Epstein accuser claims she met Trump in disgraced financier's office in ‘troubling encounter'
Artist Maria Farmer said she urged the FBI to look into people in the disgraced financier's social circle, including the president, after the alleged encounter in the 90s, she told The New York Times.
Farmer and her younger sister Annie, who testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking trial, have spoken publicly about their ordeal with Epstein before. But her account now sheds light on how the Epstein files could contain material that is 'embarrassing or politically problematic' to the president, the Times reports.
Farmer's account is among 'the clearest indications yet' of how Trump may appear in the Epstein files, the Times notes, though the White House disputed the alleged encounter.
'The president was never in [Epstein's] office,' said White House communications director Steven Cheung. 'The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep.'
It follows a turbulent few weeks for the Trump administration after MAGA outrage over the Epstein files boiled over last week. Despite campaigning on a promise to release the files, Trump's Justice Department announced in July that no further evidence in the case would be released, unleashing turmoil among the president's MAGA supporter base.
The president last week agreed to release select grand jury testimony of the case, which experts say is unlikely to produce much, if anything, to satisfy the public's appetite for new information about Epstein's crimes.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail awaiting a sex trafficking trial in August 2019.
Farmer was in her mid-twenties when she claimed she met Trump in 1995, shortly after Epstein hired her to do artwork.
One night, she received an unexpected call from Epstein, who requested she come by his offices in Manhattan.
According to Farmer's account to the Times, Trump was there and 'started to hover over her.'
Farmer said that 'she recalled feeling scared as Mr. Trump stared at her bare legs,' the newspaper reported. 'Then Mr. Epstein entered the room, and she recalled him saying to Mr. Trump: 'No, no. She's not here for you.''
Epstein and Trump then left the room, according to Farmer, and she claimed she heard Trump comment that he thought she was 16 years old.
The White House disputed Farmer's account.
After the encounter, Farmer said she had no other 'alarming' interactions with Trump, nor did she witness him engage in inappropriate conduct with any other girls or women.
Farmer filed a lawsuit at the end of May alleging that the federal government failed to protect her and other victims of the convicted pedophile and his madam, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Farmer told the Times that she has long wondered how her complaints about Epstein between 1996 and 2006 were handled by law enforcement agencies.
She told the newspaper that she raised Trump's name with authorities on two occasions because of the alleged encounter and 'because he seemed so close' to Epstein.
Trump has never been accused of any wrongdoing in the Epstein case.
Farmer, who did not testify at Maxwell's trial, was sexually assaulted by Epstein and his madam at his Ohio estate in 1996. Farmer later learned that her younger sister Annie, then 16, was molested by Maxwell and Epstein at his New Mexico ranch that same year.
When Farmer discovered her sister had also been assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell, she reported the sex offender to the FBI.
'There is certainly more to know,' Annie Farmer told The Independent in an interview last year. 'I don't know whether we will ever learn more about that but I don't think we know everything.'
The president has sought to distance himself from the sex offender, with whom he had a friendship from the late 80s until the early 2000s.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published the text of a note that was allegedly penned by Trump to Epstein as part of a 50th birthday card. The note itself was framed with the silhouette of a naked woman, with the contents alluding to a 'secret' that Trump wrote the two men shared.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
12 minutes ago
- Scotsman
Sunday's News in Pictures: Donald Trump announces US-EU trade deal at Turnberry after day of golf
It was a busy day at Turnberry in South Ayrshire yesterday, with US President Donald Trump enjoying a day of golf before announcing a trade deal with the EU. Ahead of sitting down for a discussion with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Mr Trump played a few rounds of golf with his family, where he was seen blowing kisses to supporters. It was later that day that he spoke with Ms von der Leyen to announce a trade deal between the EU and the US. Today, Mr Trump is set to meet one-on-one with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at Turnberry, before they are expected to travel to a private engagement at Trump International in Menie. Here are some pictures from the historic day at Turnberry. 1 . US President Donald Trump shakes hands with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen US President Donald Trump with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after agreeing on a trade deal between the two economies following their meeting at Turnberry | AFP via Getty Images Photo Sales 2 . US President Donald Trump shakes hands with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after agreeing on a trade deal between the two economies AFP via Getty Images Photo Sales 3 . US President Donald Trump (R) and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at Turnberry Trump told reporters after: "We have reached a deal. It's a good deal for everybody." The EU chief also hailed it as a "good deal". | AFP via Getty Images Photo Sales 4 . Staff and family, Bettina Anderson, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump U.S. look on as President Donald Trump and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announce a US-EU trade deal The US-EU trade deal was announced after a meeting at Trump Turnberry golf club on July 27, 2025 in Turnberry, Scotland. | Getty Images Photo Sales
Telegraph
12 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Chinese hackers have seized control. How did we let this happen?
