- Newly released emails suggest Epstein claimed Trump "knew about the girls" and offered photos of Trump with young women.
- Epstein and Trump exchanged close ties historically, contradicting Trump’s claim of a clean break from Epstein.
- Trump allies dismiss the revelations as hoaxes, while emails deepen suspicions about elite impunity and hidden evidence.
In a fresh wave of revelations that refuse to let the shadows of Jeffrey Epstein’s world fade, thousands of newly released emails paint a disturbing picture of the late financier’s tangled ties to President Donald Trump.
Among the documents dropped by the House Oversight Committee this week is a 2015 exchange where Epstein dangled a provocative carrot in front of a New York Times reporter: snapshots of the then-presidential candidate posing amid “girls in bikinis” right in his own kitchen.
The emails, part of a sprawling 20,000-document trove from a bipartisan probe, underscore the murky overlap between Epstein’s predatory orbit and the highest echelons of American power.
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It’s the kind of detail that lingers, forcing us to revisit not just old friendships but the what-ifs that still echo through politics today.
Where It All Started, And Where It Went South
The story starts back in 2002, when New York magazine ran a profile on Epstein penned by Landon Thomas Jr. At the time, Trump—ever the quotable mogul—couldn’t say enough good things about his Palm Beach pal.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump gushed in the piece.
“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.”
Fast-forward to December 2015. Trump had just thrown his hat into the presidential ring, and the old quote was resurfacing like an unwelcome guest at a family reunion.
Thomas, now at the Times covering finance, shot off an email to Epstein: “Now everyone coming to me thinking I have juicy info on you and Trump. That story will never die.”
What followed was a rapid-fire volley that veered from financial gossip to something far more salacious. Epstein first nudged Thomas toward digging into Trump’s money trail.
Then, in a casual aside that lands like a gut punch today, he typed: “would you like photos of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen.”
Thomas’s reply was immediate and enthusiastic: “Yes!!!”Epstein didn’t hesitate.
“Hawaiian Tropic girl Lauren Petrella,” he shot back, naming what appeared to be the subject of one such image.
But the photos never materialized. Thomas, who left the Times in 2019 amid ethical lapses unrelated to this saga, later confirmed to his old paper that Epstein never followed through.
The Times, in turn, told The Daily Beast it couldn’t verify if the pictures even existed.
Epstein Evidence May Reveal Painful Truths
Epstein wasn’t done teasing, though. In the same thread, he recounted a vivid anecdote for the reporter’s benefit: reporters should “ask my houseman about donad [sic] almost walking through the door leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door.”
It’s the sort of offhand detail that feels ripped from a tabloid thriller, but these emails ground it in cold, digital reality.
This isn’t the first time whispers of such photos have bubbled up. Michael Wolff, the sharp-elbowed Trump chronicler and co-host of The Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast, dropped a bombshell of his own last month.
On an October episode, Wolff recounted a visit to Epstein’s Palm Beach estate about a decade ago, where the financier allegedly cracked open a safe to show him images of Trump “posing with topless young women” on his lap.
Wolff didn’t know their ages, but the implication hung heavy in the air. He even pressed Epstein on what to do with the shots after Trump’s election win.
“And he said, ‘I can’t now. I may be such and such, but I’m not crazy,’ implying that he had some reason to fear the wrath of Donald Trump,” Wolff told host Joanna Coles.
Details of the Emails
Wolff’s Epstein connection runs deep—the emails show they were in regular touch right up until the financier’s 2019 jailhouse death.
One note from Epstein to Wolff, dated January 31, 2019, directly rebuts Trump’s public narrative about their split.
Trump has long claimed he booted Epstein from Mar-a-Lago over his creepy behavior toward teenage staffers there. But Epstein wrote: “trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked to Ghislaine to stop.“
That Ghislaine? Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted accomplice, who drew a 20-year sentence for her role in recruiting and abusing girls alongside him.
By the way, whistleblowers are coming out alleging that Maxwell is being pampered, with officers getting punished if they do not meet her demands.
The Mar-a-Lago link stings especially sharp. Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers who died in 2024, was just 17 when Maxwell approached her at the club’s spa.
“He stole her,” Trump once told reporters in 2019, framing it as the breaking point in their bromance.
The emails don’t stop at titillating offers. In 2018, as Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen was pleading guilty to campaign finance felonies, Epstein reached out to Kathryn Ruemmler—Barack Obama’s former White House counsel—with an ominous heads-up on brewing scandals.
“I know how dirty Donald is,” he wrote flatly, as if stating the weather.
How Trump Loyalists Are Reacting
Trump’s camp, predictably, is waving this all off as yesterday’s garbage. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed the release to The Daily Beast: “These emails prove literally nothing.”
Communications Director Steven Cheung went scorched-earth on Wolff, calling him “a lying sack of s–t and has been proven to be a fraud” with a “severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
On Truth Social, Trump himself branded the whole thing a “Democrat-induced ‘hoax,'” tying it to gripes about government shutdowns and other woes.
“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 posted.
A Times spokesperson was equally terse: “Landon Thomas Jr. has not worked at The Times since early 2019 after editors discovered his failure to abide by our ethical standards.”
What Happens Next?
To be clear: Trump neither sent nor received these messages, and he’s faced no charges tied to Epstein or Maxwell.
Their friendship, documented in photos from the late ’90s and early 2000s—Trump with a young Melania Knauss, Epstein, and Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago—fizzled publicly around 2004, per Trump’s telling.
But these emails chip away at the clean-break story, hinting at a bond laced with mutual secrets and sidelong glances.
As Maxwell sits in a cushy minimum-security camp in Texas—complete with a service puppy, private workouts, and custom meals, after a mysterious post-deposition transfer—these documents serve as a grim reminder.
Epstein’s web didn’t unravel with his suicide; it just keeps unspooling, thread by incriminating thread. In an era where trust in institutions feels as fragile as ever, stories like this don’t just inform—they haunt, urging us to ask: What else is still locked away?
Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity
