Trump's Mar-a-Lago Spa Was Tailor-Made for Epstein
The Trump Spa sought "young, attractive" college students to wear mini-skirts and "skin-tight" tops
Guest article by Jonathan Larsen. Follow him on Substack here.
Mini-skirts weren’t allowed at Mar-a-Lago, the employee handbook said.
But Virginia Giuffre, née Roberts — who killed herself in April — said The Trump Spa at Mar-a-Lago had a uniform for its female workers: “White miniskirt and a skin-tight white polo top.”
Job listings from the local paper at the time encouraged college students to apply. Trump’s human-resources manager said Trump wanted “young, attractive people.”
These and other unearthed details about Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein may address a question Trump hasn’t been asked: Why did Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell make Trump’s club one of the spots where they hunted for victims?
Even the club knew what Epstein was doing. A Mar-a-Lago source in 2007 told the New York Post that Epstein “would use the spa to try to procure girls.” Poring through decades-old depositions, lawsuits, and even help-wanted ads, it’s not hard to see why.
When Giuffre applied for work at Mar-a-Lago around or shortly after her 17th birthday, her lack of previous work experience wasn’t a barrier. Neither was the fact she hadn’t finished high school.
Giuffre wasn’t even in school at the time of her job interview. In fact, her lawyers later said, she was “a troubled teen” living with her boyfriend. The slender, long-haired blonde was hired.
Her new duties included making tea. And keeping the women’s locker and rest rooms neat (not mopping floors; more like decorative folding of toilet paper). It’s not clear how demanding Giuffre’s work was. When Epstein’s partner in crime showed up and spotted her, Giuffre was sitting outside. Reading a book. On the clock.
These and other forgotten details about Trump’s young female workers don’t just raise troubling questions about the past. They also cast doubt on Trump’s new claims about what he really knew at the time about Epstein and his predation on children.
Trump, for instance, claimed last week that Epstein poached Giuffre and other young female spa employees and that Trump told him to stop.
But if Trump knew about Giuffre being recruited, and truly admonished Epstein about it, why would Epstein just months later take Giuffre to Trump’s Atlantic City casino, and alert Trump that they were coming?
And if Trump was aware of Epstein’s proclivity for girls — which he was, at least by 2002 — it’s hard to explain Trump’s failure to help them. He said this week that he knew about Giuffre and, assuming she was the first Trump knew about, “not too long after that, he did it again and I said, out of here.”
And yet, he and Epstein were still in touch as of late 2004. And it took Trump until October 2007 to close Epstein’s Mar-a-Lago account. And Trump and the White House now claim he found Epstein creepy, even though he showed no sign of distaste in 2002 when discussing Epstein’s preference for women “on the younger side.”
To the contrary, Trump in the same breath called Epstein “a lot of fun to be with.” A “terrific guy.”
Now Trump says he knew about Epstein recruiting Giuffre in 2000 — two years prior to his praise of Epstein. In fact, allegedly, Epstein introduced Trump at Mar-a-Lago to an even younger girl (whom Epstein was abusing) even earlier: In 1998.
Now grown, she testified in Maxwell’s 2021 trial that Epstein drove her in a dark green car to Mar-a-Lago, where Epstein introduced her to Trump. She was 14. “This line of questioning is not explored much further,” journalist Adam Klasfield reported from the trial.
In a 2010 deposition, Epstein was asked whether he and Trump ever socialized together with girls (“females under the age of 18”). Epstein said, “Though I'd like to answer that question, at least today I'm going to have to assert my Fifth, Sixth, and 14th Amendment rights.”
It’s well known that Maxwell recruited Giuffre at Mar-a-Lago. But in light of Trump’s statement last week that Epstein recruited multiple unidentified young “women” (Giuffre was a minor) from Mar-a-Lago, some forgotten details may help explain why Epstein and Maxwell considered Mar-a-Lago fertile hunting ground.
“THE TRUMP SPA AT MAR-A-LAGO”
How did an inexperienced, troubled 17-year-old high-school dropout get a public-facing job at a high-end, luxury resort like Mar-a-Lago in the first place?
Giuffre’s dad testified later that she didn’t apply for an open position. He got her the job. He had started working there in April 2000. Later that year, he asked if his daughter could get a job, too. Something fun for the summer.
A review of Mar-a-Lago help-wanted ads from the Palm Beach Post shows that the club advertised pretty routinely for spa attendants. Sometimes the listings specified part-time. Others not.
Sometimes applicants were supposed to call Carol Ash, the club’s human-resources manager. Or they were to call Dr. Ginger Southall, the spa director and/or fitness trainer around that time.
A January 2000 job listing said spa attendants had to be able to work a flexible schedule. That caveat was absent from the next month’s listing.
