We don’t yet know the full story of the Trump administration’s sudden reluctance to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Its reversal appears to have coincided with the president being told his name appeared in the files, but there are gobs of unanswered questions.
What we do know is that Trump keeps making some very curious claims about the situation and about his ties to Epstein.
Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. But in an effort to downplay the whole thing, he’s added fuel to the fire with the kind of dodgy claims that he himself once suggested could raise suspicions about one’s ties to the convicted sex offender.
The most recent is his denial last week that Attorney General Pam Bondi had told him his name was in the Epstein files.
“No, no,” Trump said July 15. “She’s given us just a very quick briefing.”
It turns out Bondi had, in fact, told Trump precisely that back in May, CNN confirmed Wednesday.
And not only that, but sources familiar with the Justice Department’s review of the files told CNN they appeared to include several unsubstantiated claims about Trump and others. DOJ found those claims not to be credible, according to the sources, but whatever those claims were, they could have posed problems for Trump if aired publicly.
Trump has also denied writing a letter bearing his name that the Wall Street Journal reported was given to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003 — a period in which plenty of evidence suggests he and Epstein had a relationship.
The letter included an outline of a naked woman and a strange, imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein in which Trump concludes by saying, “May every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the Journal. The president is suing the newspaper and its owner, his oft-ally Rupert Murdoch, saying the letter is a “fake.”
Part of Trump’s public denials have rested on the idea that it simply wasn’t in his character to draw things. “I never wrote a picture in my life,” Trump said at one point. “I don’t draw pictures,” he added at another.
It didn’t take long to find plenty of evidence that contradicted that. Trump drawings have been auctioned off. He wrote in a 2008 letter that he donated an autographed doodle every year to a charity. A charity director told CNN that Trump sent her two signed drawings in 2004, the year after the Epstein birthday letter.
After that report, a White House spokesman watered down Trump’s denial, saying Trump didn’t draw things but adding the qualifier “like the outlet described.”
And now more evidence is calling these claims into question. The New York Times reported late Thursday that Trump’s name also appeared on a contributor list for the album of letters for Epstein’s 50th birthday. The Journal also reported the contributors included Bill Clinton and a Wall Street billionaire, suggesting powerful people besides Trump also participated. (A source close to the former president told CNN that his last contact with Epstein was 20 years ago and that he hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing.)
Perhaps tellingly, Trump on Friday appeared to concede that the letter could be real, but again denied he had written it.
“Now, somebody could have written a letter and used my name, and that’s happened a lot,” he said.
But these are hardly the only Trump claims about his ties to Epstein that have fallen victim to basic scrutiny.
Trump claimed in 2019, after Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors, that he was “wasn’t of fan” of Epstein’s. He suggested their relationship was more incidental than anything else, because of where they lived: “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him.”
But mounting evidence keeps suggesting a closer and more friendly relationship than that, at least before the two of them had a falling out in the 2000s. Trump not only called Epstein a “terrific guy” in 2002, but the Times reported Thursday that Trump gave Epstein a signed copy of his book in 1997, writing, “To Jeff — You are the greatest!”
And there’s plenty more where that came from suggesting a once-close relationship, as CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck reported this week.
‘I don’t know’ Prince Andrew
Also in 2019, Trump downplayed his ties to Britain’s Prince Andrew, who has been the subject of Epstein-related allegations that Buckingham Palace denies.
“I don’t know Prince Andrew,” Trump said, adding: “I don’t know him, no.”
In fact, Trump had been photographed meeting with the Duke of York just months earlier, during a state visit to the UK. Prince Andrew’s official Twitter account posted about a breakfast meeting with Trump.
And there was also a photo of them together at Mar-a-Lago in 2000. Trump told People magazine at the time that Andrew was “a lot of fun to be with.”
And last year, Trump claimed on social media, “I was never on Epstein’s Plane …”
In fact, Trump flew on it seven times in the 1990s, according to flight logs released as a part of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal proceedings.
What was most striking about that denial is that those flight logs had already been released years prior.
The question becomes: Why go to such easily disprovable places and make claims that are so suspect? If the truth is so benign, why the need to stretch it or disregard it? Why suggest you weren’t a fan of a guy you were obviously chummy with? Why deny you drew pictures when your drawings are public record?
Trump has a demonstrated history of lying and misleading about many subjects, but this would seem to be one you’d want to get right so you don’t seed suspicion.
And, as it turns out, that’s a point that was once made by none other than Trump – at least when talking about Clinton’s ties to Epstein.
“I know he was on his plane 27 times, and he said he was on the plane four times,” Trump said in 2019, while answering a question about why he retweeted a post that made baseless suggestions about Clinton being involved in Epstein’s death. “But when they checked the plane logs, Bill Clinton, who was a very good friend of Epstein – he was on the plane about 27 or 28 times. So why did he say four times?”
The difference that Trump alluded to appeared to owe in large part to Clinton having taken multi-leg trips on the plane, in which each leg counts as an individual flight on the logs.
But the question Trump raised is a good one. Indeed, why would someone misrepresent Epstein-related things? And why would a president do so repeatedly like this?
