scandals Updated Aug. 13, 2024
What the Jeffrey Epstein Documents Reveal About Donald Trump
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/epstein-documents-trump.html

Speculation about which famous and powerful figures would be tarnished by
the Jeffrey Epstein scandal heated up at the end of last year when a judge
ordered that court documents from a years-old case related to the disgraced
financier be made public. And while Epstein�s black book contained a
staggering number of A-listers and high-society pals, perhaps the biggest
question surrounding the court documents� unsealing was what they would
reveal about Donald Trump.

The hype escalated on the afternoon of January 3, 2024, when Mark Epstein
said that three years before his brother died in jail while awaiting trial
on sex-trafficking charges, he told him he knew secrets that could blow up
the presidential election between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

�Here�s a direct quote: �If I said what I know about both candidates,
they�d have to cancel the election.� That�s what Jeffrey told me in 2016,�
Mark Epstein told the New York Post.

Wild stuff! But Mark Epstein said he didn�t know what information his
brother was referring to. And while Trump and Bill Clinton (who have both
denied any Epstein-related wrongdoing) were mentioned in both old court
documents and those released in early 2024, there was no smoking gun.

Yet questions about Trump�s ties to Epstein persist, as the convicted sex
offender is now a conspiracy-theory fixture and more Epstein files could
still be unsealed. Here�s a running list of the new revelations and what we
have already learned about Trump�s relationship with Epstein.
What do we know about Trump�s friendship with Epstein?

Trump began palling around with Epstein in the late �80s, but the depth of
their friendship is a subject of debate.

Footage unearthed by NBC News in 2019 shows the two men joking around and
ogling women during a party at Trump�s Mar-a-Lago resort in 1992.

Trump and Epstein were also photographed together in 1992 and 1997. The now
famous image below shows Trump and then-girlfriend Melania Knauss partying
with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago on February 12, 2000.
Trump, Knauss, Epstein, & Maxwell At Mar-A-Lago
Photo: Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images

In 2002, the mogul told New York, �I�ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific
guy. 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. No doubt
about it � Jeffrey enjoys his social life.�
Did Trump ever fly on Epstein�s plane?

Yes. Flight logs show Trump was on Epstein�s plane multiple times, though
he has denied it.

Trump flew on Epstein�s private jet at least seven times between 1993 and
1997, according to flight logs made public during various court
proceedings. As the Miami Herald reported in 2021, Trump was accompanied by
his then-wife Marla Maples and two of his young children on some of these
flights:

The flights were all between Palm Beach and New York City airports,
with the June 1994 flight stopping at Ronald Reagan Washington Washington
National Airport between Palm Beach and New York.

A woman named Marla, apparently Trump�s then-wife Marla Maples, is
listed as joining him on the June 1994 flight, along with a Tiffany,
apparently their then-infant daughter, and a nanny. Trump�s son Eric is
listed as joining him on an August 1995 flight between Palm Beach and New
York.

Nevertheless, in a January 2024 Truth Social post, Trump claimed �I was
never on Epstein�s Plane, or at his �stupid� Island.� There is no evidence
that he ever visited Little Saint James, Epstein�s property in the U.S.
Virgin Islands.

Bizarrely, it seems Trump unwittingly used a plane formerly own Epstein
during the 2024 campaign. The Miami Herald reported that the Trump campaign
used a blue Gulfstream jet formerly owned by Epstein to travel to several
campaign fundraisers after Trump�s private jet experienced mechanical
problems on Friday, August 9, 2024:

Trump, enroute on his own private plane to a campaign event in Bozeman,
Montana last week, unexpectedly landed in Billings because of mechanical
problems, a campaign spokeswoman said. He and part of his staff then flew
on a small charter to Bozeman for a rally Friday night. The next day, he
switched to another larger Gulfstream with a serial number that matches a
plane once owned by Epstein, his former neighbor in Palm Beach, the
campaign confirmed.

