The bankruptcy auction of a Palm Beach oceanfront estate in 2004 is often cited as the reason President Donald Trump fell out with the late convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein, a split that happened more than a decade before the disgraced financier died in a New York jail cell.
A dozen years before he first won the White House, Trump — then a real estate developer — emerged victorious in the bankruptcy auction, in which the prize was a 6-acre oceanfront estate on a stretch of coastal road that locals sometimes refer to as the North End’s Billionaire’s Row.
A representative of Trump bid against two others in the West Palm Beach courtroom, including a man Trump had known socially and sometimes saw at his Mar-a-Lago Club — Epstein, a part-time Palm Beacher who in July 2019 would plead not guilty to new federal sex-trafficking charges involving teenage girls in New York. Authorities said he committed suicide by hanging in August of that year.
Up for grabs in the 2004 bankruptcy auction was the North County Road estate owned by then nursing-home magnate Abe Gosman, who died in 2013. Trump submitted the winning bid of $41.35 million bid for the property, which would prove to have another connection to Epstein.
The estate was formerly owned by retail magnate Leslie Wexner, who at the time of Epstein’s 2019 arrest was the only publicly identified client of Epstein’s eponymous financial advisory firm.
Wexner, a billionaire, is chairman and CEO of Ohio-based L Brands Inc., which owns Victoria’s Secret, among other brands. His business relationship with Epstein dated to the 1980s, according to multiple published reports. On July 15, 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported, Wexner sent a memo to employees of L Brands in which he said he had severed his relationship with Epstein — his former personal money manager — nearly a dozen years prior.
Back in 1988, Wexner had sold the mostly vacant land in the 500 block of North County Road for $12 million to Gosman, who then completed the mansion that Wexner had designed for the property and filled it with his art collection. Gosman later hit hard times, declared bankruptcy and lost his mansion to Trump.
The French-style estate was built in 1990 and had 64,000 square feet in the main house, of which 35,000 was air-conditioned. Additional structures included a tennis pavilion, a pool house and a staff apartment.
After the auction — in which Trump participated by phone— Trump said he planned to keep the property intact. He said the makeover will involve “a lot of money,” the Palm Beach Daily News reported, but Trump declined to guess how much.
“My initial feeling is to utilize the existing house and create the second greatest house in America, Mar-a-Lago being the first. It’s the finest piece of land in Florida and probably in the U.S.,” Trump said at the time.
Trump carried out renovations — mostly cosmetic — to the mansion before selling the estate in 2008 for what was then documented in courthouse records as $95 million to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. The sale set what was then a Palm Beach residential price record.
Rybolovlev in 2016 demolished the house and subdivided the land into three 2-acre lots, which ended up selling in separate transactions for a combined $108 million. Three mansions have since been built on the property, one of which was developed on speculation and sold in February 2022 for a recorded $122.7 million, which at the time was a sold-price record in Palm Beach. One of the developers of that mansion was Mark Pulte, today of Boca Raton-based Mark Timothy Inc. Pulte knew the property well, as he had been one of the unsuccessful bidders in the 2004 auction.
A blow-by-blow account of the bidding was reported by The Washington Post in a story published in July 2019 that also detailed how Epstein and Trump “swam in the same social pool. They were neighbors in Florida. They jetted from LaGuardia to Palm Beach together. They partied at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and dined at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.”
In 2002, The Washington Post reported, Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” who was “a lot of fun to be with.” Photos and videos taken in 1992, 1997 and 2000 depict Epstein and Trump posing together at Mar-a-Lago, according to The Washington Post.
But on July 7, 2019, the day after Epstein was arrested at his New York home, Trump was asked in the Oval Office about the financier. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” Trump responded.
The Washington Post’s 2019 report also suggested that Trump and Epstein’s friendship dissolved as a result of bad blood generated by the auction of the estate — known as Maison de l’Amitie, of “House of Friendship” — in the 500 block of North County Road.
“Trump has not said why their relationship ruptured,” the Washington Post reported, and quoted the president as saying: “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”
More recently, Trump has found himself embroiled in a controversy centered on Epstein, as his supporters and others have clamored for U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to release files related to the Epstein case, especially a potential “client list” the financier may have kept.
Addressing an expanding backlash to his administration’s handling of the case, Trump on July 17 offered a concession to critics who want him to disclose more documents, USA Today reported. The president asked Bondi to “seek the release” of grand jury testimony from Epstein’s legal proceedings, according to USA today.
The auction of the old Gosman property occurred about two years before Epstein was initially booked in Florida in 2006 after police said he had sex with underage girls. Epstein, police said, had paid for massage sessions at his Palm Beach home on El Brillo Way, which has since been demolished and replaced by a new mansion.
In 2008, Epstein entered a plea deal that led to his conviction on two state felony counts that included solicitation of a minor. The plea deal let him avoid harsher federal charges similar to the ones he faced in 2019.
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Reporting by Zac Anderson of USA Today contributed to this story. Portions of this story previously appeared in the Palm Beach Daily News.
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Remembering the auction that pitted Trump against Jeffrey Epstein for a Palm Beach estate
Reporting by Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
