Trump Atlantic City Casino Boss Claims President, Epstein Were Best Friends
In February 2021, Trump Plaza in Atlantic City was partially brought down, yet the numerous tales of the Boardwalk casino resort endure, including speculations and chatter about the property's three-decade legacy.
Jack O'Donnell held the position of president and chief operating officer at the Atlantic City resort during its ownership by Donald Trump. O’Donnell, a habitual critic of his old employer, has consistently been on CNN making negative comments about the 45th and 47th presidents of the United States.
In his most recent appearance on the cable news channel, O’Donnell stated Wednesday night that Jeffrey Epstein was one of the billionaire’s nearest friends in the late 1980s and early 1990s. O'Donnell asserts that Epstein was one of the businessman’s “closest friends.”
"He frequently came down to Atlantic City, the two of them, to attend special events,” O’Donnell told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “In my mind, [Epstein] was his best friend.”
O’Donnell spent four years at Trump Plaza before resigning in April 1990 due to a conflict with the real estate tycoon from New York and Atlantic City. O'Donnell began working at Resorts along the Boardwalk before shifting to a writing career focused mainly on critiquing Trump.
O’Donnell’s full CNN appearance can be found here.
Epstein Claims
Trump has consistently admitted to being at least on good terms with Epstein, although he asserts he never went to the financier’s private island in the Caribbean, where numerous child sex crimes took place. Trump has never faced charges related to Epstein, but O’Donnell insists that his connections with the convicted child sex offender, who allegedly died by suicide in federal custody in August 2019, are far more significant than the president has admitted.
"I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” Trump said in the Oval Office in 2019. In 2002, however, long before Epstein’s nefarious life came to light, Trump said Epstein was “a terrific guy, a lot of fun to be with.”
O’Donnell claims Trump is attempting to alter historical facts. A critic of Trump claims that one early Sunday morning in the late 1980s, the future president and Epstein walked onto the Trump Plaza casino floor accompanied by three women whom gaming regulators suspected weren’t of age to be in the gaming area.
"I asked them [gaming commission officials] how they knew that. One of them was the No. 3 tennis player in the world, and this guy happened to be a tennis fan. He said, ‘Jack, I know she’s 19 years old,'” O’Donnell said.
“To get on a helicopter with a friend and three other people and fly down to Atlantic City… I mean, you can connect the dots. At 1:30 in the morning,” O’Donnell said.
Trump Denies Connections
O'Donnell asserts that Trump has minimized his connection to Epstein, while the president has minimized his connection to O'Donnell.
After O’Donnell published his book, “Trumped!” in May 1991, Trump said he “met the guy two or three times total. And this guy goes off and writes a book about me, like he knows me.”
“He’s a f***ing loser,” the future president continued. “I brought the guy in to work for me. It turns out he didn’t know that much about what he was doing.”
