Finalist: The Wall Street Journal, for work led by Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo

The leather-bound book was compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell. The president says the letter ‘is a fake thing.’

By Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo

It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.

Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. 

Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It’s unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.

The president’s past relationship with Epstein is at a sensitive moment. The Justice Department documents, the so-called Epstein files, and who or what is in them are at the center of a storm consuming the Trump administration. On Wednesday, after angry comments about how the files are a hoax created by Democrats, President Trump lashed out at his own supporters for refusing to let the matter go.

The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

In an interview with the Journal on Tuesday evening, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said.

“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”

He told the Journal he was preparing to file a lawsuit if it published an article. “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he said.

Allegations that Epstein had been sexually abusing girls became public in 2006 and he was arrested that year. Epstein died in 2019 in jail after he was arrested a second time and charged with sex trafficking conspiracy. 

Justice Department officials didn’t respond to requests for comment or address questions about whether the Trump page and other pages of the birthday album were part of the agency’s recent documents review. The FBI declined to comment.

The existence of the album and the contents of the birthday letters haven’t previously been reported. The album had poems, photos and greetings from businesspeople, academics, Epstein’s former girlfriends and childhood pals, according to the documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with them. 

Among those who submitted letters were billionaire Leslie Wexner and attorney Alan Dershowitz. The album also contained a letter from a now-deceased Harvard economist, one of Epstein’s report cards from Mark Twain junior high school in Brooklyn and a note from a former assistant that included an acrostic with Epstein’s name: “Jeffrey, oh Jeffrey!/ Everyone loves you!/ Fun in the sun!/ Fun just for fun!/ Remember…don’t forget me soon!/ Epstein…you rock!/ You are the best!”

Epstein was Wexner’s money manager at the time. The longtime leader of Victoria’s Secret wrote a short message that said: “I wanted to get you what you want… so here it is….” After the text was a line drawing of what appeared to be a woman’s breasts. Wexner declined to comment through a spokesman. Wexner’s spokesman previously told the Journal that the retail mogul “severed all ties with Epstein in 2007 and never spoke with him again.”

Dershowitz’s letter included a mock-up of a “Vanity Unfair” magazine cover with mock headlines such as “Who was Jack the Ripper? Was it Jeffrey Epstein?” He joked that he had convinced the magazine to change the focus of an article from Epstein to Bill Clinton. Dershowitz, who represented Epstein after his first arrest, said, “It’s been a long time and I don’t recall the content of what I may have written.”

The book was put together by a New York City bookbinder, Herbert Weitz, according to people who were involved in the process. Weitz, who died in 2020, listed Epstein as a client on his website in 2003. 

It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.

“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is. 

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. 

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it. 

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that? 

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you. 

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

‘Jeffrey enjoys his social life’

When he turned 50, Epstein was already wealthy from managing Wexner’s fortune and was socializing with Trump, Clinton and other powerful people. He often entertained at his Manhattan townhouse, Palm Beach, Fla., home and private Caribbean island. 

A spokesman for Clinton referred to a 2019 statement that former President Clinton had cut off ties more than a decade before Epstein’s second arrest and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes.

Epstein and Trump spent time together in the 1990s and early 2000s and were photographed at social events, including with Maxwell and Melania Trump. A 1992 tape from the NBC archives shows Trump partying with Epstein at his Mar-a-Lago estate; Trump is seen pulling a woman toward him and patting her behind.

Trump, along with others including Clinton, also appeared several times on flight logs for Epstein’s private jet.

A 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein quoted Trump. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump said. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Both men said that they subsequently had a falling-out. Trump has said their friendship ended before Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008, served time in a Florida jail and registered as a sex offender. 

When Epstein was arrested again in 2019, Trump said he hadn’t talked to Epstein for about 15 years. “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Trump said in the Oval Office at that time. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

Trump’s spokeswoman told the Journal in 2023 that Trump had banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club at some point in the past, without elaborating. 

Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein’s sex-trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Maxwell didn’t respond to a letter requesting an interview sent to her in prison. Arthur Aidala, an attorney who represented Maxwell, said, “At this point, she is focused on her case before the Supreme Court of the United States.”

The FBI’s Epstein files

Epstein’s associations with Trump and many powerful people have been well documented. There remain questions about what the FBI possesses about Epstein and his well-connected friends. In 2019, the FBI confiscated evidence from Epstein’s properties in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York. 

Earlier this week, after the Journal sought comment from the president about the letter, Trump told reporters at the White House that he believed some Epstein files were “made up” by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey. 

He said that releasing any more Epstein files would be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release,” Trump said.

Allegations that bureaucrats covered up Epstein’s connections with participants in his trafficking scheme were fanned by people now in top roles in the Trump administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino.

In June 2024, Trump was asked in a Fox News interview whether he would release the Epstein case files. The Republican presidential candidate initially responded, “Yeah, I would.” But he also expressed some reservations. “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”

Soon after she was confirmed as attorney general, Bondi said she was preparing to release new Epstein files. In late February, Bondi announced the release of “Phase 1” of the documents. But the material contained few new revelations, drawing criticism from right-wing influencers.

Bondi initially blamed the FBI’s New York office for withholding information and promised to release the remaining documents after redacting the victim’s names. Patel also said, “There will be no coverups, no missing documents and no stone left unturned.” They tasked hundreds of FBI employees to review the materials and prepare them for release.

The issue took on new life in June when Elon Musk, amid a public feud with Trump, alleged that the FBI was withholding documents from the Epstein case because Trump was in the files.

“The truth will come out,” Musk wrote on X on June 5. He later deleted the message and said he regretted some of his comments. 

On July 7, the Justice Department backtracked on Bondi’s pledge to release more Epstein files. The Justice Department said that after an “exhaustive review” it had found no “incriminating client list” or additional documents that warrant public disclosure.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded this week that Republican Chairman Jim Jordan hold hearings on the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files and, if necessary, subpoena Bondi, Patel and Bongino.

At a cabinet meeting on July 8, Trump criticized a reporter for asking about Epstein. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” Trump said. “That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time?”

That same day, Musk wrote on X: “How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?”

