Trump’s History with Epstein

In 2002, Trump told New York Magazine, “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.”

A new Wall Street Journal report by Khadijah Sandra and Joe Palazzolo revealed that Donald Trump wrote a “bawdy” letter for a birthday album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell for Jeffery Epstein in 2003. The journalists say the letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”

Florida police began investigating Jeffrey Epstein in 2005 for sexually abusing a minor. Trump was the most closely associated politician with Epstein. They identified five victims and 17 witnesses, but U.S. Attorney in Miami, Alex Acosta, negotiated a plea deal with Epstein in 2008. Years later, Trump appointed Acosta as Secretary of Labor. Still, Acosta resigned in 2019 after new reports from the Miami Herald accused Epstein of abusing about 80 girls and women, and showed the steps Acosta took to shut down an FBI investigation into Epstein’s actions.

In July 2019, Epstein was charged with trafficking minors as young as 14 and sexual exploitation and abuse of a dozen girls in his New York and Florida properties. During a 2019 raid of Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, the FBI found stacks of compact discs labeled like “Young [Name] + [Name], suggesting he had deep video evidence of men sexually assaulting underage girls.

Epstein was arrested in New Jersey that July and died in his Manhattan prison cell in August.

In 2020, Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell was indicted on charges of assisting, failing to act, and contributing to the abuse of underage girls at properties in New York, Florida, New Mexico, and London. In 2021, a jury found Maxwell guilty on five of six counts, including sex trafficking of a minor and transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activities.

Trump and his supporters rallied behind him in the idea that Epstein was trafficking girls to powerful Democratic politicians and Hollywood actors. This accusation aligned with the QAnon theory that Trump was secretly battling a hidden elite. Trump also suggested that he would release the information he claimed was withheld if he were reelected.

Despite Trump’s ongoing close-knit friendship with Epstein, his supporters largely ignored the fact until Elon Musk brought attention to it.

On June 5, 2025, Musk admitted that Trump appears in the Epstein files and suggested that’s why the records won’t be released.

Musk posted, “Time to drop the massive bomb: [Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

Trump then released manipulated videos from outside Epstein’s prison cell the night he died to show that no one had entered the cell that night. They claimed this as “raw” footage. Journalist Dhruv Mehrotra of Wired revealed that nearly three minutes were missing from the DOJ’s so-called “raw” footage of Epstein’s cell.

This announcement outraged many Trump MAGA loyalists, and Trump’s efforts to downplay the Epstein files made things worse. Trump then turned on his supporters, saying he didn’t want their support. Calling them “stupid” and “foolish” while still claiming Democrats were behind these files.

Many MAGA loyalists and far-right figures like Nick Fuentes lashed out at Trump with many insults. “F*ck you. You suck. You are fat, you are a joke, you are stupid, you are not funny, you are not as smart as you think you are.”

He declared that the MAGA movement was the biggest scam in American history and that the liberals were correct, that the MAGA supporters had been deceived.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has spent the last three years investigating Epstein’s finances. Recently, Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times reported his staff’s discovery that four big banks flagged more than $1.5 billion in financial transactions, but only after Epstein’s 2019 arrest on sex trafficking charges. Wyden renewed his March demand for the administration to release more financial information about Epstein.

Trump announced on social media: “Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval. This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!”

Legal analyst Barb McQuade notes that this demand was “a meaningless trick” as courts prohibit public disclosure of such information.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) revealed in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel that his office had received information that Attorney General Pam Bondi pressured the FBI to put 1,000 personnel to work in 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein records. Those agents were told to specifically “flag” any documents that mentioned President Trump.