Report: Inside Trump and Epstein's bidding battle for $41M mansion
The titanic hour-long auction struggle was relayed to the Daily Mail by an insider present in the room on the seventh floor of non-descript office building in Palm Beach. Both Trump and Epstein were determined to buy Maison de l'Amitie - 'The House of Friendship' - a glorious six-acre French Regency-style estate on 'Billionaires' Row' overlooking the Atlantic. It had come up for auction after the owner, Abe Gosman, a nursing home tycoon, declared bankruptcy. Gosman died in 2013.
Judge Steven Friedman presided over the hearing with a speakerphone next to him on his desk. 'This was before the advent of Zoom so the bankruptcy judge allowed bidders to bid by telephone,' the insider said. Bidders tended to use representatives and Epstein pursued that strategy.
Trump had a lawyer representing him in the room, but placed his own bids from afar. 'There was a speaker on the judge's table and everyone had a dial-in number,' the insider said. 'Mr Trump did the bidding himself. We knew it was him, we recognized the voice. I was surprised. Mr Trump said he was going to outbid everyone. 'In my recollection he just made it clear he was going to win the bid. He said something to the effect of "I will continue bidding."
'The Apprentice had just started and he was that persona - very confident, very authoritative.' About 40 people - lawyers and Florida real estate types - packed into the room. Rather than a courtroom, it was a banal space in the offices of a medical company. The auction itself was the culmination of a lengthy battle for control of Maison de l'Amitie. According to the bankruptcy trustee Epstein and Trump had both already lobbied hard to buy it.
The insider said the starting price had been 'about $20 million.' Epstein, his bids relayed by an intermediary, went all the way up to $38.6 million before finally dropping out. A third bidder, another Florida developer, then made a surprise entry.
Trump was undeterred and outbid him too with an offer of $41.35 million. The third bidder did not return a request for comment. Another intriguing aspect of Maison de 'l'Amitie may have spurred Epstein's intense interest in it. It had once been owned by the Victoria's Secret fashion mogul Les Wexner.
Epstein had started managing Wexner's money in the late 1980s. It was through Wexner that Epstein acquired his massive mansion in Manhattan, a seven-story, 21,000 square foot behemoth less than a block from Central Park. Wexner sold his entire interest through which he owned the Manhattan property to an entity owned by Epstein in 1998. Wexner later severed all connections with Epstein and said he was 'embarrassed' by his former ties to someone who was 'sick, so cunning, so depraved.'
Previously, in 1988, Wexner had sold Maison de l'Amitie to Gosman for $12 million. Gosman built a 64,000 square foot home with a pool house and tennis pavilion, and filled it with expensive works of art before declaring bankruptcy. After winning the auction for it in 2004, Trump told the Palm Beach Daily News: 'My initial feeling is to utilize the existing house and create the second greatest house in America, Mar-a-Lago being the first. 'It's the finest piece of land in Florida and probably in the U.S..' A few years later he hired Karen Todd, the winner of season 3 of 'The Apprentice,' to oversee upgrades to the property.
In 2008 Trump sold the property for a Palm Beach record residential price of $95 million to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 after being charged with [sexual] trafficking. That year, when asked about Epstein, Trump said he had not spoken to him since about 2004. He said: 'Well, I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach. 'I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn't a fan.' The White House has since indicated that the falling out was to do with Epstein being a 'creep' rather than the property auction.
This week, White House spokesman Steven Cheung said: 'The fact is that the president kicked him (Epstein) out of his club for being a creep.' It has been reported that Epstein behaved inappropriately with a Mar-a-Lago member's daughter. That may have added steel to Trump's determination to crush Epstein in the auction, and to declare victory in what would prove to be their final encounter.
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