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US President Donald Trump appeared as a listed passenger on the private aircraft of the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on eight occasions between 1993 and 1996, according to a newly released internal email from the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
The disclosure comes from a 7 January 2020 email written by an assistant US attorney, which states that Trump “traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).” The email was released this week as part of a large tranche of Epstein-related documents made public by the DOJ.
Trump’s presence on the flight records does not in itself suggest criminal conduct. In 2024, Trump publicly stated: “I was never on Epstein’s plane,” and he has consistently denied any wrongdoing or involvement in Epstein’s criminal activities.
The DOJ has stressed that certain materials included in the latest document release contain “untrue and sensationalist claims” involving Trump. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the department said some of the allegations were submitted to the FBI shortly before the 2020 presidential election and were deemed unfounded.
“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the DOJ said. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had any shred of credibility, they would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
The DOJ added that the files were released in full as required by law, despite their contents. “Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” the department said in a post on X.
Trump and Epstein were known to be friends for several years in the 1990s, though Trump has said their relationship ended around 2004 — well before Epstein’s first arrest on sex crime charges.
The documents released this week exceed 30,000 pages and form part of the so-called “Epstein files,” which the DOJ was legally obligated to publish by last Friday. The newly disclosed email is part of a larger chain titled “RE: Epstein flight records.”
While the sender and recipient names are redacted, the email is signed at the bottom by an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, with identifying details removed.
According to the email, Trump “is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996,” including four trips on which Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell was also aboard. The email further notes that Trump traveled alongside then-wife Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric on some of those flights.
The email details that on one flight in 1993, Trump and Epstein were the only two listed passengers. On another flight, the only individuals recorded were Epstein, Trump, and a then-20-year-old person whose identity has been redacted. It also states that on two separate flights, women who could have served as potential witnesses in a Maxwell-related case were among the passengers.
The prosecutor wrote that Trump’s travel on Epstein’s aircraft occurred “including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.”
In 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of multiple crimes, including conspiracy to entice minors to travel for illegal sex acts and sex trafficking of a minor. Prosecutors said she committed those crimes from at least 1994 through approximately 2004.
Epstein himself died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The email provides no further detail about the purpose or circumstances of the flights involving Trump.
A separate handwritten flight log released by the DOJ in February includes several entries that are difficult to decipher. One entry, however, appears to list Donald Trump and his son Eric as passengers on a flight dated 13 August 1995, traveling from Palm Beach International Airport in Florida to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. The same entry includes the initials “JE” and “GM,” widely believed to refer to Epstein and Maxwell.
Tuesday’s release marks the largest batch of Epstein-related files disclosed so far, though the DOJ has acknowledged that thousands of additional documents remain unpublished. Since Friday, the department has released several thousand files across eight separate batches.
The DOJ failed to meet the congressional deadline to release all Epstein-related materials, which include photographs, videos, and investigative records. That delay has drawn criticism from Epstein survivors as well as lawmakers from both political parties.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on the day of the missed deadline that the full release would take place over time rather than all at once. “There’s a lot of eyes looking at these,” Blanche said. “We want to make sure that when we do produce the materials, we’re protecting every single victim.”
More documents related to Epstein are expected to be released by the DOJ in the coming weeks.
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