�The campaign had no awareness that the charter plane had been owned by
Mr. Epstein,� the spokeswoman said, adding that the charter was
commissioned by a vendor that has often been used by the campaign. �We
heard about the former owner through the media.�

Epstein�s old plane is now owned by Threshold Aviation Group, an Ontario,
California-based company that offers private charter service. The Herald
noted that the plane used by the Trump campaign was not the infamous
�Lolita Express�; Epstein replaced that plane around 2017 and it �has since
been destroyed.� A Trump campaign official told the New York Times that it
has used the private jet vendor for years, and will try to avoid using
Epstein�s old plane in the future.
What�s going on with Katie Johnson and the allegations against Trump?

In 2016 a woman who went by the pseudonyms Katie Johnson and Jane Doe in
legal filings accused Trump of raping her in 1994, when she was 13, during
an orgy held at Epstein�s home in Manhattan. She accused Epstein of raping
her as well.

Three suits were filed over the same allegations; the first was dismissed
for failure to properly state a claim, and the other two were voluntarily
dismissed. The third case was withdrawn just days before the 2016 election,
and the accuser canceled a press conference at the last minute. Her
attorney, Lisa Bloom, said the woman had received death threats and, �She
has decided she is too afraid to show her face � She is in terrible fear.�

The circumstances around the case were bizarre, as Vox summarized at the
time:

It was the end of an incredibly strange case that featured an anonymous
plaintiff who had refused almost all requests for interviews, two anonymous
corroborating witnesses whom no one in the press had spoken to, and a
couple of seriously shady characters � with an anti-Trump agenda and a
penchant for drama � who had aggressively shopped the story around to media
outlets for over a year.

Those shady characters � a former reality-TV producer who calls himself
Al Taylor and a Never Trump conservative activist named Steve Baer � had
been mostly unsuccessful in getting the media to bite. There are a few very
good reasons for that, which the Huffington Post�s Ryan Grim succinctly
summed up: Taylor and Baer have been really sketchy about the whole thing,
and since the accuser is anonymous, journalists can�t do anything to verify
her claims. The only journalist who has actually interviewed Johnson, Emily
Shugerman at Revelist, came away confused and even doubting whether Johnson
really exists.

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 other women
over the years; those women were not underage, and their allegations did
not involve Epstein. In May 2023, a federal jury found Trump civilly liable
for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her
when he denied her rape allegation in 2022. He was ordered to pay Carroll
$5 million in damages and is currently appealing the verdict.
When did Trump cut ties with Epstein?

Trump has claimed that he and Epstein had a �falling out� years before the
financier was first arrested in Palm Beach in 2005 after being accused of
paying a 14-year-old girl for sex. (Though dozens of other underage girls
accused Epstein of sexual abuse at the time, because of a 2008 plea deal,
he served only 13 months in jail in a work-release program.)

There are reports that a battle over a choice Palm Beach property ended the
Trump-Epstein friendship, but it�s unclear what exactly came between the
two. Days after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in
2019, Trump downplayed their relationship while speaking to reporters in
the Oval Office. He said he merely �knew him like everybody in Palm Beach
knew him,� adding, �I had a falling out with him. I haven�t spoken to him
in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.�
Why were more Epstein documents released this year?

The newly unsealed documents are from Virginia Roberts Giuffre�s settled
2015 defamation lawsuit against Epstein�s former girlfriend Ghislane
Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison term for trafficking
women and girls for Epstein to sexually abuse. Giuffre is one of dozens of
women, some as young as 14, whom Epstein allegedly abused.

Some documents were blacked out or sealed over privacy concerns when the
suit was settled in 2017. But in December 2023, federal judge Loretta
Preska ruled that most of the records would be made public since most of
the names were already public. The first 40 exhibits, totaling 943 pages,
were released on January 3, 2024. Another 17 documents were unsealed on
January 8. Seven more documents were released on January 9. (Read about the
other figures listed in the new Epstein documents here.)