The Department of Justice released thousands of new Jeffrey Epstein documents early Tuesday, including many that mention President Donald Trump. To that end, the DOJ added a striking caveat in the release:
“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the official DOJ statement says. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
The statement adds that the department’s “commitment to the law and transparency” compelled it to release the documents, which include “legally required protections” for Epstein’s victims.
The documents include a variety of references to Trump, his properties and his friendships with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Some are from media reports, while others focus on Trump directly.
The White House did not respond to an immediate request for comment. Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing due to his associations with Epstein, and he has said the two fell out years before Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in 2019.
Epstein appeared to reference Trump in a 2019 letter to the physician Larry Nassar, who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing multiple girls. Epstein wrote that “our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”
The letter was postmarked on Aug. 13, 2019, three days after Epstein died by suicide while in federal custody. Epstein alluded to his imminent death in the letter, joking that he had “taken the ‘short route’ home.
One document, a January 2020 email from an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan, alleged that flight logs showed Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane “many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).” The attorney, whose name was redacted, said Trump boarded “at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which [Ghislaine] Maxwell was also present.” The flight logs were revealed in “phase one” of the Epstein files’ release in February this year.
Another document revealed that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, was subpoenaed in 2021 for employment records relating to Ghislaine Maxwell, while yet another included a tip about a party “for prostitutes” at Mar-a-Lago.
One 2001 email to Maxwell from the address “aace@dial.pipex.com” with the name “The Invisible Man” asked her whether she had found “some new inappropriate friends” for them to meet in Los Angeles. The sender said they were at “Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family,” and they signed off the document “A xxx.” A document previously released by the DOJ listed the address under “Duke of York,” or Prince Andrew.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his royal titles earlier this year, has repeatedly denied witnessing or engaging in any impropriety with Epstein. Buckingham Palace and an attorney for Mountbatten-Windsor did not respond to immediate requests for comment.
