One of Donald Trump’s former employees is drawing a line connecting Jeffrey Epstein and the real estate mogul.
The former president and chief operating officer of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, Jack O’Donnell, told CNN Wednesday that he once had to reprimand Trump for bringing a 19-year-old into the casino with the child sex trafficker in tow.
The incident occurred while O’Donnell was atop the casino, between 1987 and 1990, according to the former C-suite executive.
“He frequently came down to Atlantic City, the two of them, to attend special events,” O’Donnell told the network. “In my mind, it was his best friend, you know, from really the time I was there for four years.”
Host Erin Burnett then rolled a 2019 clip of Trump in which the 45th president denied reported ties between himself and Epstein, claiming that he only knew the New York financier “like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” and that he was “not a fan” of Epstein’s.
But O’Donnell said that didn’t square with what he witnessed between the pair during his time running the popular casino.
“One incident that I think kind of proves their closeness and how much they hung out together—one time, a Monday morning, I came in and the commission was waiting, the inspectors were waiting in my office, and Donald and Jeffrey had come into the casino in the wee hours of Sunday morning, 1:00, 1:30 in the morning,” O’Donnell told CNN.
“You know, two buddies, they had three women with them, and the commission was waiting for me because they had determined that the women that they brought down were underaged to be in the casino,” O’Donnell continued. “And when I asked them how they knew that, by the way, one of them was the number three-ranked tennis player in the world, okay, and this guy happened to be a tennis fan, and he said, ‘Jack, I know she’s 19 years old.’”
