Donald Trump's past ties with Jeffrey Epstein are under scrutiny after the US president slammed a Wall Street Journal report that he sent a lewd letter to the infamous sex offender as "fake news." In 2003,

A former Jeffrey Epstein employee said that she told the F.B.I. in 1996 and 2006 about what she considered a troubling encounter with Donald J. Trump.

Here is a timeline of Epstein and Trump’s relationship. Though it is not known when Epstein and Trump first met, Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that he had known Epstein for 15 years, which would date back to the late 1980s. “Terrific guy,” Trump said in the 2002 interview.