New York CNN —
A former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model claims former President Donald Trump groped her in the 1990s, something she believes was intended as a showdown for Jeffrey Epstein.
Stacey Williams gave the most detailed public explanation of the alleged encounter on Thursday in her first on-camera interview about the allegations with CNN. She said the encounter occurred outside President Trump’s office in Trump Tower in the early 1990s, when she was in her 20s. She briefly dated Epstein. CNN spoke to three of Williams’ friends who said they talked about incidents with Trump and Epstein in 2006, 2015 and 2018.
Ms. Williams said she and Mr. Epstein were walking together on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1993 when Mr. Epstein took her to Trump Tower to meet Trump.
Trump reportedly greeted them outside his office.
“The moment he came in front of me, he pulled me into himself, and his hands were just on me and didn’t let go,” Williams said. “Then his hand started moving, next to my chest, then to my waist, then back to my butt, then back up again, and it was just on top of me.” And I froze. I couldn’t understand what was happening. ”
Williams said Epstein and Trump continued to talk, “looking at each other and smiling” while Trump put his hands on her. She thought President Trump’s aides may have come and gone from the room during their stay, but she can’t remember for sure.
“I was probably trying to smile and engage, like I would in a social situation, but it was like an out-of-body experience,” she said. “So I don’t know if I spoke, I don’t know if I answered any questions, I don’t know. It was one of the strangest moments of my life.”
Shortly after they met, Williams said her modeling agency received a postcard from Trump by courier with a photo of Palm Beach on the cover featuring the Mar-a-Lago resort.
“Stacy, your second home. Love, Donald,” wrote the back of the undated postcard.
The Trump campaign denies Williams’ claims, and the group, which is not affiliated with the Harris campaign, held an event called “Survivors for Kamala” on Monday night to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy for Trump’s presidential bid. He noted that Williams shared his story on a Zoom call.
“These accusations, announced on a Harris campaign conference call two weeks before the election, are false,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement. “This false narrative was used to distract from the deeply disturbing and newly unearthed allegations that Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff ‘forcefully slapped’ his ex-girlfriend,” Kamala Harris said. It was clearly fabricated by the campaign.”
A spokesperson for Mr. Emhoff denied tabloid reports that he assaulted his ex-girlfriend in 2012.
Williams said she met Epstein the year before the murders when her agent invited her to a dinner in New York, which Epstein also attended. She met him again that year at a Christmas party hosted by Trump at the Plaza Hotel, where the three of them reportedly spoke. She said she had previously met Trump at a taping of Saturday Night Live.
Sources close to Williams, including someone who knew him since the mid-1990s, told CNN that Williams had told them about his past relationship with Epstein. City real estate records show a trust linked to Epstein purchased the brownstone off Fifth Avenue in 1992.
After the Christmas party, Williams said on a Zoom call that Epstein “showed a lot of interest in me and we started meeting.” She told CNN that the two often went for walks and that Epstein often talked about “Donald.”
At the time, no one around Mr. Epstein – a convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019 before being tried on federal sex trafficking charges – knew about his predatory behavior. No one seemed to be there, she said. “If he knew what he was going to do, he wouldn’t have sat at that table,” she says.
Trump and Epstein
Williams said that when she and Epstein left Trump Tower, Epstein remained silent during the elevator ride. Once outside, she said Mr. Epstein reprimanded her for allowing Trump to grope her.
Afterward, Williams said she felt a “wave of shame” over what happened.
“I had this really disgusting feeling that it was being orchestrated and that somehow everything was the way it was. I rolled into it, like a piece of meat in some kind of weird, twisted game. And it made things even worse. And I couldn’t think about it or face it or talk about it for a long time,” she said. “I put it in a little box inside me and turned the key and locked it.”
She said she later met Epstein once or twice before calling off the relationship. “I realized there was something very dark and disturbing about him, and I finally told him to forget my number and stay far away from me,” she said.
She said Williams never spoke to Trump again and avoided contact with the future president in social situations.