Instead, the February listing added new language: “College students encouraged to apply.”
After Giuffre’s dad asked whether there might be work for her at the club, she got an interview. Then came a drug test. And a polygraph test.
There’s no indication Giuffre was up against anyone else for a specific position. It’s not clear whether there was one designated opening that she managed to secure or whether the club treated spa attendants as a loosey-goosey category, hiring when desirable candidates applied just to have them around for whatever purposes they might fulfill. Whatever the case, Giuffre nailed it.
Who exactly was Mar-a-Lago looking for? Experience and expertise allegedly weren’t top of the list.
The club’s human-resource manager, listed as the contact in almost all the job listings I reviewed, was Carol Ash. Trump fired her in 2001, after seven years rising through the ranks at Mar-a-Lago. Reportedly, she was told she lacked sufficient experience in labor law1.
According to Ash and two other terminated employees, they were let go for age discrimination, a claim the Palm Beach County Office of Equal Opportunity rejected. But Ash wrote in her complaint that “It has always been known through the club that Mr. Donald Trump wants young, attractive people working for him.”
In 2016, Giuffre was questioned under oath about the spa’s onboarding process:
Q: [D]id they give you any training?
Giuffre: No.
Q: Did they show you how to work the lockers?
Giuffre: Well, I mean, there was a girl who already worked there at the front desk. I think she helped make appointments and greeted people, and then she just told me my duties in the locker room were to, you know, make tea. I had never made tea before, so that was — that was fun. Learn how to make tea. Clean up after the ladies who had been in the locker room. Make sure the bathrooms were kept nice and tidy. You fold the toilet paper into a little triangle every time anyone went to the toilet. Clean up the sink area. It was a very crazy job.
She also testified about the uniform Mar-a-Lago provided for her. “It was a white miniskirt with a little white polo top with the emblem of Mar-a-Lago on it.”
Years earlier, in a 2011 interview, she described the uniform in less demure terms to the Daily Mail, recalling what Maxwell saw when she first spotted Giuffre at Mar-a-Lago. “I was wearing my uniform — a white miniskirt and a skin-tight white polo top — when I was approached by Ghislaine.”
According to the 1995 Mar-a-Lago employee handbook:
Female employees who are not required to wear a uniform may wear suits, dresses, skirts or slacks with blouses or sweaters. “Mini” skirts are not permissible.
But Giuffre wasn’t the only one in the spa uniform, according to her 2016 deposition.
Q: [W]ho else was wearing that uniform?
Giuffre: The other locker — the lady that did the front desk next to the locker rooms.
Q: She had the same one?
Giuffre: Yes.
…
Giuffre: …we had our own uniforms. Everyone else had their own.
Q: Who is we?
Giuffre: Well, the girls that worked in the meet and greet area. Me and the other girl with the curly hair I told you about had our own uniforms.
The “girl with the curly hair,” Giuffre previously explained, was the one who taught her to make tea. She was “in her 20s.”
It remains unclear exactly when Giuffre worked there. She testified it was the summer, and another Epstein employee, Juan Alessi, said under oath that it was hot the day Maxwell and Giuffre met. The club’s season, however, didn’t start until around early November. Which, of course, could still be pretty hot in Palm Beach. (Alessi also testified that he recalled Giuffre wearing “a white uniform” when he and Maxwell first saw her.)
A November 5, 2000, Mar-a-Lago ad doesn’t include spa attendant as one of the open positions, suggesting maybe they no longer needed any. But by Dec. 2, it’s back, Perhaps Giuffre’s brief tenure at the club — two or three weeks, she testified — fell somewhere between those dates.
The encouragement for college students to apply took a while to reappear in the ads.
Trump Today
According to Trump last week, Giuffre was one of the people Epstein “stole.” In a series of exchanges with media, Trump was asked whether some were “young women.” Trump hemmed and hawed before saying, “[T]he answer is yes, they were.”
Q: [W]hat were their jobs?
Trump: In the spa.
Q: In the spa?
Trump: Yeah, people that work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world, at Mar a Lago and people were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone. And other people would come and complain this guy is taking people from the spa. I didn't know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, listen, we don't want you taking our people. Whether it was spa or not spa, I don't want them taking people and he was fine and then not too long after that, he did it again and I said, out of here.
Q: Mr. President, did one of those stolen persons, did that include Virginia Giuffre?
Trump: I don't know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah. He stole her.
It’s not hard to imagine what kind of complaints the club’s wealthy male clientele might have lodged about disappearing young, female employees.
Although it might seem surprising that Trump could remember one employee there for less than a month, decades later, Giuffre said she met Trump multiple times. And her father worked there for three years — chatting often with Trump and getting a letter of recommendation.
