Remembering the auction that pitted Trump against Jeffrey Epstein for a Palm Beach estate

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.

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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.

A since demolished estate in the 500 block of North County Road in Palm Beach was purchased at a bankruptcy auction for $41.35 million in 2004 by Donald Trump, years before he was first elected President in 2016. Palm Beach Daily News File Photo.

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.

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https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/local/2025/07/21/remembering-how-trump-was-pitted-against-epstein-in-palm-beach-auction/85314440007/