Jeffrey Epstein took a 14-year-old girl to Mar-a-Lago in 1994 and introduced her to Donald Trump, according to a newly released court document in the first tranche of the so-called “Epstein files”. The account, buried in hundreds of pages of material disclosed by the US Department of Justice under a new transparency law, adds a disturbing new detail to the long-scrutinised relationship between the late financier and the man who is now president of the United States.
A child at Mar-a-Lago
In the document, the girl is identified only as “Jane Doe”, a pseudonym for a woman who has previously testified that Epstein began abusing her when she was 13 and continued for years, aided by Ghislaine Maxwell. The filing describes how, during one of those encounters, Epstein brought Doe to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and home in Palm Beach, and introduced her to its owner.
During one of Doe’s encounters with Epstein, he took her to Mar-a-Lago where he introduced her to its owner, Donald J. Trump. Epstein then allegedly elbowed Trump and, referring to the teenager, asked: “This is a good one, right?”, prompting Trump to smile and nod as the two men chuckled.
The exchange left the girl feeling “uncomfortable” and confused, according to the complaint.
An encounter hiding in plain sight
Elements of this story have surfaced before. In 2021, a witness using the pseudonym Jane told the New York jury in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial that Epstein took her to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago when she was 14, though she did not allege any improper behaviour by Trump at that meeting. The newly released filing goes further in tone and detail, casting the Mar-a-Lago encounter as part of the lattice of abuse that Doe says defined her adolescence in Epstein’s orbit.
The document forms part of a broader FOIA-driven release that includes FBI records, civil complaints, internal correspondence and other material related to Epstein and his associates, much of it heavily redacted to shield victims’ identities. It is one of the few new papers in which Trump is not just listed as a name in an address book or guest log, but placed in the room with an identified underage victim.
Trump, Epstein and a selective memory
Trump has long sought to minimise his association with Epstein, describing him in 2019 as a “fixture in Palm Beach” whom he “was not a fan of” and claiming they fell out after Epstein “stole” young women who worked at Mar-a-Lago. That narrative sits uneasily alongside a well-documented social relationship: the pair were photographed together repeatedly in the 1990s and 2000s, including at Mar-a-Lago parties populated by young women.
Trump once quipped that Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”.
The new material joins a growing archive suggesting that Epstein saw Trump as a close friend and confidant. In private emails released separately in November, Epstein allegedly told an associate that Trump “knew about the girls” and spent hours with a victim at his house — claims Trump has not addressed in detail and which remain untested in court. No criminal charges have been brought against Trump in relation to Epstein’s trafficking operation, and Doe’s filing does not accuse him of directly abusing her.
Survivors’ voices and political stakes
For survivors, the new disclosures are not just about any one powerful man, but about whether their accounts will finally be heard in full. Advocates say the partial release has already forced a re-litigation of their experiences in the harsh glare of a hyper-polarised media environment, with some victims reporting renewed harassment and online abuse.
One journalist who has investigated “Jane Doe” writes that the photograph of her at roughly 14 is a stark reminder of how young she was: “She looked like a child,” the reporter noted, arguing that the Mar-a-Lago anecdote should be read in that light.
The political implications are equally fraught. Trump’s allies portray the files as a partisan fishing expedition aimed at tarring the president by association, while critics say the Mar-a-Lago account raises fresh questions about what he saw, what he understood, and why he did not act. With more documents still to come, the clash between demands for transparency and the state’s instinct to shield institutions — and reputations — is likely to intensify.
What remains unknown
Much of the official record remains obscured by redactions, sealed proceedings and private settlements, and key questions about who enabled Epstein and how remain unanswered. For Doe and the many other women whose adolescence ran through Epstein’s houses, the new files are less revelation than official confirmation of what they have been saying — often at great personal cost — for years.
What the Mar-a-Lago anecdote supplies is not a smoking gun but a snapshot: a child, a serial sex offender and a future president sharing a brief, unsettling moment in one of the most scrutinised properties in America. Whether the political system is willing — or able — to do more than look away from that image is a question the next rounds of disclosures will not answer on their own.