A former swimsuit model who is sharing newly detailed allegations that Donald Trump groped her in the early 1990s had previously alluded to the incident in Facebook comments starting in 2020 and in an interview for a documentary recorded two years ago.
Stacey Williams, 56, said Thursday that she decided to tell her story in a call this week organized by allies of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris after she learned that the film about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue would become public right before the election and would include her interview about the alleged incident.
Williams alleges that Trump groped her in Trump Tower in New York City in 1993 after they were introduced by Jeffrey Epstein, the jet-setting financier who later killed himself while in jail on sex trafficking charges.
She said she contemplated coming forward during Trump’s first bid for president in 2016 but was worried about the ramifications for her then-teenage daughter. Now, her daughter is grown, and Williams said the documentary’s release was the catalyst for her to speak out.
‘HORRIFYING’
“What is the message we are sending by putting an adjudicated sexual abuser in the White House? That’s horrifying to me,” Williams told The Washington Post in an interview. “How can I let that happen on my watch?”
Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Thursday called Williams’s allegation “unequivocally false” and suggested it was pushed by the Harris campaign less than two weeks before the election. Leavitt alluded to the fact that Williams is a registered Democrat and climate activist who donated $25 to President Joe Biden before he dropped his reelection bid and donated $425 to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
“It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign,” Leavitt said.
Williams came forward as Harris supporters engaged in a last-minute effort to remind voters about the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against Trump in recent decades. Several of those claims involve chance encounters, in which Trump allegedly grabbed or kissed them without consent. The former president has called his accusers liars.
Last year, a jury found the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump has denied wrongdoing in that case and is appealing awards totaling more than $88 million.
Williams, who frequently appeared in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in the 1990s, described the alleged encounter with Trump and Epstein in a conference call Monday organized by a newly formed group called Survivors for Kamala that recently took out a full-page ad in the New York Times assailing Trump as a “proven abuser.”
“He put his hands all over my breasts,” she said, pausing for a moment as she choked up, in a video of the call provided to The Post. “My waist. My butt. … The hands were moving all over me, yet these two men were, like, smiling at one another and continuing on in their conversation.”
She said Epstein, whom she was casually dating at the time, berated her after they left the office because she “let” Trump touch her. As the humiliation set in, she said, she believed that the encounter was “some sort of sick bet … or twisted game” planned by the two men to degrade her.
Two friends confirmed that Williams told them years ago about the alleged incident, which was first reported by the Guardian. On the advice of her attorney, Williams submitted to a polygraph examination one week ago that concluded her description of what happened with Trump and Epstein was “not indicative of deception,” according to results shared with The Post.
“In my experience, so many women who come forward are not believed, and we wanted to make clear that Stacey was assaulted,” said Williams’s attorney, Mariann Wang. “She took a polygraph, she cleared it, and she is telling the truth.”
Between 2020 and 2024, she either indirectly or directly accused Trump of sexual assault in at least five Facebook posts and comments, according to a Post review of her account.
Her allegation is also briefly mentioned in a new documentary celebrating the founding editor of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. In Beyond the Gaze, which premiered last Friday at the Woodstock Film Festival in New York, Williams talks about the hazards of the modeling industry.
“When you’ve almost been raped a few times and roofied, and beaten on the streets of Paris and had photographers exposing themselves to you, and the former president groped you in front of Jeffrey Epstein, and like it goes on and on and on, there’s [a lot] of baggage there, so there’s a lot to sort through,” Williams told the director in the 2022 interview at her home, according to a transcript provided to The Post by the film’s producer.
Williams said she had no control over the timing of the film’s release or even if her comment would be included. A representative for the film, Steven Beeman, said Williams’s comment about the former president was included “as it speaks to the overall themes in the film about how women can be treated and objectified.” He said the film will not be released to the general public until possibly next year.
