Donald Trump allegedly called Jeffrey Epstein moments after his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton, contrary to his later claims he had not spoken to the pedophile financier in many years.
The president had called Epstein to express his shock at the victory, his brother Mark Epstein told CNN in an interview.
Trump said in 2019 that although he and Epstein were at one point close friends, their relationship had soured and he had not spoken to him in “probably 15 years,” adding “I wasn’t a fan of Jeffrey Epstein let me tell you.”
Those remarks followed shortly after the financier’s arrest on sex trafficking charges.
Speaking to CNN, Mark Epstein claimed that in fact it had been his brother who had “stopped hanging out” with Trump, after realizing that he was a “crook.” He also claimed that the two men had spoken in 2016.
“After the election, I usually speak to Jeffrey regularly, and in one of the calls we spoke, Jeffrey told me…. it was after the election, that Trump called him and it was sort of like, ‘Can you believe this?’
“Because nobody believed Trump was going to win. Trump was sort of surprised himself that he won. So Jeffrey said he called him like you know, ‘Could you believe this?’ type of a phone call.”
He then reiterated that it had been Trump who had called his brother, not the other way around.
On Wednesday night the president signed a bill to force the Justice Department to release all of its files related to the late convicted sex offender within 30 days, announcing the news in a late-night Truth Social post in which he continued to insist the whole affair was a Democrat “hoax.”
Trump had previously opposed releasing the files and had unsuccessfully tried to persuade Republican lawmakers to block their release.
At a press conference to discuss the files’ release, Attorney General Pam Bondi did not clarify a timeline or say whether specific files would be withheld.
It comes after a newly released batch of Epstein's private emails shared with Congress by the sex offender’s estate claimed that Trump “knew about the girls” and “spent hours at my house” with a victim of sex trafficking.
“I know how dirty donald is,” Epstein wrote in another message, released in a batch of 20,000 documents from House Republicans.
The president has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. He has also said he was not aware of Epstein’s criminal behavior.
Trump won the 2016 election after surprise victories in three swing states – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – put him over the top in the Electoral College, despite him losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million.
In a statement shared with The Independent, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “Instead of amplifying baseless claims, the media should start asking real questions: why was Democrat Stacey Plaskett live texting Epstein in 2019 during a congressional hearing after he was a convicted sex offender and why did she accept thousands of dollars from him?
“Why did President Bill Clinton travel on Epstein’s plane 26 times? And why did one of Epstein’s victims write that she saw Clinton on Epstein’s island with two young women?
“These are just some of the many questions that the American people deserve to have answered.”
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