Jeffrey Epstein emails show he kept tabs on Donald Trump for years

A year before his suicide in a cell inside New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center, Jeffrey Epstein was exchanging emails about his one-time friend, Donald Trump.

"You see, I know how dirty Donald is," he wrote on August 23, 2018. 

The subject line of the email referenced a New York Times opinion piece about a case in which Trump's longtime fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign financing violations.

The note was sent to Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel under former president Barack Obama.

But it has now been released to the public by a US congressional committee in a deluge of emails and other messages, totalling some 20,000 pages, after a months-long stand-off in Congress.

The files belong to a collection held by Epstein's estate, which were subpoenaed by Congress in August and are separate from a trove of investigative materials on the financier held by the Justice Department.

In another exchange, Epstein attempted to pass a message to Russia's top diplomat suggesting that he could provide "insight" on Trump ahead of the president's meeting with Vladimir Putin in 2018.

"I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me," Epstein wrote in a June 24, 2018, email to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was leading the Council of Europe at the time of the exchange.

Trump and Epstein's widely-discussed relationship is now firmly back in the spotlight, following years of questions about what the former real estate mogul knew about Epstein's behaviour and when he knew it.

Since his death, the ghost of Epstein has haunted many of the high-profile men he once associated with, including the recently de-princed Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former British ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson.

However, Trump has continued to shrug off questions about the financier, calling it the "Jeffrey Epstein Hoax".

"Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?" the president asked a reporter who brought up Epstein in July.

"Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable."

The House of Representatives was kept in a prolonged recess from September to November, delaying a push to vote on a measure that would compel the Justice Department to release all unclassified records, documents, communications and materials linked to Epstein.

But members were called back on Tuesday in order to reopen the government after a record-setting shutdown.

This set the stage for another debate over making all files pertaining to the financier publicly available.

By the end of the week, a trove of Epstein emails was released, and as reporters pored through them, more details about Trump and Epstein came to light — including exchanges that showed the late financier's preoccupation with the president in the years before his death.

The Trump-Epstein relationship

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Epstein was in the orbit of some very famous people, including Wall Street titans, political aides, royalty and celebrities.

Trump moved in those same circles, with the pair linked as early as the late 1980s when they were wealthy neighbours in Palm Beach.

The two men mingled at parties in the Sunshine State, at soirees with Victoria's Secret models, and even flew between Florida and New York several times together on Epstein's private jets between 1993 and 1997, according to flight logs presented as evidence in Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 trial.

Epstein was also a guest at Trump's 1993 wedding to Marla Maples at New York's Plaza Hotel. 

A decade later, the businessman described Epstein as someone who was "a lot of fun to be with".

"I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy," Trump told New York Magazine for its profile of Epstein in 2002.

"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."

But the two men reportedly fell out in 2004 over a property deal. According to Trump, his friendship with the financier ended after he "stole" young female employees from his Mar-a-Lago spa.

While Trump went on to bigger and better things, a net was closing in around Epstein.

In 2008, the financier admitted to two prostitution charges as part of a plea deal that was widely criticised as being too lenient.

Trump has always emphatically denied knowledge of Epstein and Maxwell's sex-trafficking operations and has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

But after spending years hinting at a potential cover-up of Epstein's death in prison, he allowed the Department of Justice to close the investigation into the financier before the outcome could be revealed to the public.

The question of why has ignited even the president's most loyal supporters in the last few months and fuelled a push, spearheaded by Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, for full disclosure of the files.

The emails about Trump's movements

The latest email dump does not change the timeline of Trump's relationship with Epstein, but it does shed further light on what the convicted sex offender said about the president in the years after the two parted ways.

Despite falling out with Epstein in the mid-2000s, emails reveal that up until his imprisonment in 2019 — and subsequent death — Epstein not only continued to talk about Trump with his various contacts, but kept track of him.

In one set of exchanges dated in 2016, Epstein's pilot, Larry Visoski, informed the financier about the timing of an upcoming flight departure from Trump.

On November 25, Visoski wrote: "Trump is still scheduled to depart Sunday between 4 and 6 pm,, Let me know if we are firm for wheels up Saturday at 6pm still?"

Epstein replied: "will let you know tomorrow morning."

It was not the only exchange the pair had about Trump's movements, with Epstein receiving multiple updates from his pilot about the president's flight logistics over the years.

The Guardian reported the documents also show that Epstein kept across the flying schedules of other high-profile figures.

For example, in September 2012, an assistant of Epstein's was told to inform the financier that: "Vice-President Joe Biden is in West Palm Beach and is scheduled to depart between 5pm and 6pm today."

What Epstein had to say about Trump

Epstein's contacts also forwarded him negative news articles about Trump, while other exchanges show the financier criticising the president.

"your world does not understand how dumb he really is. he will blame everyone around him. for bad results," he wrote to former Treasury secretary Larry Summers on May 28, 2017.

In another exchange with a redacted individual, believed to be Trump's former White House strategist Steve Bannon, in June 2019, the financier laughed at the idea of Trump and then-prince Andrew meeting at a state visit.

"Tooo funny," he wrote.

"Recall prince andrews accuser came out of mara lago," he added in another email.

Bannon replied: "Can't believe nobody is making u the connective tissue."

In other exchanges, Epstein claimed he was pressed for information about the former president by journalists.

In 2016, Epstein wrote to private equity investor Tom Barrack that he received "many calls" a week from reporters who wanted to know about his relationship with the president, Trump's second wife Marla, Mar–a-Lago, and Bill Clinton.

"my answers are always i have nothing to say. or i try to ignore altogether," Epstein wrote.

"A few times i have been ambushed on the street with questions. but am more careful now."

Ultimately, the emails, which are a haphazard mess of typo-ridden exchanges not listed in chronological order, are not a smoking gun.

They do however, indicate that Epstein was very interested in what Trump was up to, almost right up until his imprisonment.

What next?

The contentious push to release the full Jeffrey Epstein files is set to continue.

In July, Justice Department officials said their investigation of files associated with Epstein "did not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing".

They added "this systematic review revealed no incriminating 'client list'".

"There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions," the memo claimed.

"We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties."

But a swirl of speculation around the issue persists.

About three-quarters of Americans support the release of all files related to the Epstein case, according to one poll published in October.

Critics, however, believe the matter has become politicised, with Republicans on the Oversight Committee accusing their Democratic counterparts of "trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump".

As for the man himself, not much has been heard from Trump since the new batch of emails was released.

The commander-in-chief signed a bill ending the US government shutdown on Wednesday. He did not answer questions before the press were ushered out of the room.

"The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again," he wrote on social media.

"Because they'll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they've done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects."

Next week, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill referred to as the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

If it passes, it will lead to more distracting headlines for politicians on Capitol Hill.

So far, the White House's attempts at damage control — which have included lengthy meetings with Republicans who support releasing the documents — have not worked as well as they might have hoped.