Former Model Who Met Trump Through Jeffrey Epstein Says Trump Groped Her, While Rumors of More Allegations Abound
Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty ImagesIn an interview with The Guardian, former model Stacey Williams said she met Donald Trump through Jeffrey Epstein in 1992. She and Epstein casually dated for a few months, and in 1993, she alleged that Epstein suggested visiting Trump Tower while they were taking a walk. Williams said that moments after Trump greeted her, per The Guardian, he “pulled her toward him and started groping her. She said he put his hands ‘all over my breasts’ as well as her waist and her buttocks. She said she froze because she was ‘deeply confused’ about what was happening. At the same time, she said she believed she saw the two men smiling at each other.”
At least 25 women have accused the former president of sexual crimes ranging from sexual harassment to rape, and columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of rape, was awarded $5 million by a jury last year in that case. Trump was famously caught on tape bragging about being able to “do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy,” and he has amassed so many credible sexual assault accusations and fueled their legitimacy with public embraces of his misogyny that there is never any reason to doubt an assertion like this. The burden of proof in these situations is on Trump to demonstrate that he is not the cretin he has spent 78 years proving himself to be.
It is no secret that Trump and Epstein were friends. Flight logs released during the trial of Epstein’s partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, reveal that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jets six times more than was previously known in 2021, which thanks to Gawker in 2015, we knew Trump flew on Epstein’s plane, as well as former president Bill Clinton.
Which is to say that all the evidence publicly available around Trump and Epstein supports Stacey Williams’ story.
Now there may be more to this. Yesterday, just before The Guardian published this interview, rumors began swirling on social media about a supposed Trump video being shopped around. Mark Halperin, veteran Beltway reporter, began this crescendo when he said on his YouTube show on Tuesday that there is a “certain story” he does not believe is true that being pitched to major news outlets that “if it is true, it would end Donald Trump’s campaign.”
Tom Bevan, the co-founder and president of the conservative RealClearPolitics, said he was pitched the same story which “does not seem remotely credible, but don’t be surprised if you see something in the New York Times next week.” Further fueling the rumor mill around this were right-wing media doofuses Jack Posobiec and Charlie Kirk both asserting that there will be a “deepfake” of “Trump saying something he didn’t” before all this came out.
The rumor centers around supposed video of Trump allegedly groping a teenage girl, but there is no evidence for this specific claim outside of Trump’s entire life providing circumstantial evidence for any assertion of that sort. A lot of political operatives and reporters yesterday were fueling speculation around this rumor, and it’s clear that this salacious story has made the rounds several times over in the Beltway’s inner circles. It’s vital to stress that there is no evidence for this rumor right now, but it has spread so wide and far within politics that people outside the Beltway deserve to know what people inside of it are whispering about.
If there is a video being pitched to different outlets, it’s important to accept that the right-wing doofuses could easily be right that it’s a deepfake. We know that Iran is intervening in the election and trying to hurt Trump’s campaign, and it’s a certainty that deepfakes are going to become a bigger part of politics and disinformation going forward. Being an informed citizen is about to get infinitely more difficult, and for all we know we may be on the precipice of our first big test.
But even if this worst-kept secret in D.C. does wind up being a fake, that doesn’t change the facts around Stacey Williams’ allegations that are supported by scores of other women detailing similar stories of Trump’s sexual crimes. The rumored video of Trump groping a girl may be AI-generated or completely bunk, but there is no reason to believe that would be a bridge too far for mankind’s worst human who spent portions of the 1990s hanging out with the globe’s premier pedophile.