Trump and Epstein

As President Trump attracts global attention for the US military operation against Iran (now thankfully near a conclusion), I wanted to cover this issue that has bubbled along for some months now. Possible overlaps between President Trump and the now-deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have become the source of endless media and political speculation. This post attempts to examine this issue and to try to separate facts from fevered imagination. I’ll do this by asking 8 questions:

1 – Who is Jeffrey Epstein?

He was born in New York in 1953 into a modest middle-class family. His first occupation was as a schoolteacher at an exclusive Manhattan private school. There he met the CEO of Bear Stearns, a then prominent Wall Street trader and investment house, and he worked his way up from a junior clerk to an options trader, eventually becoming an investment advisor to high-net-worth individuals. He left to form his own consultancy firm advising big, influential clients like Steven Hoffenberg and Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi. His breakthrough into the big leagues of the mega rich came when he began to manage assets for Ohio retailers and owners of The Limited and Victoria’s Secret retail giants, billionaires Les Wexner and Leon Black. He met his longtime associate, Gislaine Maxwell, the glamorous daughter of UK media magnate Robert Maxwell, in the early 1980s. Epstein’s financial advising to the ultra-rich and socialising with Maxwell’s A-list of media celebrities and business magnates saw Epstein befriend a Who’s Who of billionaires, famous politicians, media celebrities, and movers and shakers across American and European elite society. Epstein’s predilections for young girls came to be investigated by Palm Beach Florida Police and later the FBI in the early 2000s, who became aware of his procurement of teenage girls from the adjacent poorer suburb of West Palm Beach who came to his multi-million-dollar Palm Beach mansion for sexual favours. He utilised a network, largely overseen by Maxwell, of key older teen girls who would recruit other mostly vulnerable teenage girls to feed his desire. He was eventually prosecuted for procuring an underage prostitute. Epstein’s recruitment of young girls for his and famous clients’ pleasure was extended to all his extensive high-value properties, including his Zorro Ranch near Stanley, New Mexico, his large home in New Dublin, Ohio, his huge brownstone Central Park mansion in New York, and a luxurious apartment in Paris, in addition to his famous Caribbean island, Little St. James, in the British Virgin Islands, which became infamous as a discreet retreat for Hollywood celebrities, top business people, high-profile politicians, media magnates, judges, and other elite luminaries.

2 – What information on Epstein’s clients is likely held by US government agencies?

It’s important to define exactly what the Epstein files are because there is a misconception that the files held by the Department of Justice are the complete entirety of everything that the government has concerning Jeffrey Epstein. The DOJ files that are being progressively released contain the quantum of communications regarding Jeffrey Epstein, his emails with various parties, and any other relevant information that only the FBI and the Department of Justice have stored about him over the years. It is not possible to fully determine from the public record precisely how much material that, for instance, all the various intelligence agencies in the US hold regarding Jeffrey Epstein and, more importantly, his clients, associates, and friends. It is quite widely known that Epstein installed hidden cameras in every single room in every single one of his five large mansions, and it has been approximated that the volume of recorded material is over 1,000,000 hours across tens of thousands of individual recordings. Given the rumours that circulate that he was an agent for either Mossad, MI6 and/or the CIA, and given that honeypot operations are stock in trade for intelligence agencies, it would be an intelligent guess that there exists a very large amount of compromising material given what we know about Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking activities, of which only the very tip of a very large iceberg has been revealed at this stage.

Donald Trump did famously say in an impromptu interview that he gave in front of Marine One in 2018, “I caught the swamp. I caught them all. Only I could do it”. My personal opinion (that I’ve got no documentary evidence to back up) is that one of the reasons why Trump is proceeding forward with the Epstein situation with a surprising amount of equanimity and confidence is that the intelligence agencies that he has control over likely do possess a large amount of compromising material featuring what is rumoured to be elites of politics, law enforcement, Hollywood, academia, media, and government. Some would say that the histrionics and vitriol that has been hurled at Trump and his team over the subject may possibly be because of the fact that Trump is getting nearer and nearer to very sensitive targets, and if you are the subject of compromising video material, then obviously you are not wanting that material to see the light of day or to be in the hands of Trump’s law enforcement. On this topic, I think only time will tell, but I’m going to make a bold prediction that we’re going to learn some very ugly things about some very prominent people.