Bondi also told president at the meeting that Justice decided to not release more Jeffrey Epstein documents because of the presence of child pornography and the need to protect victims

By Sadie Gurman, Annie Linskey, Josh Dawsey and Alex Leary

When Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “truckload” of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials. 

In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing.

The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump’s appearance in the documents wasn’t the focus.

They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.

They also told Trump that senior Justice Department officials didn’t plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information, the officials said. Trump said at the meeting he would defer to the Justice Department’s decision to not release any further files.

The meeting set the stage for the high-profile review to come to an end. Bondi had said in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” Trump said last week in response to a journalist’s question that Bondi hadn’t told him that his name was in the files.

The administration didn’t publicly announce the decision until weeks later on July 7, when the Justice Department posted a memo on its website. The statement, which was unsigned, stated that a thorough review had turned up no list of Epstein’s clients, no evidence that would lead to an investigation of uncharged third parties and no additional documents that merited public disclosure. It said that much of the material would have been sealed in a trial to protect victims and to block the dissemination of child pornography.

Typically, the FBI doesn’t disclose materials that aren’t related to a charged offense.

“This is another fake news story, just like the previous story by The Wall Street Journal,” said White House communications director Steven Cheung.

In a statement to the Journal on Friday, Bondi and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution. “As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings,” they said.

On Tuesday, Blanche said on X that the Justice Department was seeking to arrange a meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell in the coming days to discuss any possible information about anyone who has committed crimes with Epstein.

Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 of helping Epstein’s sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. She has been in custody since she was charged in 2020 and didn’t testify at her trial.

One of Maxwell’s lawyers, David Oscar Markus, confirmed the discussions and said, “We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case.” Maxwell has been seeking to have her conviction overturned, contending she didn’t receive a fair trial. 

Both Epstein and Trump said years ago that they had a falling out. On Wednesday, after the publication of this article, Trump’s spokesman Cheung said: “The fact is that The President kicked him out of his club for being a creep.”

Trump has said their friendship ended before the financier was indicted for soliciting prostitution in 2006. Epstein later pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008, served time in a Florida jail and registered as a sex offender. When Epstein was arrested again in 2019, Trump said he hadn’t talked to Epstein for about 15 years. Epstein died in jail that year while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking.  

FBI Director Kash Patel has privately told other government officials that Trump’s name appeared in the files, according to people close to the administration.

Patel declined to answer an inquiry from the Journal about the Epstein case, but said in a statement that the memo on the Justice Department website explaining why the department wouldn’t release more Epstein documents was “consistent with the thorough review conducted by the FBI and DOJ.”

Details of Bondi’s meeting with Trump haven’t been previously reported. Trump’s advisers had for months, including during the presidential campaign, said they would release the files, and Trump, while at times equivocal, indicated he would support the release.

Trump’s supporters, including some now serving in senior roles in the administration, claimed that the documents would expose global elites and powerful Democrats who spent time with the disgraced financier.

The decision to not release the files has triggered the most serious backlash from Trump’s political base since he launched his bid for the White House a decade ago, with a vocal group of the president’s allies seeing the move as a massive betrayal. 

Trump has told administration officials in recent weeks that he wanted the growing public attention on Epstein to go away. On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson cut short the legislative session as some lawmakers demanded votes on more releases related to the Epstein files.

Grand jury testimony

Last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published an article about a letter bearing Trump’s name that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein, which was assembled before the financier was first charged. On Friday, Trump sued the Journal’s reporters, Journal publisher Dow Jones, parent company News Corp and executives, calling the letter “nonexistent” and alleging the article defamed him.

A spokeswoman for Dow Jones said, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.” 

Pages from the leather-bound album are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It’s unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.

On Thursday, Trump said he had directed Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval!” On Friday, Bondi and Blanche asked a federal court to do so, saying it was “a matter of public interest.”  

The grand jury testimony makes up only a portion of the more than 300 gigabytes of Epstein-related material the FBI compiled as part of the recent review. Among other material, the FBI confiscated digital and documentary evidence from Epstein’s properties in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York in 2019 when he was arrested.

Grand jury testimony is subject to secrecy protections and faces potentially high hurdles for public release. Administration officials privately acknowledge that the court is unlikely to release the testimony.

On July 15, an ABC News journalist asked Trump, as he took questions from reporters at the White House, what Bondi told him about the Epstein files: “Specifically, did she tell you at all that your name appeared in the files?”

“No, no, she’s—she’s given us just a very quick briefing,” Trump responded. He also said Bondi had “really done a very good job” on the Epstein review.

Bondi-Bongino clash

The decision to not release the files and the harsh fallout among the public has roiled some of Trump’s senior staff, who have staked their reputations on exposing the ties between Epstein and moneyed elites. 

Patel, the FBI director, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, had been in favor of releasing more documents, people familiar with their efforts said. 

Bongino has told colleagues that his association with the administration’s decision to keep the files private has eroded his credibility among the base of support that fueled his rise as a successful podcaster and media personality on the right, according to a senior administration official. Bongino didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

On July 9, after ABC News reached out to the White House about Bondi’s briefing to the president, Bongino and Bondi clashed in a meeting in which Bondi alleged that Bongino secretly provided information to the media to damage her reputation, people familiar with the meeting said. 

Bongino in turn exploded about Bondi, his face red, and called her a liar, a senior administration official said.

An analysis of the text and drawing long hidden in a 2003 birthday book

By Khadeeja Safdar, Joe Palazzolo and Kara Dapena

Here's an analysis of the letter bearing Donald Trump's name that was included in a 50th birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein.

The Wall Street Journal in July reported on the 2003 birthday book and letter bearing Trump's name. Trump has denied writing the letter or drawing the picture, calling it "a fake thing."

A copy of the letter was provided Monday to Congress in response to a subpoena from Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chair of the House Oversight Committee. Reps. Robert Garcia (D., Calif.) and Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) had pressed for the release of the book from the Epstein estate.

Here is a look at key features of the document.

Signature and typeface

In the Epstein letter, Trump's signature is a squiggly "Donald" mimicking pubic hair. Trump often signs with his full name, but there are other examples of personal letters he sent with a similar signature and bold serif lettering.

The signature and font used in the 2003 Epstein letter resemble a thank-you letter Trump sent in April 2006 to attorney George Conway and a letter sent in November 2000 to Hillary Clinton congratulating her on her election to the U.S. Senate.