Here’s Giuffre, from a 2016 deposition:
Giuffre: I worked for Donald Trump, and I've met him probably a few times.
Q: When have you met him?
Giuffre: At Mar-a-Lago. My dad and him, I wouldn't say they were friends, but my dad knew him and they would talk all the time — well, not all the time but when they saw each other.
In a statement last week, Giuffre’s family responded to Trump’s recent remarks, saying, “It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey likes women on the younger side.”
In an interview last week, Giuffre’s brother, Sky Roberts, said, “she was preyed upon by Ghislaine Maxwell as well as many other predators out there, but she was preyed upon at Mar-a-Lago.”
And it was known at the club. In 2007, a source at Mar-a-Lago told the New York Post that Epstein “would use the spa to try to procure girls. But one of them, a masseuse about 18 years old, he tried to get her to do things.”
But if, as he suggested, Trump chewed out Epstein for recruiting Giuffre away from the spa, Epstein doesn’t seem to have been fazed by it. It’s not just that Epstein did it multiple times: About five months after Giuffre left Mar-a-Lago, Epstein paraded her around at Trump’s casino in Atlantic City.
The trip featured in a May 2016 deposition given by another Epstein victim, Johanna Sjoberg. In it, Sjoberg discussed a flight on Epstein’s plane in April 2001. Giuffre was still 17:
Q: Did you go into Atlantic City?
Sjoberg: Yes, went to one of Trump's casinos.
Q: Did you actually go into the casino itself?
Sjoberg: Yes.
Q: Do you recall Virginia — at the time, Virginia Roberts — being present with you?
Sjoberg: Yes.
...
Q: How did it come to be that you were in a casino in Atlantic City?
Sjoberg: We, as we were flying, Jeffrey said, Why don't you go sit in the cockpit to check out the landing? So we were sitting there, and the pilots told me to go back and tell him that we can't land in New York and that we were going to have to land in Atlantic City. Jeffrey said, Great, we'll call up Trump and we'll go to — I don't recall the name of the casino, but — we'll go to the casino.
…
Sjoberg: [Giuffre] was not going to be allowed to gamble, and so I spent time with her. We were just walking around. I don't remember what we did. Because either she didn't have an ID or she was too young. I don't remember specifically why. I just knew that she could not gamble.
Q: Okay. So you walked around with her in Atlantic City?
Sjoberg: Unh-huh. In the casino. We never left the casino.
Apparently, whatever fear of God Trump put into Epstein for recruiting Giuffre didn’t deter Epstein from bringing Giuffre with him onto Trump’s home turf.
Even to this day, the White House hasn’t settled on a narrative for Trump’s rift with Epstein.
Was it losing valuable staffers? Was it club members — and even fathers — complaining about their favorites disappearing? Or getting abused? Or was it Trump’s moral umbrage about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s predation?
The Washington Post reported years ago that it was none of the above. The rift, the paper said, arose from a contest to buy an estate they both wanted.
Epstein interviewer Michael Wolff now says it was Trump who first tipped off police about Epstein, not to save the victims, but to get revenge for their real-estate beef. “At that point,” Wolff said this week, “the investigation of Epstein began, and Epstein … believed that it began because Trump notified the police about what was going on at Epstein's house, which Trump was fully aware of, because he was a frequent visitor to the house.”2
Despite years to settle on a narrative, today Trump and the White House still can’t seem to get straight whether he bounced Epstein for recruiting girls at Mar-a-Lago, or for abusing them (being a “creep” or “creepy”). The White House has tried to erase sexual predation from the equation, saying that “creepy” referred to recruiting employees: “[T]aking employees is most definitely creepy.” (In fact, it’s fairly common in a wide range of fields. Trump himself has done it.)
But now, Trump appears to have tiptoed toward implying that the sexual aspects of his young, attractive employees defined them not just as Epstein victims but as Mar-a-Lago employees. That came last week, when he had a chance to clean up the two competing narratives — that he was pissed over Epstein’s professional poaching, or over the personal predation.
“Can you explain that discrepancy?” Trump was asked.
“Well,” Trump responded, “maybe they're the same thing.”
1 A South Florida Sun-Sentinel report on the firings is here, but a marked-up version has also been posted with no paywall here.
2 Last month I speculated, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that Trump might’ve been the unknown tipster who first pointed the cops at Epstein.
Jonathan Larsen is a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC — as co-creator of Up w/ Chris Hayes and senior producer for Countdown with Keith Olbermann — CNN, ABCNews, The Daily Show, Air America Radio, and TYT. You can follow his Substack here.
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Keep your kids away from MAGA, folks. Any house with a Trump-Vance flag is a place where pedophiles are welcome.
Who would let their daughter, niece, grand daughter, friend work at tRUMP spa.