Now-President Donald Trump banned Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after a 2003 incident at Epstein's Palm Beach home involving a young spa employee, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing former Mar-a-Lago and Epstein employees.
The Journal reported Mar-a-Lago's spa had, for years, sent employees — typically young women — to Epstein's nearby mansion for massages and other services.
Former employees told the newspaper that staff warned one another about Epstein's behavior during those house calls, describing him as sexually suggestive and prone to exposing himself.
That practice came to an end in 2003 after a then-18-year-old beautician returned from a house call and told managers that Epstein pressured her to have sex, the Journal reported.
According to former employees, a manager sent Trump a fax detailing the allegation and urged Epstein be barred from the club. Trump agreed and ordered Epstein removed.
"No matter how many times this story is told and retold, the truth remains: President Trump did nothing wrong and he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for being a creep," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Journal.
The White House accused the Journal of "writing up fallacies and innuendo in order to smear President Trump."
The Journal emphasized that mentions of Trump in recently released Epstein-related documents do not indicate wrongdoing.
Epstein was not a dues-paying member of Mar-a-Lago, the Journal noted, but Trump had previously instructed staff to treat him as one. Epstein maintained an account at the spa, where Ghislaine Maxwell, his longtime associate, booked appointments and charged services in his name.
Maxwell, the report said, regularly visited the spa and helped arrange the house calls.
The beautician's allegation was reported internally to Mar-a-Lago's human resources department but was not referred to Palm Beach police at the time, according to the Journal.
Law enforcement did not begin investigating Epstein until 2005, after a parent accused him of abusing a 14-year-old girl. Epstein was arrested in 2006 and later pleaded guilty to prostitution-related charges.
He was arrested again in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges and died in jail while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide.
The Journal reported that concerns about Epstein had circulated at Mar-a-Lago well before the 2003 ban.
Trump's second wife, Marla Maples, warned Trump and staff in the mid-1990s that something about Epstein seemed "off," according to former employees interviewed by the paper.
Although Epstein was barred from the spa in 2003, Trump and Epstein crossed paths on occasion afterward, including competing for a Palm Beach property in 2004 that Trump ultimately won.
Trump has said he cut ties with Epstein years before Epstein's first arrest and long before his crimes became widely known.
Asked this past summer why he stopped socializing with Epstein, Trump said Epstein had repeatedly hired away his staff despite warnings.
"He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non grata," Trump said.
Virginia Giuffre, a former Mar-a-Lago spa employee who later accused Epstein of abuse, testified that she never saw Trump participate in any misconduct and wrote in her memoir that Trump "couldn't have been friendlier" when she met him.
Giuffre killed herself April 25, 2025. She was 41.
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