Line drawings

The Epstein letter has a line drawing that appears to be hand-drawn with heavy marker, including a pair of small arcs denoting a woman's breasts. Over the years, doodles and drawings of cityscapes and other subjects with similar strokes have been attributed to Trump and auctioned for charity.

Third person

The Epstein letter has a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person. In speeches and social-media posts, Trump has often referred to himself in the third person. Here are four video clips:

“Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump. Nobody.”

— Presidential campaign announcement in New York, June 16, 2015 (Video: C‑SPAN)

“Some of the signs you’ll see are not put up by the people that love or like Donald Trump, they’re put up by the other side.”

— News conference at the White House, Feb. 16, 2017 (Video: NARA)

“But because his name is Donald Trump you have the haters and they continue to hate.”

— "Make America Great Again" rally in Illinois, Oct. 27, 2018 (Video: ABC 7 Chicago)

“Nobody’s done more for the historically Black colleges and universities than Donald Trump. Nobody.”

— Remarks to the RNC in North Carolina, Aug. 24, 2020 (Video: CBS News)

Word choices

The Epstein letter says, "Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?" and ends with "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday -- and may every day be another wonderful secret." Trump used the word "enigma" to describe Don King and Mike Tyson in his 1990 book and to describe Dan Rather in his 2004 book. In social-media posts and in speeches, Trump has often used the phrase "a wonderful thing." Here are some examples.

'Enigma'

“Any discussion of Mike’s affairs eventually leads to the subject of Don King. Don, like Mike, is something of an enigma. The difference between the two is that Don delights in being one; he likes keeping people a bit off balance all the time because it usually works to his advantage.”

— ‘Trump: Surviving at the Top,’ 1990

“This is one of those gray areas that remain an enigma even to those who have finely honed business instincts. There are inexplicable signs that can guide you to or away from certain deals and certain people.”

— ‘Trump: How to Get Rich,’ 2004

“Dan Rather is an enigma to me. He’s got absolutely no talent or charisma or personality, yet year after year, CBS apologizes for his terrible ratings.”

— ‘Trump: How to Get Rich,’ 2004

'A wonderful thing'

“I think Brexit’s going to be a wonderful thing for your country.”

— News conference with U.K. prime minister at the White House, Jan. 27, 2017 (Video: NARA)

“See, in the old days, you’d say that’s a wonderful thing. Now they say, ‘How can you possibly do that?’”

— Address accepting presidential nomination in Wisconsin, July 18, 2024 (Video: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

“And we sold it to the Waldorf Astoria, and it was a wonderful thing, but…”

— Interview on "The Joe Rogan Experience," Oct. 25, 2024 (Video: the podcast)

“But it’s going to be a wonderful thing. It’s going to be wonderful for the Middle East.”

— Meeting with Jordanian leaders at the White House, Feb. 11, 2025 (Video: the White House)

Richard Kahn and Darren Indyke worked for the convicted sex offender for years, handling payments, banking and legal matters for Epstein and women in his orbit; the men deny they knew about Epstein’s crimes

By Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo

In 2016, a letter was drawn up for U.S. immigration officials with a glowing endorsement. It described “a very healthy marriage” between two women, their bond so deep they “often complete each other’s sentences.” 

Its author, a New York accountant named Richard Kahn, said he had personally witnessed the women’s “passion for each other” during meetings. He had his signature notarized to make it official.

But the marriage turned out to be a sham.

Kahn prepared the letter on behalf of his longtime boss and patron, Jeffrey Epstein. The convicted sex offender was trying to secure U.S. papers for an Eastern European woman he wanted to keep in the country. The plan required a spouse. Epstein had pressured an American woman he had abused into marrying the woman—and Kahn’s letter gave it legitimacy.

Soon after, the American woman told attorney Darren Indyke that she wanted a divorce. Indyke, who had previously advised her on how to communicate with U.S. immigration officials, warned against it. He, too, worked for Epstein.

Epstein wasn’t a one-man operation. He ran a well-oiled machine, with members of his inner circle performing specific roles. Former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell recruited girls and young women whom Epstein would abuse, as did victims whom Epstein coerced into his scheme. His secretary Lesley Groff scheduled appointments.

But it was Kahn, the trusted accountant, and Indyke, the loyal lawyer, who kept the engine running for years with their financial and legal maneuvers. Indyke started working exclusively for Epstein around 1996. Kahn became Epstein’s in-house accountant in 2005.

In separate statements to The Wall Street Journal, Kahn and Indyke each said they didn’t know their boss was engaged in sex trafficking and denied being complicit in or knowingly facilitating any crimes. They said they never witnessed Epstein sexually abuse a woman and that none of the women ever reported to them they were being sexually abused. 

Epstein’s sexual abuse “by all accounts occurred behind closed doors, in secluded locations, and at times when neither Mr. Indyke nor Mr. Kahn was present,” said Daniel Weiner, a lawyer for Indyke. The men said they provided legal and financial services that are typical for an ultrawealthy client.

The Journal reviewed public and nonpublic court documents; settlement agreements; banking, tax and property records; and letters and emails. The reporting includes interviews with women who dealt with Indyke and Kahn as well as people who worked with the two men and others familiar with their activities.

Both Kahn and Indyke were working closely with Epstein when he was arrested in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges. Epstein made the men co-executors of his estate, giving them the power to control access to evidence and assets currently estimated at more than $100 million. 

While their boss was alive, part of their job was keeping his financial activities private. Indyke and Kahn created or were officers of entities that obscured transactions. Kahn managed the expenses, and Indyke withdrew cash in amounts that didn’t trigger federal reporting and pushed to relax travel restrictions that came with Epstein’s sex-offender status. Both explained away suspicious transactions in Epstein’s accounts when banks asked questions. 

Another part of the job was dealing directly with women later revealed to have been caught in Epstein’s web. They facilitated marriages that turned out to be shams, sent payments to women who have since said they were abused and monitored the personal expenses Epstein was paying for. 

Women said Kahn’s office provided cash and logged costs for things Epstein was covering—doctors’ visits and rent, as well as lingerie from Victoria’s Secret and haircuts at Frederic Fekkai. Kahn also prepared tax returns for some of the women and provided detailed spending reports on them at Epstein’s request. For about two years, Kahn and Indyke worked from offices in a New York City building where Epstein also housed women who later said they were abused.