Williams’s story, gleaned from the conference call and interview, begins with her growing up in a small Pennsylvania town and getting “discovered” by a former model while hanging out at the mall.
‘LONG, LUCRATIVE CAREER’
During what she described as a “long, lucrative career” that took her to New York and Europe, she appeared in Sports Illustrated from 1992 to 1998. She was later inducted into its Swimsuit Hall of Fame, alongside supermodels Tyra Banks, Christie Brinkley and Heidi Klum, according to the magazine, which described her as “a brunette stunner.”
She said in the video that she met Epstein in 1992 at a swanky Manhattan restaurant where there were “models there and the usual men, hangers on.” She and Epstein bonded over Democratic politics, and they met again at Trump’s Christmas party at the Plaza Hotel. They dated occasionally for a few months, she said, and Epstein would often mention Trump.
“It became clear to me that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,” she said.
Williams account of Trump and Epstein’s friendship is borne out in photos and video footage from that time. The two men traveled in the same social circles in the late 1980s and 1990s – jetting from New York to Palm Beach together, partying at Mar-a-Lago with cheerleaders and models, and dining together at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.
TRUMP ON EPSTEIN: ‘TERRIFIC GUY’
“Terrific guy,” Trump said of Epstein in a New York magazine interview in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
After Epstein’s arrest in 2019 on sex trafficking charges, Trump sought to distance himself, saying from the Oval Office, “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.” Epstein hanged himself in his jail cell later that year.
Williams said she was 24 years old when she and Epstein were walking down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and he suggested they stop to say hi to Trump. She said shortly after they got off the elevator, Trump greeted her by putting his hands all over her body while continuing to chat with Epstein.
After they left Trump Tower, she said, she was confused by Epstein’s anger toward her. She blamed herself, she said, in part because she prided herself on being a “tough model” who spoke up when men harassed her or her peers.
She said she later received a postcard from Trump sent by courier from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach that said “Your home away from home.” Williams provided photos of both sides of the postcard to The Post, which was signed “Donald” in what looked like his trademark black Sharpie pen. The Post was unable to verify its authenticity.
A longtime friend of Williams, Allison Gutwillinger, said she was at Williams’s house in Los Angeles in 2015, just days after Trump launched his first presidential campaign, when she saw the postcard sitting on the kitchen counter.
‘DISGUSTED LOOK’
“She had this disgusted look on her face,” Gutwillinger said. “She said, ‘He’s vile. And he groped me at Trump Tower.’”
Soon after, she said, Williams started telling her and other friends that Epstein had “served her” to Trump. “Trump announcing his candidacy opened the floodgates,” said Gutwillinger, who moved to Germany at that time. “It was never a question that she wouldn’t be telling the truth or even exaggerating.”
Another friend of Williams, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she said she feared retaliation from Trump supporters, said they met through a mutual friend in Los Angeles in 2006. She said Williams told her over coffee that she regretted dating Epstein and said he had facilitated her being groped by Trump.
A few weeks ago, Williams told her about the upcoming documentary and that she was preparing for blowback from the Trump campaign.
Her jabs at Trump on Facebook went at least as far back as 2020. “He’s always been as dumb as a post – even while sexually assaulting people,” she said in one 2021 post.
The recent conference call organized by Harris supporters also included Anita Hill, who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court, and Ashley Judd, the first of several actresses to accuse Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. Thomas denied wrongdoing and was confirmed; Weinstein faces a retrial on sex crime charges after his conviction was overturned, and he was indicted last month on additional assault charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
“We have this cumulative number of women who have come out and given me a great example, and I felt now it’s my turn,” Williams said.
Trump has been accused by at least 17 other women of sexual assault or misconduct dating back to the 1990s. Two of those women testified at Carroll’s trial and appeared in a recent ad paid for by an anti-Trump political committee. Williams appeared on CNN on Thursday night.
“It takes a lot of guts,” said Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, “to go public with an allegation of sexual misconduct against Donald Trump.”