3 – Why did Trump play ‘footsie’ over this issue, waxing hot, then cold, then hot?

Trump’s initial reluctance and skepticism about the Jeffrey Epstein files caused major speculation amongst his opponents and the MSM, and early consternation even in some of the MAGA influencer ranks. Speculation as to what exactly is in the Epstein files ramped up after Axios (a known left-wing blog site) leaked an unsigned and undated memo from the Department of Justice, essentially stating that there was nothing actionable in the “files”, that Epstein took his own life (heading off the conspiracy theory that Epstein was murdered in a hit to silence him), and that the case was “closed”. Trump and his Attorney General Pam Bondi, seemed to go along with the thrust of the memo in various pronouncements designed to essentially deflect attention away from Epstein. Given Bondi’s earlier comments that she had all the files and was merely reviewing them prior to release, such an apparent about-face caused major heartburn with various pro-Trump media sites and influencers accusing him of reneging on his promise to be transparent. In parallel, his opponents on the left (and amongst anti-Trump RINOs) have reacted by saying that Trump must be covering something up by initially not releasing the files, implying that there must be damning evidence in the files he’s not wanting to see the light of day. Trump increased this speculation by initially describing the files on social media as “the Epstein hoax’. So, what is going on? My belief is that Trump was both simultaneously creating a diversion to buy time for the actual secret investigations into child sex trafficking long underway and goading his opponents into switching from studiously ignoring Epstein to openly campaigning for the release of all matters Epstein. This fits some of Trump’s known tactics.

4 – How did this fit with Trump’s common modus operandi?

Trump’s opponents have not only underestimated Trump but frequently misinterpreted him. They take his every word literally, and they often exaggerate, frequently twist, and distort his statements. Some of these I covered in my recent Media Lies posts here and here. Trump forged his skills as an adroit and canny negotiator in the brutal and vicious New York City property market. NYC is a very difficult place to do business; you have to negotiate with corrupt and powerful union officials, regulation-bound city bureaucrats, grandstanding and corrupt elected politicians, big banks, ratings agencies, insurance companies, hedge funds, and hardheaded contractors and suppliers. To build his huge legacy Manhattan skyscrapers successfully and profitably takes tremendous skill. This has made Trump quite forceful and aggressive and yet amiable and pliable enough to get things done. He is very outcome-driven and will do what it takes to clinch the deal, and with that comes a delicate combination of firmness and flexibility. His later life as a media star added showmanship and presentation skills to his repertoire and a superb appreciation for how to manipulate the media to his advantage. We see these various skills playing out in the unconventional way Trump gets things done compared to career politicians. He likes to disarm his enemies with forthright bluster and invective, which rarks up the media cycle as they react to Trump’s seeming nasty, over-the-top tone. He loves to troll people using taunting and teasing to sometimes devastating effect (e.g. “Crooked Hillary” and “Tampon Tim”) as he pigeonholes his enemies with negative but catchy epithets. As is common in real estate wheeling and dealing, he opens negotiations with high-ball offers, hoping to end somewhere lower but at a price that both sides grudgingly live with (this tactic is most apparent in his tariff strategy). He will say something seemingly outrageous to start a dialogue that he hopes will over time rebound in America’s favour. His comments about Greenland fall into this category. He knows the media will shriek that, “Trump wants to invade Greenland” which is far from what he wants. He wants the people of Greenland to reflect on where their best interests in the future might lie after decades of benign neglect by their Danish overlords. Trump has forced the future of Greenland into the public arena because he eyes Greenland’s strategic military location for advancing US influence and expansion and also eyes Greenland’s vast wealth of rare earth and other minerals, not for some forced expropriation. Whilst full details are sketchy, Trump appears to be negotiating something pretty close to giving the US all the access they want. Time will tell.