A civilisation that cannot defend itself really should not expect to survive, and after the latest cybersecurity news, I wonder how it can. An official advisory was recently sent out to the US military, warning that all forces must now assume their networks have been breached. The enemy is inside the house. What it means is that no system connected to the internet can be defended. Our own national cybersecurity agency asked UK businesses to make this presumption in 2020. The reason this hasn't been bigger news is that we've become fatalistic and weary, as one cybersecurity attack follows another. So when we discovered in early July that Chinese hackers had gained control of Microsoft servers at hundreds of US government agencies – including the US nuclear weapons agency – it was just another hacking story. What made this one noteworthy was that there wasn't immediately a fix or a patch, Microsoft admitted last Tuesday. Incredibly, confirmation of the US military's 'assume breach' alert had to be dragged out of the Department of Defense via Freedom of Information Act requests by a campaigning non-profit called Property of the People. These developments are the latest stage in an ongoing state-sponsored Chinese campaign, in which hacking has evolved from widespread commercial espionage a decade ago into something far more threatening. The latest phases, Salt Typhoon and now Volt Typhoon, are meticulous and sophisticated. They target not just government agencies like the National Guard, and China-critical MPs like Sir Iain Duncan Smith, but also private sector companies in the energy, telecoms, transport and water sectors. Ciaran Martin, former head of NCSC, the cybersecurity centre based at GCHQ, says that China's capabilities have been transformed. 'Now think of dozens or even hundreds of [individual] hacks at the same time – 'everything, everywhere, all at once' in the words of Jen Easterly, recently departed head of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.' Software attacks on our computer systems can create unique damage in ways that conventional warfare cannot. Let's consider two. While aerial bombing can produce spectacular instant results, targets can be disassembled prior to attack, and can be quickly rebuilt after the attack. Both happened with the recent attack on Iraq's nuclear facilities. But recovering from cyber attacks is much harder. Ask the British Library, which has still not restored all of its services. 'Printed catalogues and handlists are available in our Reading Rooms', it still advises visitors to its website. The attack took place in October 2023. A second way in which cyber attacks now present a unique challenge is the ability of Chinese hackers to 'live off the land' after they break through. Rather like special forces embedded behind enemy lines, hackers conceal themselves undetected for months or years. To the guardians of the network, they are just another innocent user. 'Both Salt and Volt Typhoon were in play for years before being detected,' writes Martin. 'And they are strategic compromises of the West on a scale hitherto unseen by any other cyber power.' Not only do we not know when the attack is over, we don't even know when it has begun. How did this happen? If I haven't depressed you enough, this is where it gets particularly troubling. Cybersecurity is a gnarly failure of accountability and regulation that spans decades of indifference, and implicates business complacency and government apathy. The internet protocols (IP) we use today are completely rotten. The great and the good of the IT and telecommunications industries spent the entire 1980s in international committees devising complex secure networking protocols, only to be met with mistrust and specifications no one really wanted. Fed up with waiting, we adopted today's protocols, which were cheap and simple to implement, but not secure. Now, the international standards bodies that might devise a successor to IP are dominated by China. When they fail, suppliers can hide behind licensing agreements and expensive lawyers. No one goes to prison for bad security design. Their customers – us – are guilty of negligence too. Salt Typhoon took advantage of a bug in Cisco routers that users had not bothered to fix for seven years. As a society, we rush to implement technologies without thinking too hard about externalities. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) opens up lots of new holes, and also lowers the bar so that even the technically unskilled can plant hacks. All in all, then, this may not seem a good time to force Britons to use a new government identity service. Especially when you know that 'red team' penetration testing proved in March that this could be penetrated by hostile foreign agents without them being detected. This is what Baroness Neville Jones calls 'a piece of critical infrastructure'. Chinese agents may already be 'living off the land' inside the One Login system, on which your government wallet has been built, and soon perhaps, your digital ID. But don't expect Peter Kyle, the Science and Technology Minister, to put the brakes on the One Login project when he's its biggest fan. To survive and prosper, we need serious and technically aware people in his position, who listen to the security professionals. Kyle appeared on Newsnight last week wearing jeans and a T-shirt and trainers, all of which were intended to signal to viewers his youthful love of digital technology. He is 54.
Reuters
12 minutes ago
- Reuters
European leaders react to US-EU trade deal
July 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. struck a framework trade agreement with the European Union on Sunday, imposing a 15% import tariff on most EU goods and averting a bigger trade war between the two allies that account for almost a third of global trade. Following are reactions from European leaders to the deal. "It is a sombre day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission." "This is not an agreement ... Donald Trump ate von der Leyen for breakfast, this is what happened and we suspected this would happen as the U.S. president is a heavyweight when it comes to negotiations while Madame President is featherweight." "This agreement has succeeded in averting a trade conflict that would have hit the export-orientated German economy hard. This applies in particular to the automotive industry, where the current tariffs of 27.5% will be almost halved to 15%." "I consider it positive that there is an agreement, but if I don't see the details I am not able to judge it in the best way." "The agreement brings much-needed predictability to the global economy and Finnish companies. Work must continue to dismantle trade barriers. Only free transatlantic trade benefits both sides the most." "This agreement does not make anyone richer, but it may be the least bad alternative. What appears to be positive for Sweden, based on an initial assessment, is that the agreement creates some predictability." "A deal provides a measure of much needed certainty for Irish, European and American businesses who together represent the most integrated trading relationship in the world. While Ireland regrets that the baseline tariff of 15% is included in the agreement, it is important that we now have more certainty on the foundations for the EU-US trade relationship, which is essential for jobs, growth and investment."
