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Donald and Melania Trump often have told the story about how they met at a Manhattan nightclub during New York Fashion Week in 1998.

Jeffrey Epstein has never figured into this origin story — but the financier and former Trump friend has tried to take credit for this historical encounter between the future president and first lady.

The New York Times, reporting on Trump’s long and difficult friendship with the newly jailed accused sex trafficker, said that Epstein was very eager to play up his connections to Trump after the 2016 election. One way Epstein did this was by “claiming that he was the one who introduced Trump to his third wife,” the Times reported.

Jeffrey Epstein claims he introduced President Trump to wife Melania as it is revealed the two … https://t.co/VyAwAlJSh0 via @MailOnline — Jackie Pelky (@jpelky41) July 10, 2019

But long before the election — and certainly while Trump was running for president — the Republican candidate and his associates tried to downplay his decades-long friendship with the hedge-fund manager. By 2015, Epstein was a registered sex offender who had served 13 months in jail, after being investigated in the mid-2000s for allegedly sexually abusing dozens of underage girls at his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

In Donald and Melania Trump’s version of how they met, they give credit to another person for their introduction: modeling agent Paolo Zampolli. The agent threw the party at the Kit Cat Club, where the then-celebrity real estate mogul spotted a beautiful 28-year-old model from Slovenia named Melania Knauss. At the time, Trump was still married, though separated from his second wife, Marla Maples. He also was on a date with another woman.

“I went crazy,” Trump told Larry King on CNN in 2005. “There was this great supermodel sitting next to Melania. I was supposed to meet this supermodel. They said, ‘Look, there’s so and so.’ I said, ‘Forget about her. Who is the one on the left?’ And it was Melania.”

Melania Trump similarly said she felt “great chemistry and energy” with her future husband, but she told Harpers Bazaar in 2016 that she refused to give him her phone number because she wasn’t sure how serious he was.

“I said, ‘I am not giving you my number; you give me yours, and I will call you,'” Melania Trump explained, saying she would have been put off if Donald Trump had given her just his business number. He won her trust by giving her four numbers, including to his private homes in New York and Mar-a-Lago.

Melania called, they went on a date, Donald soon got his divorce from Maples, and the two eventually married in 2005.

If Epstein made claims that he somehow brought Donald and Melania Trump together, he could argue that the timing made sense.

From the 1980s through the early 2000s, Trump and Epstein were Palm Beach neighbors and Manhattan high-flyers who shared an an appreciation for wealth and for being seen together at fabulous parties, especially if beautiful women were present, according to the New York Times and other publications.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump famously told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Epstein, Trump and Trump’s good friend Tom Barrack were “a set of nightlife Musketeers,” author Michael Wolff wrote in his book “Fire and Fury.”

“In those days, if you didn’t know Trump and you didn’t know Epstein, you were a nobody,” Harvard University Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told the Times. Dershowitz served on Epstein’s defense team when he was charged in 2006 with unlawful sex with minors.

The New York Times report recounts “an exclusive” 1992 party that took place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. Other than the two dozen or so women flown in to provide the entertainment, the only guests were Trump and Epstein, according to George Houraney, a Florida-based businessman who arranged the party at Trump’s request.

But years later, the friendship between Trump and Epstein turned “toxic,” possibly over a failed business deal, the Times reported. At one point, Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago “because Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club,” an attorney for one of Epstein’s alleged victims said in court documents, the Washington Post reported in 2017.

Now that Trump is president, his association with Epstein has turned out to be controversial in other ways. His labor secretary, Alex Acosta, is under fire because he was the U.S. attorney in Miami who signed off on the non-prosecution agreement that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to solicitation charges in 2008 and avoid a lengthy prison term.

After Epstein was arrested this past weekend and indicted on new federal sex trafficking charges, Trump this week tried to dismiss the idea that they were ever good friends, telling reporters: “Well, I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him; he was a fixture in Palm Beach. I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan. I was not – yeah, a long time ago. I’d say, maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.”