When banks cut off Epstein over suspicious transactions, Kahn and Indyke took steps to keep Epstein afloat. Indyke withdrew $100,000 in cash for his boss in 2018, and Kahn found new firms where Epstein could open accounts.

In their statements, Kahn and Indyke said Epstein’s entities served legitimate purposes, such as employing household staff and paying expenses for aircraft. They said they didn’t hide Epstein’s involvement from banks and that any cash withdrawals were authorized and reviewed by banks. More than 90% of Epstein’s spending was related to his residences and planes, according to Kahn. 

Kahn “only very rarely ever interacted with any of Epstein’s accusers” and any letter Kahn provided in support of a woman’s immigration application was provided at the request of the recipient, said Daniel Ruzumna, a lawyer for Kahn. “He had no reason to think that any woman was coerced into a forced marriage.”

Weiner, the lawyer for Indyke, said that Epstein regularly needed cash because after 2008 Epstein had limited access to credit cards, that there was nothing “inherently suspect” about Epstein’s payments to Eastern European women and that Indyke had no reason to believe that the marriages “were anything other than consensual.” 

All the while, the duo were richly rewarded by Epstein. He paid them millions and gave them millions more in loans—that were never repaid. Epstein also paid out-of-pocket for perks such as covering extra healthcare expenses and children’s education.  

Between 2011 and 2019, Epstein and Epstein-owned entities paid more than $16 million to Indyke and over $10 million to Kahn, “apparently far more than could reasonably be attributed to the rates of their professional services,” the U.S. Virgin Islands government said in a 2020 lawsuit against the estate. Epstein owned a private island and had some of his entities based in the U.S. territory.  

After Epstein’s death in 2019, the pair were left to manage his estate and settle lawsuits brought by Epstein’s victims. The men are among the beneficiaries of a major trust that will collect his remaining assets after all claims against the estate are resolved, called the 1953 Trust. That means they stand to personally benefit from whatever is left of his fortune, potentially tens of millions of dollars each. 

Although their work for Epstein has been detailed in several civil lawsuits, Kahn and Indyke have largely stayed under the radar. When federal authorities in New York were investigating Epstein and Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges, neither Indyke nor Kahn was questioned by law enforcement, according to people familiar with the investigation.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which handled the Epstein and Maxwell cases, declined to comment.

In recent months, the estate has been turning over documents, including Epstein’s 2003 birthday book and a cache of emails with prominent people, in response to a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee. 

In a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting with the committee in September, some of Epstein’s victims delivered a more urgent message to lawmakers, according to people who attended: Collecting documents isn’t enough. Investigate the men controlling access to them. The women told committee members that the two men now gatekeeping access to evidence are the same ones who, in their view, helped orchestrate Epstein’s operation for decades. 

After Epstein’s death, the men used their executor roles—controlling both victims’ compensation and access to records—to try to immunize themselves from personal lawsuits, according to court filings. Victims who settled with the estate had to sign a release barring them from suing Kahn, Indyke and others. The victims could request an exception—but it had to be approved by Kahn and Indyke.

“Epstein’s sex trafficking could not have operated at the scope and scale it did, for as long as it did without the services and support Indyke and Kahn provided,” said attorney David Boies, who is representing some Epstein accusers in a lawsuit against the two men filed in New York last year. “They managed the cash that fueled the sex trafficking, paid procurers like Maxwell, arranged transportation and housing for victims, concealed the sources of funds.”

Lawyers for Kahn and Indyke said they have not improperly controlled access to evidence and continue to provide documents to the House Oversight Committee as requested. All of the estate’s assets have gone to resolve claims, pay taxes or operational expenses—and have been monitored by a court-appointed special master.

They said the victims’ compensation program was voluntary and adjudicated by a neutral administrator, and that the language of the agreements was negotiated with victims’ lawyers and was designed to avoid litigation that would deplete the estate’s resources. Kahn and Indyke have also resolved more than 50 other victims’ claims outside the program, their lawyers said. 

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse underage girls. She is serving a 20-year sentence, though was moved to a lower-security facility earlier this year. 

Groff, Epstein’s former secretary, hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing and has denied knowledge or involvement in Epstein’s crimes. She didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The lawyer and the accountant

Indyke was a recent college graduate from New York when he first met Epstein about three decades ago. He was working at a boutique Manhattan law firm called Gold & Wachtel that counted Epstein among its clients.

Within a few years, Indyke attended law school at Cornell University. When he graduated in 1991, he returned to Gold & Wachtel as an attorney, then moved to Greenberg Traurig, a large national firm. 

​Around 1996, Indyke left the firm to work exclusively for Epstein, supporting his financial consulting firm. Epstein moved his business in the late 1990s from the mainland to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the government granted him millions of dollars in tax incentives. 

Early on, Epstein arranged an apartment for him at 301 E. 66th Street, where Indyke lived for about two years in the early 2000s. The building would later become infamous when it was discovered that Epstein had been housing women there that he was sexually exploiting. In their statements, Indyke and Kahn said they weren’t aware of any abuse of the building’s occupants.

“I was given an incredible opportunity and that was to go join and work closely with Mr. Epstein, who had become kind of my mentor,” Indyke would say at a 2009 hearing in USVI. “So I guess you could say I’ve been working with him as an attorney, adviser and personal representative for over 20 years now.”

Kahn’s recruitment was more transactional, according to people familiar with the events.

In 2005, Epstein was in the market for a new accountant and used a recruiting firm. He tried out three candidates and eventually chose Kahn. The accountant was a young CPA from New York who had graduated from college in 1994 and earned his master’s in taxation in 1999.

Like Indyke, Kahn dedicated himself to Epstein. He first worked as an employee of New York Strategy Group, an Epstein company. In 2008, he and fellow accountant Harry Beller established HBRK Associates Inc., a one-client firm that listed its address as the 301 E. 66th Street building used by Epstein. It was a one-bedroom apartment converted into an office. Indyke had a similar one, and their doors were across the hall from each other. 

Kahn had been in the job less than a year when Epstein was arrested in 2006 on charges he was abusing girls in Florida. Kahn later told people that, as a new parent in a bad economy, he stayed on. 