“I remember thinking that even if we didn’t talk about it, there was a chance he could go somewhere. I wouldn’t go,” she said. “It affected me on a deep level. I was humiliated.”
She received a Palm Beach postcard signed by President Trump, delivered by courier shortly after they met, but it was unclear when that would be, as her fan letters often piled up at modeling agencies. I don’t know. A postcard manufacturer told CNN that the postcards likely date from the 1990s, but there is no record of when they stopped circulating.
Williams’ testimony that Trump molested her comes after Trump ran for president in 2016, and since then, many women have come forward to claim that Trump molested, kissed and assaulted them. Added to the long list. President Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations. One of Trump’s accusers, E. Jean Carroll, has filed two defamation lawsuits against Trump in the past two years over comments the former president made belittling her and denying rape allegations. won the case.
President Trump has also sought to publicly distance himself from Epstein for years, ever since he first faced charges related to inappropriate sexual acts with underage girls in the mid-2000s. There are photos and videos of the two together from the 1990s and 2000s.
In 2002, Trump told New York Magazine: He’s a great guy,” and Epstein added, “I like beautiful women as much as I do.”
Epstein was indicted on charges of sex trafficking of minors in July 2019 and died by suicide in a New York prison a month later. After Epstein’s indictment, President Trump told reporters he had no knowledge of his wrongdoing.
President Trump said, “I was never a fan of Jeffrey Epstein. “And yesterday you saw people saying I kicked him out of the club. I didn’t want anything to do with him. That was years ago. It shows one thing, you know?”
Williams told CNN that she did not tell anyone about the allegations at the time.
When Trump announced his presidential bid in 2015, one of Williams’ friends said he went to his home and found Williams had left a postcard on the kitchen counter. Williams said she told her friend to turn the postcard over so she could see Trump’s message and signature. Williams then told her that Trump had groped her.
Williams said she found the postcard in a pile of memories she had kept from her modeling days. She said she didn’t remember telling friends about the incident until around 2015, when Trump announced he was running for president.
A source close to Ms. Williams said she did not tell her husband, whom she married years after the incident, what happened. The official said she shared that she knew Epstein years ago.
Williams said she didn’t believe she had said anything about her encounters with Trump and Epstein, although she did share details about her time in the New York modeling world in the 1990s. “He knew I was in a lot of pain,” she said.
“I prided myself on being tough and fighting back, and that was the only time I didn’t. To be honest, that was key to that more than anything and I didn’t bury it. I think it was,” Williams said.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Williams said she did not come forward out of concern for her family. After the #MeToo movement in 2017, she said she started finding a way to start discussing it. Williams spoke off-the-record about Epstein on the podcast in 2019, including raising allegations about Trump, according to the podcast’s producer.
Williams occasionally posted some details of the incident on her social media accounts in 2020 and 2024, but her social media accounts are currently private.
The former model said her appearance in a Sports Illustrated documentary about the swimsuit issue ultimately inspired her to speak out more publicly. She was interviewed for a documentary in 2022 and mentioned the incident with President Trump, but did not mention Trump’s name.
The documentary premiered last weekend. Williams said when she was recently informed that her comments about “former presidents” would be included, it made her decide to share her story more publicly.
“You’re supposed to be really, really ready, and I wasn’t,” she previously said of coming forward. “I think there will be an evolution in combating abuse and these types of incidents, but it’s not going to happen overnight.”
Williams said he has been a Democratic supporter since high school and has been a Democratic Party volunteer for decades. Williams has also worked on climate and energy issues, including with the Clean Tech for Obama group, which is separate from the campaign, she said. A spokesperson said Williams has not spoken to the Harris campaign.
With less than two weeks until the election, Williams insisted her decision to speak out now was not due to the presidential campaign, but the timing of the documentary’s release.
At the same time, she made clear her feelings about the Trump presidential campaign in a “Kamala Survivor” call, saying she hopes others will not be inspired by her story to support him.
“It’s my worst nightmare to think that that monster is coming back to the White House,” she said.
CNN’s Scott Glover contributed to this report.
