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One day in 1993, the financier Jeffrey Epstein brought a model named Stacey Williams to Trump Tower in Manhattan to say hello to the building’s owner, Donald J. Trump. As he and Mr. Epstein chatted, Mr. Trump groped Ms. Williams, she said.
Ms. Williams, a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, made the accusation this week in an interview with The New York Times and on a Zoom event in which several women said they had been victims of sexual misconduct by Mr. Trump. The women, some of whom had previously made their allegations in public, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
The Times spoke to two of Ms. Williams’s friends, who said she had previously told them about the assault. Mr. Trump’s campaign denied on Friday that it ever happened, calling the allegations “unequivocally false” and politically motivated.
Ms. Williams is the latest of more than a dozen women to accuse the former president of sexual abuse and misconduct. Last year, for example, a New York jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, who said Mr. Trump raped her in the dressing room of a department store. Mr. Trump was also once caught on tape boasting about assaulting women.
At the time of the 1993 incident, Ms. Williams was dating Mr. Epstein, who would later be convicted as a sex offender and in 2019 killed himself in his jail cell after being arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. The two had met in 1992, at a party with models and Wall Street types at a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Ms. Williams said that she sat next to Mr. Epstein and that they talked about politics.
Later in 1992, Ms. Williams bumped into Mr. Epstein again at a Christmas party that Mr. Trump hosted at the Plaza Hotel. A relationship developed over the next several months.
Ms. Williams said Mr. Epstein appeared to consider Mr. Trump a close friend. “Jeffrey talked about Trump all the time,” she said.
Ms. Williams and Mr. Epstein would often go for walks. On one occasion in 1993, they were strolling down Fifth Avenue, and he suggested that they stop at Trump Tower to visit Mr. Trump. She said that they rode the elevator to the floor of Mr. Trump’s office and that he greeted them in a waiting area.
As Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein conversed, Mr. Trump pulled Ms. Williams toward him and touched her breasts, waist and buttocks, she said. “It was like an octopus,” she said. “I was utterly confused and frozen.”
After they left Trump Tower, Mr. Epstein “just berated me for allowing that to happen,” Ms. Williams said. She added that she often wondered whether she had been part of a bet or a challenge between the two men. “I definitely felt like I was a piece of meat delivered to that office as some sort of game.”
Ms. Williams said that she was not sure exactly when the incident occurred but that she remembered that the sun was shining and that she wasn’t wearing a coat.
Ms. Williams tried to push the memory out of her mind. Eventually, she said, she stopped seeing Mr. Epstein and avoided events where she might encounter Mr. Trump. But she said Mr. Trump continued to pursue her.
Not long after the incident, she said, her agent gave her a postcard with a photo of Mar-a-Largo, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla. There was a handwritten message on the back: “Your home away from home. Love, Donald.”
Allison Gutwillinger, a friend of Ms. Williams for nearly two decades, said Ms. Williams told her about the groping incident around the time that Mr. Trump announced his first run for president in 2015. Ms. Gutwillinger had noticed the postcard sitting on Ms. Williams’s kitchen counter.
“Why do you have a love note from Donald Trump?” Ms. Gutwillinger said she asked Ms. Williams. Ms. Williams then told her the story, Ms. Gutwillinger said.
Ms. Williams told another friend about the incident in 2006. The friend, who requested that her name not be published, said that Ms. Williams told her that she had dated Mr. Epstein and that she blamed him for serving her up to Mr. Trump to be groped.
The friend said Ms. Williams over the years had discussed going public but was worried about endangering her family.
Ms. Williams said in the interview that she decided to come forward with the story now because she had obliquely mentioned it in a documentary, “Beyond the Gaze,” about Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issues. The film premiered this month at a film festival in Woodstock, N.Y., and she figured her comments in the documentary were likely to attract attention. Since the videoconference on Monday, which was organized by a group called Survivors for Kamala, Ms. Williams has told her story to The Guardian and other media outlets.
“When you are a survivor, there is an evolution to the process of being able to disclose,” she said. “I have gone through that evolution.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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