place around three years earlier. Evan Agostini/Getty Images
“I do remember little snippets of Trump saying, ‘Oh yeah, her career is on fire.’ You know, that thing that he does: ‘Everything’s the best,’” she said. “And Jeffrey just kept—he didn’t intervene. He watched it, and then he raged at me in the elevator and on the way down that I allowed it to happen. You know, either it was some sort of twisted game, and he didn’t get the result he wanted. Maybe it was a bet. I don’t know, but I’m confident that that is what occurred.”
She ended her romance with Epstein soon after.
“I just said, ‘Jeffrey, you are extremely mentally ill and you need to get help. There’s something deeply wrong with you. And stop calling me. I don’t want anything to do with you.’ And he, oddly enough—this is hard for people to understand—but he got weepy. He was very sad.”
The model previously told The Daily Beast Podcast that Trump “came out of his office right outside of, in sort of the waiting area, and started groping me while the two of them continued having a casual conversation… He’s just moving his hands sort of up and down my body and, like, smiling at him. And Jeffrey smiling back.”
Williams first went public with her allegations against Trump on a “Survivors for Kamala” Zoom call last year. Though she told NBC News at the time that she had no communications with the Kamala Harris campaign team, that didn’t stop the White House from accusing her of having political motivations.
Williams says she froze during the alleged incident with Trump, which she said was unusual given her previous record of pushing back on the inappropriate behavior of others. JB Lacroix/FilmMagic
“These accusations were unequivocally false when they were first contrived and nothing has changed. Democrats and the mainstream media are desperately trying to use this hoax as a distraction to talk about anything other than President Trump’s tremendous successes,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the Daily Beast.
Last year, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt similarly said, “These accusations, made by a former activist for Barack Obama and announced on a Harris Campaign call two weeks before the election, are unequivocally false.”
Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Trump’s Department of Justice must release the federal investigation files related to the disgraced financier by Friday.
The co-author of the law, California Democrat Ro Khanna, warned that Justice Department officials “could be subject to prosecution given the federal law” and “hauled in front of Congress, the Oversight Committee” if they fail to release the files on time.
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