Trump’s comments about Canada being the 51st state are a classic example of Trump’s style and how he prepares the ground for something no previous President has tried to do and that is to reign in the trade imbalance with Canada and to end the various subsidies the US makes to Canada. Trump has no interest in making Canada the 51st state, constitutionally in the US it would be a huge ask and it’s an absolute no-goer politically in Canada but by gradually ending the subsidies AND imposing balancing tariffs, both which will be a such a shock to the Canadian economy that Trump is saying, tongue in cheek, Canada might prefer to be the 51st state where there would be no need for tariffs and the subsidies would stay. It’s controversial, inartful, provocative (and helped Carney win the recent Canadian Federal election) but watch this space as Trump has only just begun with what he intends to do with Canada. We need to view how Trump is handling the Epstein situation through the same complicated lens.

5 – What do the Epstein files say about Trump?

We now know that Trump is in the Epstein files, but not in the way that his opponents think. Honestly, if the Epstein Files had anything remotely damaging about Trump, the then Obama DOJ would’ve leaked it to the Clinton campaign in 2016 to derail Trump’s campaign. Instead, we got the “Billy Bush Tapes” featuring a twenty-something Trump talking about women disrespectfully like some pampered frat boy in then-typical bravado talk. Again, had the files that Trump’s opponents have been braying for held any damaging secrets, there is no doubt the Biden DOJ would’ve released them in the run-up to the 2024 election to assist Kamala Harris.

Researchers poured over 3 million DOJ Epstein documents since the largest release on 30 January 2026 and here is what they found on Trump: 40 documents total with no damning evidence: every sworn deposition, every FBI interview, every flight log entry, every civil complaint, every media reference of any kind linking Trump to Epstein in the largest document production in DOJ history. The documents themselves tell it better. The friendship initially was real; Trump and Epstein were Palm Beach, Florida neighbours and Manhattan social circle fixtures in the 1990s. Trump DID call him a terrific guy in 2002 and so a friendship had existed and must be stated plainly because everything that follows only makes sense if you understand that the falling out was also real. Around 2004 it ended. Brad Edwards, the attorney who represented Epstein’s victims and investigated every lead for years, established under oath that Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club. There is no documented contact between Trump and Epstein after 2004, not one e-mail, not one phone call, not one scheduled entry in the millions of documents. We now know that Trump assisted the Palm Beach Police Department in their child sex trafficking investigation that led to Epstein’s first conviction in 2006.  It’s also clear from the Epstein files that Epstein was very resentful of Trump and conspired with various close associates to try and take Trump down including a famous texting exchange between himself and his legal counsel who was testifying before the January 6th committee in Congress in 2021.

Various law enforcement investigations found nothing remotely damaging about Trump. The FBI flagged every document mentioning Trump across the entire trove by order of the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee. The result? 1 allegation with 1 alleged victim who refused to cooperate. No Grand Jury investigation, no indictments, no prosecution in the Southern District of New York who had all Trump’s phone records, and they found one innocuous 2001 call buried alongside Epstein’s explicit trafficking procurement communications.  They charged Trump with nothing. Trump 45’s second Attorney General Bill Barr, not a Trump fan, said on this topic under oath, “I was never informed of the evidence and I’m skeptical there is any if they had evidence, this would have been low hanging fruit”. Brad Edwards, who had every reason and every incentive to find evidence against anyone connected to Epstein, filed a sworn affidavit, “we have no information that Trump spoke to Epstein about any of the specific victims of his molestation” and when Edwards was reaching out to powerful men in Epstein’s orbit, Trump was the ONLY one who picked up the phone and returned his call because he knew what Epstein was and wanted to talk about it. Here’s the comparison with other luminaries in Epstein’s orbit. Bill Gates: 2,265 documents, multiple confirmed meetings and donations routed through Epstein. Boris Nikolic: named in Epstein’s will. Bill Clinton: 1,586 documents, 147 sexually explicit messages with Maxwell, multiple confirmed island visits and up to 20 flights on the ‘Lolita Express’ confirmed by Epstein’s pilot! Reid Hoffman (billionaire Democrat donor): 1,976 documents and slept at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. Leon Black: 667 documents and $158 million paid to Epstein across a decades long financial relationship. Donald Trump? 40 documents, zero financial transactions, zero island visits, 2 domestic commuter flights in the late ‘90’s accompanied by a friend, a friendship that ended in 2004 when he drew the line and had Epstein removed from his property and the ONLY person in Epstein’s orbit who returned the victims’ attorneys’ call.