Kahn’s lawyer said Epstein’s Florida conviction “did not suggest that Epstein was a serial sex trafficker—or that Epstein would commit acts of sex trafficking or abuse against adult women or minors in the future.”

Beller also worked as an accountant for Epstein until 2014. JPMorgan Chase flagged checks signed by Beller as suspicious, including ones from Epstein’s account totaling $800,000 in less than a year and a half, according to a suspicious activity report unsealed in a 2022 USVI lawsuit against JPMorgan. The bank also flagged an unusual number cashed for $9,800—just under the $10,000 daily limit requiring the bank to file a report with the Treasury Department. JPMorgan dropped Epstein as a client in 2013.

Beller didn’t respond to requests for comment. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to a subpoena for documents and questions in a deposition in the New York lawsuit against Indyke and Kahn filed last year.

In 2007, Kahn and Indyke were involved in a $1 million letter of credit in Epstein’s name to backstop a loan from Mellon United National Bank to MC2 Model Management, a modeling agency that Epstein used to recruit women, according to emails produced in the lawsuit against JPMorgan. 

That same year, an HSBC branch in France terminated Epstein as a client, the first known instance of a major bank refusing to do business with him, according to emails obtained by Bloomberg. Indyke bore the news to his boss in a January 2008 email.

When Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida later in 2008 to procuring a person under 18 for prostitution, he needed someone to run his financial consulting business during his jail sentence. He asked Indyke to stand in.

Indyke made around 40 trips to see Epstein in jail. A USVI compliance review would later document that Epstein had relinquished his title as president of his consulting firm, Financial Trust Company, to Indyke during this period.

With Epstein behind bars, Indyke represented Financial Trust Company in a USVI hearing over whether to extend a 10-year tax break that the territory had awarded Epstein’s company. Indyke was successful in obtaining a five-year extension.

Financial web

Around the time Epstein was released from a Florida jail in 2009, Indyke and Kahn were enmeshed in Epstein’s complex financial and legal scaffolding. There were dozens of Epstein-related entities and hundreds of accounts at more than 20 banks by the time Epstein died. 

Indyke and Kahn held positions at many of these entities, including some that were allegedly “created to simply facilitate the illegal sex-trafficking venture,” according to the 2024 New York lawsuit against the two men. They include the C.O.U.Q. Foundation, Gratitude America, J. Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation, FT Real Estate, Hyperion Air, Jeepers, Mort and Zorro Development.

Indyke’s lawyer said there was “nothing remotely sinister in the use of such entities” and there was no effort to hide that Epstein owned them. Kahn’s lawyer said it was a standard way of organizing assets, such as aircraft and residences.

The two men were also trustees of the Butterfly Trust, which made $383,000 in five payments to women in one year through a JPMorgan account, according to a forensic accountant’s report commissioned by USVI in the 2022 lawsuit against the bank. USVI’s expert said there was no justification for the transfers and called them “highly suspicious.”

Indyke and Kahn served as vice president and treasurer, respectively, of the C.O.U.Q. Foundation, which made more than $30,000 in direct payments to women, according to the report.

The report also gives a partial view of the men’s compensation from Epstein’s JPMorgan accounts from 2003 to 2013. Indyke’s personal account received $2.4 million, while his business account received $8.3 million over those years. Kahn’s company, HBRK Associates, received $4.9 million in that time, the report said.

The men received other forms of financial compensation. Epstein lent Indyke more than $7 million that was never repaid. He financially assisted Indyke in purchasing homes in New Jersey and Boca Raton, Fla.

Kahn’s lawyer said the compensation from Epstein was consistent with Kahn’s experience and education. Indyke’s lawyer said his compensation was appropriate given his nearly 23 years of legal services for Epstein.

Roles as ‘assistants’

In July 2012, Indyke and another Epstein lawyer met with the USVI attorney general to loosen the travel requirements for his boss, who often spent time at his private island there.  

As a convicted sex offender, Epstein was required to provide 21 days’ notice before leaving the territory. Indyke, who was responsible for reporting Epstein’s travels, and the other lawyer argued it was too burdensome. The requirement was dropped to just 24 hours’ notice, limiting the ability of authorities to track Epstein’s movements.

In 2019, before Epstein’s arrest, a new USVI attorney general reimposed the 21-day requirement. By then, Epstein had spent years moving freely between his properties, including his private island where dozens of young women have said they were sexually exploited.

For years, young women whom Epstein was sexually abusing cycled through Epstein’s properties as “assistants.” Epstein supplied their housing, managed their immigration papers, arranged medical and dental care, and funded even basic personal needs such as haircuts and clothing.

Lawsuits would later allege that Epstein orchestrated at least three fraudulent marriages for immigration purposes, and that Indyke and Kahn performed legal and accounting work, including helping the women set up joint bank accounts. Lawyers for Indyke and Kahn said the marriages were legal and the women thanked them for the work.

In May 2013, after a Russian woman whom Epstein was sexually exploiting opened a Bank of America account, Kahn immediately wired $14,073 into it, according to a lawsuit filed against the bank this year. 

Over the following years, Kahn and bookkeeper Bella Klein used the account to pay rent and other costs with money from Epstein—creating the appearance that the woman was earning legitimate income and paying her own expenses, the lawsuit said.  

Klein declined to comment. Like Beller, the former accountant, she declined to turn over records or answer questions in a deposition in the New York lawsuit against Indyke and Kahn, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The rent checks were made out to “301/66 Owners Corp” at 301 E. 66th Street, the same building where Kahn and Indyke each once had an office.

In May 2015, the woman was added to the payroll of one of Epstein’s companies. Paychecks were deposited into the Bank of America account, and Kahn used the records to prepare the woman’s 2015 tax return.

Epstein arranged for the Russian woman to marry another young woman to secure her immigration status, and the bank statements and tax returns were to create a paper trail for immigration officials, the lawsuit against Bank of America said.

When she later questioned Kahn about irregularities in the account in her name—transactions were far too large for her supposed income—she was told not to worry, the suit said. 

Kahn’s lawyer said his client had no control over this account and that the woman who received the funds didn’t inform Kahn of any abuse.

