Stacey Williams says Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein ‘coordinated’ groping incident

Former model Stacey Williams said she thought Donald Trump groped her to show off to her then boyfriend, the late financier and sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, when the couple dropped by to visit him in Trump Tower in New York in 1993.

In her first detailed, on-camera interview since discussing assault allegations with the Guardian, Williams late on Thursday told CNN that she recalled the former president and Epstein smiled at each other as the property mogul was feeling her up, which gave her the impression the entire incident was a “coordinated” game between the two men.

Her account comes just weeks before the presidential election, in which Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris are essentially tied, according to polls. Trump has denied Williams’s accounts.

“The second he was in front of me, he pulled me into him and his hands were just on me and didn’t come off,” Williams told CNN, echoing her account to the Guardian.

“Then the hands started moving on the side of my breasts, on my hips, back down to my butt, back up, sort of – they were just on me the whole time, and I froze,” she said.

Williams briefly dated Epstein in the 1990s. At the time, she told the Guardian, she and Epstein were walking through Manhattan when he suggested they visit Trump at his Trump Tower complex on Fifth Avenue.

The two were good friends, she said. Trump later distanced himself from Epstein after the financier was convicted of being a sex offender in Florida, several years before he was arrested in New York on federal sex offenses in 2019 and killed himself while in custody awaiting trial.

She added, as she did in her recounting to the Guardian, that she believes now that the incident was planned by Epstein and Trump all along. When they encountered Trump, she alleges he immediately grabbed and groped her, right in front of her boyfriend.

“This context made no sense because the hands were on me and he and Jeffrey just kept talking and looking at each other and smiling,” she said. Later, when thecouple left, she said Epstein berated her for allowing Trump to touch her, and that the whole incident left her confused and sick.

“I just had this really sickening feeling that it was coordinated, I was rolled in there like a piece of meat in some kind of weird twisted game,” she told CNN. “I felt a wave of shame,” she said, and took the memory of the incident, “put it in a little box inside of me, turned the key, locked it.”

Williams told the Guardian this week in an exclusive first interview that she got the sense, at the time, that Trump and Epstein were “really, really good friends”. Williams also shared an undated postcard that she said Trump later sent her, with a view of Palm Beach, Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion.

“Your home away from home,” the postcard read. “Love, Donald”.

Trump’s campaign, responding to CNN, said Williams’ allegations were a “fake story [that] was contrived by Kamala Harris’ campaign,” to distract from a second incident, in which Doug Emhoff is accused of slapping a former girlfriend. A campaign spokesperson for Harris, the US vice president, earlier this month denied the allegation against her husband.

Williams’ account will add to a long list of women who have accused Trump of sexual assault, ranging from writer E Jean Carroll, who was eventually vindicated by a civil jury that found Trump liable for sexual abuse, to his ex-wife, Ivana Trump, who accused the former president of raping her, in a divorce deposition.

Williams said she gained the courage to come forward about the incident following the release of a recent documentary about the magazine Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issues, called Beyond the Gaze.

“I can’t control when a documentary comes out, I can’t control its premiering two weeks before the election,” Williams told CNN. Although Williams had alluded to the incident in social media comments, she had never told her story in detail until this week.

“It takes a lot of guts, and you have to really prepare yourself for that onslaught, and I’m ready now,” she said. “Just bring it.”

• Information and support for anyone affected by sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html