Virginia Giuffre spoke about Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship with Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton in her memoir, released six months after her death.
Nobody’s Girl sparked global headlines, particularly in Britain, over Giuffre’s account of being trafficked by convicted sex offender Epstein and his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17. Andrew denies the allegations.
Also mentioned in the book are two political heavyweights who have been linked to Epstein and have always maintained they knew nothing about Epstein’s sexual exploitation of minors.
Giuffre makes no allegations against Trump and Clinton but described meeting both in contexts unconnected to Epstein’s crimes. Newsweek reached out to the Clinton Foundation for comment.
Why It Matters
Trump and Clinton have become significant figures in the debate about Epstein, as both liberals and conservatives have clashed over whether the scandal has a greater impact on Democrats or Republicans.
An FBI and Department of Justice statement asserting there is no evidence Epstein sought to blackmail his rich and powerful friends sparked a major backlash against Trump from within his own base. The report also said there was no “client list” and no more charges would be brought in connection with Epstein.
What Donald Trump and Bill Clinton Have Said About Epstein
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, told Newsweek: “Democrats, the media, and Newsweek knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents.”
Trump said he turned down an invitation to go to Epstein’s private island in July: “I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.”
Clinton’s office said in a July 2019 statement that “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.
“In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation. Staff, supporters of the Foundation, and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg of every trip.”
Virginia Giuffre Meets Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago
Giuffre worked at Mar-a-Lago and briefly met Trump before she met Epstein, having been introduced by her father, who also worked there.
“In the summer of 2000,” she wrote in Nobody’s Girl, “my father—then a maintenance man at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach—got me a job there as a $9-an-hour locker-room attendant.”
“It couldn’t have been more than a few days before my dad said he wanted to introduce me to Mr. Trump himself,” she continued. “They weren’t friends, exactly. But Dad worked hard, and Trump liked that—I’d seen photos of them posing together, shaking hands. So one day my father took me to Trump’s office. ‘This is my daughter,’ Dad said, and his voice sounded proud.
“Trump couldn’t have been friendlier, telling me it was fantastic that I was there. ‘Do you like kids?’ he asked. ‘Do you babysit at all?’ He explained that he owned several houses next to the resort that he lent to friends, many of whom had children who needed tending.”
She would later be recruited by Maxwell after an encounter at Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump, Prince Andrew and a Halloween Party
In her book, Giuffre describes how famous figures like Trump and Clinton helped her understand that it was not just Epstein who was considered important in high society, but also Maxwell.
“As for Maxwell, who told us girls to call her G-Max,” she wrote, “I was figuring out she was important too. In October 2000, she jetted off to New York to meet up with her old friend Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II’s second-born son, who was then fourth in line to ascend the British throne.
“On Halloween, along with other guests that included Donald and Melania Trump, Maxwell and Prince Andrew attended a party hosted by German supermodel Heidi Klum at The Hudson, a swank hotel.”
And it was not just the meetings that took place while Giuffre was in Epstein and Maxwell’s world, as Maxwell would also talk about past encounters.
“Maxwell was proud of her friendships with famous people, especially men,” Giuffre wrote. “She loved to talk about how easily she could get former president Bill Clinton on the phone; she and Epstein had visited the White House together when Clinton was in office.”
Dinner With Clinton
In another passage, Giuffre talks about her difficulties marrying her experiences of Epstein’s abuse with the respect he commanded in high society.
“I don’t know how to reconcile this sordid scene with the worldly reputation that Epstein seemed intent on projecting,” Giuffre wrote. “This is a man who displayed framed photographs of himself with the Dalai Lama, with the pope, and with members of the British royal family.
“A photo in his Palm Beach house showed Epstein posing behind the podium of the White House briefing room. This was a man who’d had former president Bill Clinton over for dinner (I was at the table that night) and who’d hosted Al and Tipper Gore as well (again, I was there).”
