An Accuser’s Story Suggests How Trump Might Appear in the Epstein Files
A former Jeffrey Epstein employee said that she told the F.B.I. in 1996 and 2006 about what she considered a troubling encounter with Donald J. Trump.
July 20, 2025Updated 2:21 p.m. ET
Maria Farmer poses for a portrait. She is seen through pink flowers and trees.
Maria Farmer in August 2019. Ms. Farmer said in an interview with The New York Times that she twice told the F.B.I. about a troubling encounter she had with Donald J. Trump, and about how close he was with Jeffrey Epstein.Andrea Morales for The New York Times
It was the summer of 1996 when Maria Farmer went to law enforcement to complain about Jeffrey Epstein.
At the time, she said, she had been sexually assaulted by Mr. Epstein and his longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Ms. Farmer, then in her mid-20s, had also learned about a troubling encounter that her younger sister — then a teenager — had endured at Mr. Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico. And she described facing threats from Mr. Epstein.
Ms. Farmer said that when she discussed her concerns with the New York Police Department, then with the F.B.I., she also urged them to take a broader look at the people in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, including Donald J. Trump, then still two decades from being elected president. She repeated that message, she said, when the F.B.I. interviewed her again about Mr. Epstein in 2006.
Her account is among the clearest indications yet of how Mr. Trump might have come to be named in the unreleased investigative files in the Epstein case, a matter that has generated another political uproar in recent weeks.
In interviews this week about what she told the authorities, Ms. Farmer said she had no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Epstein’s associates. But she said she was alarmed by what she saw as Mr. Epstein’s pattern of pursuing girls and young women while building friendships with prominent people, including Mr. Trump and President Bill Clinton.
Investigations like the ones that targeted Mr. Epstein often explore a wide range of tips, evidence, recollections and relationships, little of which ends up being used in court records or as the basis for criminal prosecution. Mr. Epstein’s voluminous investigative file contains many records that have not been made public, but that became the focus of claims, long stoked by Mr. Trump’s allies, that authorities might have covered up the involvement of other rich and powerful men.
Now, after his attorney general and F.B.I. director abruptly abandoned their earlier promises to reveal everything about the Epstein files and said, in effect, that there was nothing to see, Mr. Trump’s ties to Mr. Epstein are under renewed scrutiny, leading to questions about what so-far-undisclosed appearances he might have in the investigative record.
The story of Ms. Farmer’s efforts to call law enforcement attention to Mr. Epstein and his circle shows how the case files could contain material that is embarrassing or politically problematic to Mr. Trump, even if it is largely extraneous to Mr. Epstein’s crimes and was never fully investigated or corroborated.
And it underscores the complexities of opening up to scrutiny all the leads that investigators pursued, the evidence they gathered and the interviews they conducted, little of which ever went before a judge or jury.
Law enforcement agencies have not accused Mr. Trump of any wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein, and he has never been identified as a target of any associated investigation. Mr. Trump last week called for relevant grand jury testimony in the prosecution of Mr. Epstein to be publicly released, and has repeatedly dismissed any notion that he has something to hide. Even if that testimony is released, it is unlikely to shed much light on the relationship between the two men, which did not figure prominently in Mr. Epstein’s criminal cases.
Ms. Farmer said she has long wondered how law enforcement agencies handled her complaints in 1996 and 2006.
And she said she has been wondering in particular whether federal authorities did anything with her concerns about Mr. Trump. She said that she raised his name both times, not only because he seemed so close to Mr. Epstein but because of an encounter, which she has previously described publicly, that she said she had with Mr. Trump in Mr. Epstein’s New York office.
‘She’s Not Here for You’
The encounter with Mr. Trump, Ms. Farmer said, occurred in 1995 as she was preparing to work for Mr. Epstein. She said she told the authorities that late one night, Mr. Epstein unexpectedly called her to his offices in a luxury building in Manhattan, and she arrived in running shorts.
Mr. Trump then arrived, wearing a business suit, and started to hover over her, she said she told the authorities.
