In a televised interview with CNN on July 16, 2025, Jack O’Donnell, former president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, reported witnessing Donald J. Trump and convicted rape trafficker Jeffrey Epstein escorting three teenage girls onto the casino floor in the late 1980s, a direct violation of state law. Instead of facing penalties, Trump received a private warning, and the incident disappeared from public record.
State Law Broken, No Consequences
O’Donnell said the incident took place during the peak of Trump’s Atlantic city casino empire. Security flagged the group after Trump and Epstein used VIP access to bring three visibly young girls onto the main gambling floor. Under New Jersey law, no one under 21 is allowed in gaming areas.
According to O’Donnell, one of the girls was later identified by a state gaming inspector as a then-19-year-old ranked among the top three female tennis players in the world, known in sporting circles at the time to be affiliated with IMG Academy in Florida.
Despite the clear legal violation, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission opened an internal inquiry but issued no public sanction, instead delivering a private warning to Trump. O’Donnell reports that he personally relayed the message to Trump, who brushed it off. The Trump–Epstein duo frequented the casino during this period, often entering together through VIP-access routes to avoid scrutiny.
“He didn’t care,” O’Donnell said. “He knew he was above the law, and acted like it.”
Speculation Around a Teenage Tennis Star
It is speculated that the female tennis player is Gabriela Sabatini, then a 19-year-old rising star in women’s tennis who had recently broken into the world’s top three and would go on to win the 1990 US Open. Sabatini, originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, was “dating” Donald Trump during that period, a claim substantiated by multiple press reports, including her own public acknowledgment of the “relationship.” Donald Trump was 43 years old when he briefly dated 19-year-old Gabriela Sabatini around June to July 1989.
While gossip outlets reported on the relationship at the time and Sabatini acknowledged knowing Trump in past interviews, her presence at the Atlantic City casino has not been confirmed. The identification remains speculative and based on circumstantial evidence, including her proximity to both Epstein and IMG Academy and her known relationship with Trump during the same period.
The age gap and power imbalance, between a teenage athlete and a twice-divorced real estate tycoon more than two decades her senior, show’s Trumps inclination to prey on teen girls.
Two Unidentified “Models”
The other two girls, O’Donnell said, were introduced to casino staff as “models.” Security guards described them as “barely out of high school.” Neither has been identified.
At the time, Trump was running Trump Model Management, an agency later shut down amid reports that it was trafficking young foreign models (some as young as 14) on tourist visas, improperly coached them to lie to immigration officers, and forced them to pay expensive rents and fees, often leaving them financially exploited. Jamaican model Alexia Palmer filed a 2014 lawsuit claiming she was recruited at age 17 and paid only $3,880 over three years while Trump Model Management claimed she would make $75,000 annually. She described her treatment as akin to “modern-day slavery”.
The agency operated in the mold of Elite Model Management, founded by Trump associate John Casablancas, a man accused of serial child rape and impregnating at least one 15 year old child model. Casablancas operated child-targeted modeling events, and industry coverage confirms Trump appeared at some of these, including Look of the Year competitions, alongside Casablancas and producers of the events. Trump frequently praised Casablancas, publicly called him a friend, and even entrusted him to privately coach Ivanka Trump on modeling.
According to eyewitnesses and reporting by The Guardian, Ivanka caught Casablancas’s attention during a 1991 event. He invited her to his private dinner table, at age 10, while other models were seated elsewhere. She began modeling for Elite Model Management at 14 years old.
Repeated Access to Teens and Children
Multiple former models, including Patty Owen, Barbara Pilling, Heather Braden, Shayna Love, and Ell Nesso, have accused Trump, Epstein, and Casablancas of luring young girls to parties in New York and Florida between the late 1980s and 1990s. These events took place in private mansions, penthouses, and hotel suites and routinely included alcohol, drugs, and high-profile older men.
The girls were often told the events were opportunities to network or build modeling careers. Instead, many say they were groomed, raped, exploited, and pressured into silence. Witnesses report seeing Trump and Epstein together at multiple such gatherings. These events, according to firsthand accounts, were deliberately orchestrated to give powerful men unfettered access to vulnerable teens and children under the pretext of professional opportunities. The overlapping involvement of Trump, Epstein, and Casablancas points to a trafficking network that facilitated access to teens and children, to high-profile individuals.
Casino Regulators Looked the Other Way
Despite the serious nature of the violation, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement never issued a fine, citation, or public statement about the incident. O’Donnell’s claim that Trump and Epstein used VIP tunnels and private entrances to avoid scrutiny fits with long-standing reports of how Trump’s Atlantic City casinos operated under special treatment.
Trump’s businesses were known for cozy relationships with regulators, campaign donors, and contractors with ties to organized crime. These alliances created an environment where high rollers and politically connected figures routinely escaped accountability—even when teens and children were involved.
Renewed Pressure to Release Records
O’Donnell’s revelations have intensified demands for the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to release sealed records from the Trump Plaza era. Advocacy groups and some state legislators are calling for a full investigation into why the incident was buried, and who helped keep it quiet.
Until now, media coverage of Trump’s links to Epstein has focused largely on Mar-a-Lago and Manhattan. But the Atlantic City incident shows their relationship ran deeper and began earlier than previously acknowledged. It also shows that the mechanisms shielding them, wealth, influence, and regulatory complicity, were already in full operation.
State officials have not yet commented on whether they will revisit the case. Legal experts say criminal charges may be limited due to statutes of limitation, but the public release of investigative files could finally expose the networks that allowed teens and children to be exploited without consequences and who enabled it.
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