Bill Clinton’s Flight on Epstein’s Plane
Giuffre talks about a time when Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane in 2002, though she did not go with them: “On September 21, Epstein and Maxwell were leaving New York on an extended trip to Africa. Marcinkova was flying with them on Epstein’s Boeing 727, as were several high-profile guests: the actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey and former president Clinton, not to mention six US Secret Service Agents. (Clinton has said the trip was a humanitarian mission that included stops related to the work of his foundation.)”
News Reports About Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton
Giuffre, despite having named Clinton, appears surprised when headlines focus on Clinton’s connection to Epstein at the point her account of her abuse was first published in The Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail in 2011.
She draws attention to the Daily Mail‘s headline on the second article: “Teenage Girl Recruited by Paedophile JE Reveals How She Twice Met Bill Clinton,” as quoted in the book.
“Right away, the article noted that I had never been ‘lent out’ to the former president,” she wrote. “But I guess the Mail found it newsworthy simply that I’d witnessed Epstein and Clinton together. ‘Jeffrey had told me that they were good friends,’ I’m quoted as saying.”
The article quoted Epstein saying, “He [Clinton] owes me some favors,” and Giuffre noted the newspaper also reported she had met Donald Trump.
Donald Trump Nominates Alex Acosta
Giuffre also wrote about the backlash over a plea deal between Epstein and Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida at the time.
The 2008 nonprosecution agreement allowed Epstein to plead guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution while avoiding being charged with more serious federal crimes.
Trump’s decision to nominate Acosta as Labor Secretary in 2017 prompted renewed focus on Epstein’s abuse. At the time, victims, including Giuffre, had been suing Epstein and Maxwell in civil court, but neither was yet facing federal charges.
“While the mounting number of cases against Epstein and Maxwell was heartening, however, there were indications that public awareness of their crimes was either fading or had never been very high in the first place,” Giuffre wrote.
“Donald Trump was now president, and in early 2017 he nominated Alexander Acosta—the former federal prosecutor based in Miami who had approved Epstein’s shameful, secretive non prosecution agreement—to be secretary of labor. Acosta was confirmed in April 2017.”
“It was during this period that Julie K. Brown, an investigative journalist at the Miami Herald, began digging into the Epstein case,” she continued. “She has said that she was prompted, in part, by Alex Acosta’s elevation to Trump’s cabinet—and by the fact that during Acosta’s confirmation hearings, Epstein’s name had barely come up.
“The Miami Herald‘s investigations editor gave Brown the go-ahead and assigned a videographer, Emily Michot, to work with her to capture interviews with Epstein’s victims on tape.”
Later, Giuffre noted: “On July 19, Alexander Acosta—whose role in the 2008 non prosecution agreement was now being viewed more harshly–resigned from Trump’s cabinet.”
Donald Trump’s Friendship With Epstein Breaks Down
Giuffre also noted that Trump cut off his friendship with Epstein, though she gives a different reason than the one offered by the president earlier this year. By the time Trump made those remarks, Giuffre had died after what her family described as a suicide.
“Only later would it become clear that Epstein had been shunned by at least one powerful person he’d previously wooed: Donald Trump. In their 2020 book called The Grifters’ Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and the Selling of the Presidency, journalists Sarah Blaskey, Nicholas Nehamas, Caitlin Ostroff, and Jay Weaver reported that Trump ended Epstein’s membership at Mar-a-Lago and banned him from visiting in October 2007, after Epstein hit on the teenage daughter of another member,” Giuffre wrote.
“That was a month after Epstein had entered into the secret non prosecution agreement with the government but eight months before he made a plea deal.”
Trump, however, gave a different account of the reason the friendship ended to reporters on board Air Force One in July: “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone. And other people would come and complain, ‘this guy is taking people from the spa,'” he said.
“I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him. I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa.’ I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again and I said, ‘out of here’.”
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Update 10/22/25 3:17 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from the White House.