Ms. Farmer said she recalled feeling scared as Mr. Trump stared at her bare legs. Then Mr. Epstein entered the room, and she recalled him saying to Mr. Trump: “No, no. She’s not here for you.”
The two men left the room, and Ms. Farmer said she could hear Mr. Trump commenting that he thought Ms. Farmer was 16 years old.
After her encounter with Mr. Trump, Ms. Farmer said, she had no other alarming interactions with him, and did not see him engage in inappropriate conduct with girls or women.
The White House on Friday night contested Ms. Farmer’s account and cited Mr. Trump’s long-ago decision to end his friendship with Mr. Epstein.
“The president was never in his office,” said Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, referring to Mr. Epstein. “The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep.”
Reports to Law Enforcement
Ms. Farmer, an artist, worked for Mr. Epstein in 1995 and 1996, initially to acquire art on his behalf but then later to oversee the comings and goings of girls, young women and celebrities at the front entrance of his Upper East Side townhouse.
In 1996, Ms. Farmer said she went to stay at Mr. Epstein’s estate in Ohio in a complex developed by Leslie H. Wexner, the chief executive of the company that owned Victoria’s Secret. Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell came that summer.
Ms. Farmer said that after she was asked to give Mr. Epstein a foot massage, he and Ms. Maxwell violently groped her until she fled the room and barricaded herself in another part of the building. Ms. Farmer was an artist who did work on nude figures, and she also reported that partially nude photos she had of her two younger sisters were missing from a storage lockbox.
Over the years, Ms. Farmer has been attacked by people who questioned whether she could be trusted. She was not called to testify when Ms. Maxwell was prosecuted and convicted in 2021 of conspiring with Mr. Epstein to sexually exploit and abuse girls. (Her sister Annie did testify in the case about how Ms. Maxwell had massaged her bare chest after she had been invited to Mr. Epstein’s estate in New Mexico.)
But Ms. Farmer’s mother said she remembered hearing about the Trump encounter around the time it occurred in 1996, and that Ms. Farmer had first gone to the F.B.I. that year. Annie Farmer also said she remembered Maria sharing that she had told the F.B.I. about Mr. Epstein and powerful people like Mr. Trump and Mr. Clinton.
In her first interviews with The Times in 2019, Maria Farmer said that before she talked to the F.B.I., she first spoke to the Sixth Precinct of the New York Police Department. Police records show that she had done that in August 1996.
Law enforcement agencies have not released records of any F.B.I. report Ms. Farmer made in 1996, but handwritten notes from the interview agents did with her a decade later match her account, including that “6th precinct told MF to call FBI.”
The portions of those F.B.I. records that have been released do not mention Mr. Trump, but much of the account remains redacted.
The F.B.I. did not respond to a request for comment.
Unclear Follow-Up
Mr. Epstein was indicted in 2006 and later pleaded guilty to two felony charges, including soliciting a minor, in a deal that avoided federal charges. In 2019, he was charged again, accused of trafficking dozens of girls, some as young as 14, and engaging in sex acts with them. He was later found dead in a jail cell, and officials have said he hanged himself.
It is unclear whether federal investigators pursued a deeper examination of Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Epstein or whether the authorities documented what Ms. Farmer said she told them about Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s friendship with Mr. Epstein has been captured in videos of them partying together and comments the men have made, and his name appears in some previously released case records, including Mr. Epstein’s flight logs. Mr. Trump was quoted in 2002 as calling Mr. Epstein a “terrific guy.” He has since said that he is “not a fan” of Mr. Epstein, and has emphasized that he broke with him two decades ago.
In recent years, Mr. Trump’s allies have pressed for further release of federal files related to Mr. Epstein. But after initially promising full disclosure, Attorney General Pam Bondi suddenly backtracked this month, saying that a review of the case found nothing to indicate that anyone else should be charged.
Amid a backlash from his supporters in recent days, Mr. Trump has assailed those still calling for more disclosure. After The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Mr. Epstein had received a sexually suggestive birthday greeting from Mr. Trump in 2003, Mr. Trump called the report a hoax and sued the news organization.
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