Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime assistant said she personally arranged multiple phone calls between the disgraced pedophile financier and Donald Trump in the years before he became president.
Lesley Groff, 59, who worked for Epstein for roughly 18 years starting in 2001, made the disclosure during a closed-door interview Tuesday with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee as part of its ongoing Epstein investigation.
Two Democrats on the panel relayed her account afterward. Rep. Stephen Lynch said Groff referred to a period before Trump entered the White House when she set up several calls between the two men, as reported by Politico. Rep. Melanie Stansbury told the outlet that Groff said “she arranged calls for them to connect,” but the calls were infrequent.
Trump has insisted he severed ties with Epstein years before the financier’s 2019 death, and he has never been charged with any misconduct. Democrats have repeatedly questioned whether the administration buried evidence of a longer relationship.
The White House dismissed that line of questioning. Deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement that Trump “has been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein,” pointing to released documents, cooperation with the committee’s subpoena, and his signing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Groff used the interview to put distance between herself and Epstein’s crimes. In her prepared opening statement, provided to the Daily Beast by her attorney, Michael Bachner, she said the man who employed her “was a monster,” describing how “for 18 years, I worked for Dr. Jekyll but was never permitted to see the true Mr. Hyde.”
She called Epstein “a master manipulator and deceiver” who walled off his secret life from his legitimate one. She said the massage appointments she booked were, as far as she knew, with legitimate therapists, and that “none of these women or anyone else ever told me they were minors; or that they were sexually abused.”
Groff, who was paid a starting salary of $50,000 and based at Manhattan’s Helmsley Palace hotel, said Epstein had no reason to confide in her. She told the panel she had been the target of death threats and harassment, and that her 21-year-old son’s life had been in turmoil for seven years.
Not everyone believed the longtime Epstein assistant’s claims. Lynch told reporters that Groff’s position was “highly inconsistent,” questioning how she could maintain she saw nothing improper after arranging young women for massages with a registered sex offender. Survivor Sharlene Rochard told CNN that hearing those closest to Epstein claim ignorance does not match her own experience.
Groff was named an unindicted co-conspirator in Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution agreement but was never charged. She told the committee the label remains her “scarlet letter.”
Oversight Chair James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, described her as “very forthcoming” and said he hopes to hold a public hearing with Epstein’s victims.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