In 2014, Epstein lured a young European model with false promises of development work in Africa with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She received a letter signed by Kahn on Enhanced Education letterhead—an Epstein entity where Kahn was listed as an officer—requesting expedited visa processing. 

The letter claimed the woman would “canvass the progress of The Gates Foundation Program in three African Nations” for Enhanced Education’s continued operations in Africa and that all her expenses were covered.

In fact, there was no Gates Foundation arrangement and Enhanced Education had no African operations. By the time the model realized no legitimate work awaited her and that Epstein was sexually exploiting her, months had passed.

Kahn’s lawyer said Epstein asked him to prepare the letter, he had no reason to question Enhanced Education’s sponsorship and there was no suggestion of abuse. The Gates Foundation didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Cash operations

Sex-trafficking operations depend on cash since it leaves no record of payments to victims or recruiters. But obtaining large amounts of cash without triggering federal reporting requirements takes careful planning.

Indyke, who had signatory authority, made bank withdrawals from Epstein’s accounts in a systematic way, according to a 2020 settlement agreement between Deutsche Bank and the New York state financial regulator and lawsuits filed by Epstein accusers. The New York regulator fined Deutsche Bank for failing to properly monitor its dealings with Epstein. 

About twice a month between 2013 and 2017, Indyke walked into the Deutsche Bank branch on Park Avenue, a few blocks from Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, according to details spelled out in the settlement. Each time, the lawyer withdrew exactly $7,500 in cash—the maximum amount someone other than the account holder could take out. Over four years, Indyke made this withdrawal 97 times.

The cash would be stored in a safe in Kahn’s office, and then placed in Epstein’s black travel bag as needed. A May 8, 2014, email from Groff, Epstein’s secretary, reviewed by the Journal, inquired if Kahn had brought the cash that day. “Do you know if Rich brought money for JE today?” she wrote. “The black bag is to always have $6,000 if he is traveling…” 

The settlement described how when bank personnel asked why Epstein needed so much cash, Indyke cited travel, tipping and household expenses. But in May 2014, Indyke asked a bank employee a question that revealed his real concern: How often could he withdraw cash without triggering an alert? “Is it once a week? Twice a week? Once every other week?”

Indyke’s lawyer said Indyke was authorized to make the withdrawals and only wanted to ensure he didn’t exceed the maximum amount allowed for non-account holders. 

The pattern continued for years. On July 20, 2016, Indyke brought two checks to cash to a teller: $7,500 from Epstein’s account and $4,000 from his own business account. The $11,500 total was enough to trigger federal reporting. 

He cashed only the $7,500 check that day, then returned the next day for the $4,000 one.

In July 2017, Indyke asked a teller directly: Would a withdrawal of more than $10,000 require a report? When told yes, he spread a withdrawal over two days.

That month, anti-money-laundering officers at Deutsche Bank confronted him. His withdrawals looked like textbook cash structuring—pulling money in increments designed to evade reporting requirements. By then, Indyke had withdrawn hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from Epstein’s personal accounts since he opened them in 2013.

On Jan. 17, 2018, just before Deutsche Bank closed its Park Avenue branch, Indyke cashed a single check for $100,000. Kahn coordinated with the bank to ensure they had the cash ready, according to the 2024 New York lawsuit.

Bank scrutiny

In May 2018, a Deutsche Bank compliance officer noticed payments from Epstein to the Russian bank accounts of women with Eastern European surnames. A bank employee asked Kahn to explain the purpose and Epstein’s relationship with the recipients.

Kahn’s response: “SENT TO A FRIEND FOR TUITION FOR SCHOOL.”

Kahn’s lawyer said estate records show that the women were in school, Epstein was paying their tuition and nothing suggested that “Epstein’s payments were for sex rather than to support their studies.”

Indyke wired tens of thousands of dollars to women with Eastern European surnames in the three years leading up to Epstein’s 2019 arrest, according to the 2020 USVI lawsuit against the Epstein estate. And over nine months ending in February 2019, one of Epstein’s personal bank accounts recorded 97 withdrawals of $1,000—all from the same ATM near Indyke’s office, the lawsuit said. 

Meanwhile, from 2016 to 2019, Epstein made at least 55 payments to women that were marked in financial records as “℅ HBRK Associates,” Kahn’s company, according to a document produced by JPMorgan in the 2022 lawsuit against the bank.

After the Miami Herald published a series in November 2018 reporting that Epstein had dozens of victims, more banks started dropping him. Kahn worked hard to keep him afloat and find new financial institutions, while Indyke kept Epstein abreast of the media fallout. Emails released by the House Oversight Committee earlier this month included those from Indyke to Epstein about damaging news articles on the sexual-abuse allegations.

In December 2018, Deutsche Bank began shutting down Epstein’s accounts, and Indyke and Kahn started moving money elsewhere—including to accounts in their own names.

Around that time, both Kahn and Indyke had signatory authority on some accounts.

In April 2019, an Epstein trust made two payments: $1 million to Indyke’s personal TD Bank account and $1 million to Kahn’s personal JPMorgan account, according to people familiar with the accounts. 

That year, Kahn traveled to USVI to discuss activating a banking license that would help Epstein start his own bank.

On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport and charged with sex-trafficking. The moment triggered a flood of civil claims against Epstein’s estate from his victims. 

A month later, Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell. Both Indyke and Kahn hired criminal defense lawyers.

The money kept moving. In April 2020, another of Epstein’s trusts received around $13 million in proceeds from his investments. That year, more than half of the trust’s funds moved into new trusts—with Indyke and Kahn among the beneficiaries—according to a motion filed by USVI in its 2020 lawsuit against the estate.

The investment adviser for the trust wrote in a letter to banks that the decision to “decant” the trust’s assets was done in large part to insulate the money from claims against the beneficiaries of the new trusts. 

After the estate settles debts and legal claims against it, Epstein’s remaining assets are to be funneled into another trust, called the 1953 Trust, according to his will, modified two days before Epstein’s death.

Indyke and Kahn are co-trustees of the trust, which is named after the year Epstein was born. They are also two of the top three beneficiaries, prioritized over dozens of others, including Maxwell, said people familiar with the trust. The other top-three beneficiary was the Eastern European woman involved in the 2016 immigration letter that Kahn worked on.

