A former executive at the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Jack O’Donnell, has made shocking claims about the close relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
He says the two men showed up at the casino with underage women in 1987. O’Donnell, who was president and chief operating officer at the time, said of Trump and Epstein’s relationship, “It’s laughable that it wasn’t a good friendship his best friend, if not his best friend” during the four years he worked with Trump.
According to O’Donnell’s interview with CNN, one time, Trump and Epstein arrived at the casino around 1:30 AM on a Sunday morning with three women. Casino inspectors were waiting and had already figured out that the women were underage for the casino (under 21, though not necessarily underage in the legal sense outside the casino). One of the women was identified as a 19-year-old who was the number three ranked tennis player in the world at the time.
O’Donnell says he had to call Trump and “read him the riot act” over the incident because the casino could have faced huge fines or even lost its license for letting underage people in. Trump was reportedly “shocked” they got off with just a warning and said, “Nobody gives me a break.”
Trump was a lot closer to Epstein than he lets on, according to his own employees
These claims go against Trump’s recent attempts to distance himself from Epstein, especially after Epstein’s arrest in 2019, when Trump said he “was not a fan of his.” But back in 2002, in an interview with New York magazine, Trump had called Epstein a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be with.”
Investigative journalist Barry Levine, who wrote the book The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, confirmed how big Epstein’s network was and criticized anyone who calls the Epstein case a “hoax.” Levine pointed out that there are around a thousand victims and said calling it a hoax is a huge insult to them. He said it’s important for the legal process to be open and transparent, not just to find out who else was involved in Epstein’s circle, but also to uncover how his multi-million-dollar operation kept running for twenty years.
Levine also had a strong reaction to the recent firing of Maureen Comey, the federal prosecutor handling the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases and the daughter of former FBI director James Comey. He called it “another situation… of absolutely horrible things” and said it seemed like retaliation because of her father. He said it was a loss for victims of sexual abuse, since she had been an advocate for them.
Published: Jul 17, 2025 01:23 pm