Fresh documents released by the United States Department of Justice have revealed that former US President Donald Trump was listed as a passenger on the private aircraft of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions. The information, part of a trove of over 8,000 pages made public this week, adds new details to the known association between the two men.
Details from the Internal Email
The key revelation comes from an internal email dated January 7, 2020, which was included in the latest document dump. The email, whose sender and recipient names were redacted, was signed by an assistant US attorney from the Southern District of New York.
It states, "Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than previously has been reported." Specifically, the email notes that Trump's name appears on flight manifests for at least eight journeys between 1993 and 1996. On four of those flights, Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell was also present.
The correspondence provides specific examples: on one 1993 flight, only Trump and Epstein were listed as passengers. On another, the manifest showed three people: Epstein, Trump, and a then-20-year-old individual, whose name was blacked out. The email further mentions that on two other flights, passengers included women who could be potential witnesses in a case against Maxwell.
Family Travel and Official Response
According to the email, Trump was accompanied on these trips by various family members, including his then-wife Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric. These details underscore the social familiarity between the Trump and Epstein circles during that period.
In response to the release of these files, the Department of Justice issued a statement on social media platform X. It cautioned that some documents contained "untrue and sensationalist claims" against Donald Trump, which were submitted to the FBI just before the 2020 presidential election. "To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false," the DOJ asserted, adding that if they had any credibility, they would have been used against him politically already.
Context of the Document Release
This email is part of a massive release mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed with near-unanimous support. The release came after criticism over delays and excessive redactions in previous disclosures.
The newly public material includes hundreds of video and audio files, along with surveillance footage from August 2019—the month Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Ghislaine Maxwell was later convicted in 2022 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in Epstein's crimes.
Historically, Trump has acknowledged a friendship with Epstein that soured around 2004, years before Epstein's first arrest. He has consistently denied any knowledge of or involvement in Epstein's illegal activities. Merely being listed on the flight logs is not an indication of wrongdoing. The documents continue to fuel public and media scrutiny into the extensive network of the disgraced financier.