Under the terms of the trust agreement, the men would receive tens of millions of dollars each as beneficiaries if the trust has sufficient assets after the estate’s affairs are settled, one of the people said. 

In 2020, the Epstein estate established the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program, which ultimately paid more than $121 million to 136 women. But to receive compensation, victims had to sign releases barring them from bringing claims against Kahn and Indyke, among others, according to court filings.

Lawyers for Indyke and Kahn said the program was established to create a fair, private process to resolve claims, that amounts were determined by the neutral administrator after negotiation with the victims’ lawyers and that there was no limit on payouts. 

Other cases were settled outside the program. Some women said their mediations were traumatic. They said lawyers for Indyke and Kahn worked to keep payouts low and shamed victims over their correspondence with Epstein. This was especially painful, they said, given that the effect of Indyke and Kahn’s work had helped keep women trapped and the pair stood to benefit from keeping the payouts low.

Indyke’s lawyer said the mediation process was “done in complete privacy” and that some women had sent Epstein “multiple, repeated messages of warmth, love and support” years after their interactions with him.

In November 2022, the duo, as executors, settled the USVI lawsuit against the estate, in which the USVI attorney general alleged Indyke and Kahn served as the operational backbone of Epstein’s sex-trafficking enterprise. 

Under the terms of the settlement, the estate, without admitting wrongdoing, agreed to pay USVI $105 million in cash plus half the proceeds from the sale of Little St. James, Epstein’s private island, the USVI attorney general’s office said.

A New York federal judge last year allowed the lawsuit against Indyke and Kahn filed by Boies and his firm to proceed on behalf of women who hadn’t signed the releases to receive funds from the estate. “These allegations permit the reasonable inference that Indyke and Kahn knew what was going on and had a hand in keeping it going,” the judge ruled.

After Epstein

Six years after Epstein’s death, Indyke and Kahn remain wealthy and in control of key evidence. 

In February 2025, at a hearing in a separate lawsuit involving women who have accused Epstein of abuse, victims’ lawyer Brad Edwards accused the two men of stonewalling discovery requests. “We have a situation where it is truly a fox guarding the henhouse. The co-executors Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn are not independent, neutral executors,” he said. “Unless we tell them exactly the documents that we know exist, we’re getting no responsive documents back.”

Lawyers for Kahn and Indyke said they hadn’t stonewalled discovery requests and have turned over hundreds of thousands of pages to private plaintiffs. 

Indyke has relocated to Delray Beach, Fla., where he bought a $1.8 million home in 2023. That same year, he sold his Boca Raton house for $5.5 million. He has been working as a real-estate agent and appearing in online videos promoting luxury properties in the area.

Indyke landed a job as a lawyer at Parlatore Law Group, a firm whose founding partner, Tim Parlatore, has represented President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. 

On the firm’s website, Indyke describes himself as “a devoted husband and father of twin daughters” who volunteers with dog rescue shelters. He said he has “over 15 years of battle-tested crisis management experience” and “resolved well over 150 claims on behalf of defendants for a fraction of the dollar amounts claimed in litigation,” but doesn’t name Epstein.

Kahn owns property in New York and has told people recently he is no longer working as an accountant.

In September 2025, Kahn and Indyke filed legal responses denying the allegations against them in the New York lawsuit. 

The men agreed with the lawsuit on some points: They said they are entitled to future compensation for their work as co-executors and control the trust that will get whatever is left of Epstein’s fortune. They didn’t volunteer that they are also key beneficiaries.

Unexpected arrival of Epstein associate upset camp’s routines; some inmates say she got favorable treatment

By Christopher Weaver, Meghan Bobrowsky and Brian Whitton

On a weekend in mid-August, hundreds of inmates at a minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas, were locked down during their usual time for strolling the grassy campus and visiting with family and friends.

All except one: Ghislaine Maxwell, the 63-year-old associate of Jeffrey Epstein convicted for her role in helping him sexually abuse underage teens. 

While her fellow inmates were confined to their dormitories after breakfast, Maxwell met with several visitors in the federal prison camp’s chapel, according to people familiar with the matter.

Less than three weeks earlier, the Justice Department had moved Maxwell to Federal Prison Camp Bryan from a higher-security facility in Tallahassee, Fla. Under Federal Bureau of Prisons rules, prisoners with sex-crime convictions like Maxwell’s don’t ordinarily qualify to serve their time in such camps. 

The transfer followed an interview with senior Justice Department official Todd Blanche during which Maxwell said she had never seen President Trump, during his long association with Epstein, doing anything inappropriate or illegal.

Maxwell’s unexpected arrival upset the camp’s usually relaxed atmosphere, leading to more frequent lockdowns, the addition of armed guards and other changes. Current and former inmates said in interviews that Maxwell appeared to receive unusually favorable treatment at times, sparking resentment from other inmates.

It couldn’t be determined whom Maxwell met with in the chapel that day. Some prisoners heard the lockdown was needed to accommodate important visitors. David Markus, a lawyer for Maxwell, declined to comment.

One inmate recalled seeing Maxwell return to the Madison dormitory unit that day with a smile on her face. When that inmate asked Maxwell about the meeting, she said it went really well, but didn’t share any other information.

Less than a week later, the Justice Department released a transcript of Blanche’s July interview with Maxwell. A spokesman for the Justice Department, which oversees the Bureau of Prisons, declined to comment.

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Maxwell, leaving a presidential pardon as the only remaining legal option to avoid serving out her sentence. With credit for time served, good behavior and other things, she is projected to be released in 2037.

Asked after the Supreme Court ruling if he would consider pardoning Maxwell, Trump said, “I’d have to take a look at it.”

Some Trump supporters have continued to draw attention to the Epstein affair by spreading conspiracy theories about a potential coverup of a “client list” identifying wealthy and famous associates of the disgraced financier, who died by suicide in 2019. 

In July, The Wall Street Journal published an article about a lewd letter to Epstein bearing Trump’s signature that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein. Trump denied writing the letter, which he called “nonexistent,” and sued the Journal’s publisher, the reporters and others. Epstein’s estate later released a copy of the letter bearing the signature to lawmakers.

