Jeffrey Epstein Tried to Weasel His Way Into Donald Trump’s Political Orbit: Report

Jeffrey Epstein may have had a “falling out” with Donald Trump in the 2000s, but in 2016, the well-connected financier and sex offender was bullish on the idea of a Trump presidency, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. In the lead-up to that election, Epstein—who died in 2019 inside a federal detention center—reportedly bragged about being close with a number of Trumpworld figures, and scheduled lunches with tech billionaire Peter Thiel and Colony Capital founder Thomas Barrack. And when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton that November, Epstein reportedly expressed delight over the outcome.

According to documents reviewed by the Journal, Epstein had meetings scheduled with both Thiel and Barrack in 2016, planning to introduce them on separate occasions to Vitaly Churkin, the then Russian ambassador to the United Nations who died of an apparent heart attack in 2017. In an interview with the Journal, Thiel described his October 2016 rendezvous with Epstein and Churkin as “nothing memorable,” adding, “I was rather naive, and I didn’t think enough about what Epstein’s agenda might have been.” Thiel, who confirmed he first met with Epstein in 2014, went on to call Epstein “a crazed networker” who was “low on substance in one-on-one conversations. It was all smoke and mirrors.”

However, Epstein did confide in the tech billionaire following the death of Churkin in February 2017. “As you read my russian ambassador friend died. life is short, start with dessert,” he wrote in a cryptic email to Thiel obtained by the Journal.

As for Barrack, a longstanding ally of the former president who went on to head Trump’s inauguration committee, Epstein reportedly scheduled a meeting with him in August 2016. Churkin and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak were also included in the invitation. Barrack, who declined the Journal’s request for comment, was later invited by Epstein to a pair of separate events in September of that year.

In a statement to the Journal, a Trump spokesperson noted that neither Barrack nor Thiel were official members of the 2016 campaign. “In fact, President Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago,” the Trump spokesman said. (Barrack had been an informal adviser to the campaign and a fundraiser while Thiel was a major donor.)

The documents obtained by the Journal did not reveal any meetings or conversations between Trump and Epstein, who were friendly in the ’80s and ’90s, and have been filmed and photographed together on multiple occasions. Trump even described Epstein as a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun” in a 2002 piece published by New York magazine, in which Trump ominously observed that Epstein liked women “on the younger side.” But, according to a 2019 report from The Washington Post, their friendship ended in 2004 over a piece of Palm Beach real estate that both men were trying to purchase. (Epstein did not become a convicted sex offender until 2008, when he pleaded guilty to a state charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution.)

Since his political rise, Trump has sought to downplay his association with Epstein. In 2016, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten told Fox News that Trump and Epstein were “not friends” and “did not socialize together,” despite footage, unearthed by NBC in 2019, taken at Mar-a-Lago in 1992 that clearly shows the two chatting in front of a group of NFL cheerleaders. 

More recently, Trump shared his opinion on Epstein’s death, more or less siding with official accounts that ruled it a suicide. “Do you think Epstein killed himself, sincerely?” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Trump in an interview that aired last week. “I don’t know,” Trump replied, concluding that it was “possible” Epstein was killed but that he most likely died by suicide. “A lot of people think he was killed,” Trump continued. “He knew a lot on a lot of people.”