Child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein said he was at Trump Tower five days after Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory.
If he were telling the truth in a newly released email, it would appear to further undermine the president’s claim that the pair had not associated since the mid-2000s.
One day after bombshell emails revealed Trump may have known more about the sex offender’s conduct than he has acknowledged, correspondence between Epstein and a female associate has raised fresh questions about the president’s relationship with the disgraced financier.
The emails, sent in 2016, show Epstein and former Microsoft executive Linda Stone discussing Trump’s chances of victory against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
In two separate emails sent on September 25, Stone asks Epstein, “will you have a cabinet position”—presumably in a Trump administration—followed up with, “do you think he can win?”
Epstein replies a day later, saying: “too far to tell, we will know much more come Oct 15.”
Then, on Sunday, November 13, five days after Trump’s surprise election win, Stone writes to Epstein again, asking him, “You still in Paris?”
Epstein replies: “trump tower.”
Located on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Trump Tower was Trump’s personal home until 2019, before he officially changed his address to Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
The then Republican candidate used it as his base during his first presidential campaign and also spent time there immediately after his 2016 election victory before transitioning to the White House.
Security was dramatically increased in the wake of the election, and some visitors were able to use separate entrances to avoid the parade of reporters and fans through the public atrium and lobby.
While the latest emails do not explain what Epstein was doing at Trump Tower that day, they cast further doubt on the timeline the president has long given to distance himself from the child sex offender.
Another email released this week sparked questions about whether Trump and Epstein may have been together for Thanksgiving in 2017, with the sex offender naming the president when asked where he was spending the holiday and “who else is down there.”
Epstein replied: “david fizel. hanson. trump.”
Trump was serving his first term as president when Epstein was arrested in 2019 and charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy. Asked about their relationship at the time, he told reporters that Epstein was “a fixture of Palm Beach” in Florida, and “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him.”
But in terms of when they last spoke, Trump added: “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.”
This suggests the pair cut ties around 2004, a few years before Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 for soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution from a minor as part of a sweetheart plea deal.
Asked about the latest revelations, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Daily Beast: “These emails prove literally nothing.
“Liberal outlets are desperately trying to use this Democrat distraction to talk about anything other than Democrats getting utterly defeated by President Trump in the shutdown fight,” she said.
“We won’t be distracted, and the entire Administration will continue fulfilling the promises the President was elected on, including Making America Affordable Again.”
Behind the scenes, however, the White House has been in damage control.
On Wednesday, administration officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, even met in the Situation Room with Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who is one of several Republicans wanting the Justice Department to release its trove of Epstein files.
The aim, according to well-placed sources, was part of a bid to convince Boebert not to support a discharge petition that could pave the way for the full suite of files to be released next week.
However, this effort ultimately failed, with Boebert joining fellow Republicans Thomas Massie, Nancy Mace, and Marjorie Taylor Greene in supporting the petition.
The explosive emails released this week were part of a cache of more than 23,000 documents produced by Epstein’s estate and handed over to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The president did not receive or send any of the messages, nor has he been accused of any criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein or his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
But the messages are certain to exacerbate tensions about the administration’s handling of the Epstein files and the decision by Trump’s Department of Justice to renege on a pledge to fully release them.
In one email to Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, which was dated April 2, 2011, Epstein tells her: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. (REDACTED) spent hours at my house with him , he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”
In another email, written to author Michael Wolff on January 31, 2019, Epstein wrote: “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”
Trump responded to the revelations in an angry tirade on social media.
“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” he wrote on Wednesday.
“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”