6 – What about the Wall Street Journal claim of the smutty birthday card?

Various defenders of Trump have said that Trump never sends handwritten notes, his communications almost always are typed with his large and distinctive signature at the bottom. There has been a literary analysis done on the poem that was written and it doesn’t match any literary style of Trump. Trump’s style is now very much public property because he chooses to communicate a lot of his thoughts about almost every matter to do with his presidential policies and crucial announcements are all made via Posts on his social media company Truth Social and so Trump’s rather bombastic and at times awkward inelegant style is on display for everyone to see. In any event even, if this birthday card is real, it long predates any of the child sex allegations made about Jeffrey Epstein and obviously predates when Trump began running for political office. Given that the Wall Street Journal is a very anti Trump RINO publication, it would not surprise me that they would be a party to the publishing of a fabricated claim.

7 – Why was the Biden administration Department of Justice silent on this matter?

Whenever Attorney General Pam Bondi or FBI Director Kash Patel have to appear before Congressional oversight committees, both are quite vehemently attacked on the whole Epstein file situation by Democrat House Representatives or Senators, and inevitably they shoot back with the counter-question which is, why in the four years that Biden was President did not his Attorney General Merrick Garland attempt to produce a single file from the Epstein files? This question highlights the highly partisan political agendas around the subject such that the Democrats think that the whole Jeffrey Epstein situation has got something that is going to damage Trump, whereas the Trump administration would say that the reason why the Biden administration was silent in his four years was because there is more damaging material regarding Democrats than there is regarding Republicans. I repeat what I said earlier, if there had been anything remotely damaging about Trump in the Epstein files, then either the Obama or Biden administrations would have found ways to get such damaging material to an eagerly awaiting press.

8 – Wasn’t delays in the release of the files evidence that Trump was covering for Epstein?

Liberal and anti-Trump talking points regarding Epstein have evolved somewhat in recent months from: Trump is deeply implicated in the Epstein files and then when there was no evidence of that, now he’s implicated in covering for Epstein by his tardy release of the files. So, if this were true then you’d see other evidence of Trump’s reluctance to pursue child trafficking actions and yet the opposite is the case. From Alpha Warrior comes this exhaustive bullet-point list of major things Trump personally signed, directed, or publicly ordered, plus major anti-trafficking / child-exploitation actions carried out under his administration:

1. Signed Executive Order 13773 (Feb. 9, 2017) directing federal agencies to prioritize dismantling transnational criminal organizations involved in human trafficking and smuggling.
2. Made anti-trafficking an early administration priority, using the President’s Interagency Task Force to coordinate federal efforts.
3. Signed the DHS Blue Campaign Authorization Act of 2018, giving statutory authority to DHS’s anti-trafficking public‑awareness program.
4. Signed FOSTA–SESTA (Apr. 11, 2018), expanding tools for law enforcement and victims to act against websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking.
5. Under the administration, DOJ seized Backpage.com (Apr. 2018), which DOJ described as a dominant online marketplace used to facilitate sex trafficking, including of minors.
6. Appointed nine trafficking survivors to the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking (Mar. 2018), bringing survivor expertise into federal policy.
7. Highlighted and supported a $25 million State Department grant to the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (2017).
8. Signed the Abolish Human Trafficking Act of 2017 (Dec. 21, 2018), strengthening federal anti‑trafficking programs and survivor services.
9. Signed the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2018 (Jan. 8, 2019), reauthorizing and modifying the TVPA framework.
10. Signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2017 (S.1312) (Jan. 2019), creating new prevention, prosecution, and collaboration initiatives.
11. Signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (S.1862) (Jan. 2019), tightening criteria for evaluating foreign governments’ anti‑trafficking performance.
12. Issued annual National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month proclamations, framing trafficking as a national moral and security issue.
13. In the 2019 proclamation, cited DOJ convictions, FBI disruptions of child‑sex‑trafficking enterprises, DHS case initiations, and HHS modernization of the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
14. Linked border‑security policy to anti‑trafficking enforcement, arguing that stronger border controls were necessary to disrupt trafficking networks targeting women and children.
15. Signed Executive Order 13903 (Jan. 2020) on combating human trafficking and online child exploitation, directing agencies to prioritize prosecution, victim assistance, data improvement, and interagency coordination.
16. That order also directed DOJ and DHS to strengthen coordination and propose actions to improve detection and disruption of online child‑exploitation activity.
17. DOJ held two national anti‑trafficking summits (2018, 2020) to coordinate law enforcement, business, and advocacy efforts.
18. The government seized CityXGuide.com (June 2020), which DOJ identified as another major online marketplace tied to sex trafficking.
19. Federal enforcement statistics (DOJ, DHS, FBI, HHS) showed increased trafficking prosecutions, arrests, convictions, and victim certifications during the administration.
20. The FY 2020 report states that the President’s Interagency Task Force and the White House developed the first National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking.
21. In a second term, signed Executive Order 14159 (Jan. 20, 2025), creating Homeland Security Task Forces in all states to dismantle trafficking and smuggling networks, especially those involving children.
22. The same order directed DOJ, HHS, and DHS to share information to stop the trafficking and smuggling of alien children.
23. Also on Jan. 20, 2025, signed “Securing Our Borders” (not yet codified in the Federal Register), directing DOJ and DHS to prioritize trafficking, child‑trafficking, and smuggling prosecutions.
24. Signed the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act (Jan. 2026), creating a process for survivors to seek vacatur or expungement of convictions resulting directly from being trafficked.
25. DOJ announced the first phase of declassified Epstein files (Feb. 27, 2025), stating it was following through on a presidential transparency commitment.
26. Signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R. 4405) (Nov. 19, 2025), requiring DOJ to release Epstein‑related records.
27. DOJ reported releasing nearly 3.5 million pages, including videos and images, by Jan. 30, 2026, pursuant to the law.

Does any of this sound like the actions of a man who’s trying to cover up child sex trafficking?

Conclusion

There most definitely was a time when Trump and Epstein had a friendship, long before he knew of Epstein’s dark predilections. When Trump was informed of the assault on an underage female staff member, the friendship was over, Epstein was barred from Mar-A-Largo (a prominent feature in the elite social life of wealthy Palm Beach residents), Trump helped the PBPD with their investigations into Epstein’s underage sexual activities AND he was the only prominent socialite to assist the victims’ lawyer in his inquiries. Like so much else in Trumpworld, his opponents will do anything to smear him and undermine his Presidency and the media and his political opponent braying over the Epstein files follows the same playbook. What is in the Epstein files is but an entrée into what Trump has planned for the many elites implicated in Epstein’s extensive honeypot operations. Prediction: the louder the Hollywood star screams about Trump and Epstein, the higher up they are on the list of compromised people whose time to pay for their crimes is soon coming.

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