Low-risk inmates

At Federal Prison Camp Bryan, located about 90 miles northwest of downtown Houston, guards usually don’t carry weapons. During the early morning shift at Bryan, as few as six guards oversee more than six hundred inmates, according to a 2021 report on staffing levels. 

Most candidates for the medium-security prisons committed white-collar crimes, face short sentences or have served a large portion of a longer one and are considered a low flight risk. Bureau of Prisons policies prohibit sex offenders from serving time in minimum-security facilities without a special waiver. The bureau didn’t respond to an inquiry about how many such waivers have been granted.

Maxwell has the fourth-longest remaining sentence of the more than 600 inmates at Bryan, a Journal analysis of Bureau of Prisons records found. The records covered Bryan inmates during the period from Sept. 5 to Sept. 11.

Maxwell’s fellow inmates currently include Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of blood-testing company Theranos who was convicted of defrauding investors, and “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Jennifer Shah, who is in prison for defrauding seniors through a telemarketing scheme.

In July, after Maxwell was interviewed about Epstein by the Justice Department’s Blanche, inmates in the Bryan prison camp’s Madison unit were told to do a deep cleaning of the whole dormitory. One inmate said they were told “someone important was coming to do a walk-through.” 

Shortly thereafter, Maxwell was transferred into the unit. “She had said she didn’t know why they moved her,” one inmate recalled. “She said one night they just told her to get up and they brought her” to Bryan.

Markus, her lawyer, said in a post on X that her transfer to a “safer facility” came after she “faced serious danger in Tallahassee.”

Grassy campus

Like other minimum-security camps, Bryan offers job training and vocational opportunities, cleaner facilities and a higher level of freedom than other prison facilities, including the ability to come and go from housing units under normal circumstances, said former Bryan inmate Rhonda Fleming, who was convicted of Medicare fraud and was moved to another prison before Maxwell arrived.

Inmates said Maxwell was greeted with hostility from some prisoners, who called her a pedophile and a “chomo”—a prison slur for child molesters. 

Bryan’s prison cells, which can house up to four inmates, don’t have doors, former inmates said. One inmate who had just been transferred from another facility walked into Maxwell’s room and told her she liked her hair. Maxwell politely asked her to leave the room, according to another inmate who witnessed the incident. The witness recalled the new inmate screaming at Maxwell that she didn’t belong here. The new arrival was removed by guards and reassigned to another dormitory.

The warden called a “town meeting” for inmates. She warned that if inmates made threats to Maxwell, put her in any sort of danger or talked to the press about her, they would be shipped to a harsher facility, people familiar with the matter said.

The Journal sent more than 100 letters through the prison mail system to reach potential witnesses to Maxwell’s stay in the facility. It conducted interviews with current and former Bryan inmates and people who are in touch with them, and consulted government records.

Christiane Irwin, a 46-year-old Texas accountant convicted of defrauding a law firm where she worked, said in a telephone interview she could discuss Maxwell only in general terms because of the prohibition.

One day after she spoke to a Journal reporter on a phone line monitored by prison officials, her prison email privileges were suspended. Within days, she had been moved to the higher-security Houston Federal Detention Center. 

Her lawyer, Brandon Beck, said he learned of the move from the Journal and didn’t know the reason. “The BOP is a black box,” he said.

Inmates said another inmate was transferred after discussing Maxwell with someone outside the prison.

Maxwell largely kept to herself early on, other inmates said. There was a heavy media presence at the fence line, where photographers vied to get a shot of her. 

Drones flew overhead, the inmates recalled. One inmate recalled Maxwell telling her she was afraid one of the drones might “take her out.” 

Guards brought Maxwell her meals in her dormitory room. She was escorted to the recreation area for late-night workouts, and was allowed to shower after other inmates were confined to their bunks at 8 p.m. 

After Maxwell arrived, prison officials stationed special operations response teams, called SORT—the BOP’s equivalent of SWAT teams—at the camp’s main entrance and rear gate, day and night. SORT members carry military style weapons.

Earlier this year, prison officials had taken down black tarps that had prevented inmates from seeing beyond the camp’s perimeter fencing. After the tarps went back up, blocking sightlines into the camp, Maxwell ventured out more, inmates said. 

She got her hair done—a cut just above the shoulder, a dark mahogany dye job and a blow out—at the facility’s prisoner-run salon where inmates can earn credit toward cosmetology certificates. 

She began visiting the cafeteria, where she received vegetarian meals, most of which she gave away to other inmates. She said she couldn’t eat the food, one inmate recalled.

Rising tension

In the early morning hours of Aug. 9, a week after her arrival, gunfire erupted just outside the facility’s perimeter. Two law-enforcement officers with rifles rushed into Maxwell’s room in the Madison dormitory, screaming at her to get up. They rushed her out to another location.

Guards ordered other inmates to lock down. About an hour later, inmates were told they could return to their bunks. Maxwell was back by morning. 

A local police report reviewed by the Journal said officers responded to the shooting just after 1 a.m. On the street bordering the prison camp to the northeast, the report said, a shooter opened fire toward a house in the opposite direction of the prison. Another person returned fire before fleeing the scene.

Investigators collected 29 spent 9mm and .40 caliber cartridge casings and numerous bullet fragments from the scene, an evidence log shows. No one was injured, but several vehicles were damaged. A local man, an alleged getaway driver, was later arrested.

The police report said the shooting was gang-related—a finding that prison officials relayed to inmates.

But some inmates doubted the official account. Some prisoners feared for their own safety, worrying that an attempt on Maxwell’s life could claim theirs instead, other inmates said.

The following weekend is when Maxwell had her meeting in the chapel during another lockdown. Inmates were shuttled in and out of the cafeteria one housing unit at a time. That same weekend, people outside the camp’s gates were protesting Maxwell’s presence inside. 

Trump administration officials haven’t commented on why Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison.

In August, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse requested all Bureau of Prisons documents related to the transfer, raising concerns about whether it complied with the agency’s policies. His spokeswoman, Meaghan McCabe, said the lawmaker hadn’t gotten a response.

Some sex offenders in other facilities questioned why Maxwell should get better treatment than they receive despite having been convicted of similar crimes.

Tammy Halling, a Montana woman who was convicted of sexual exploitation of children in 2006 and sentenced to 110 years in prison, said inmates at another Texas federal prison where she is currently serving time were outraged when they learned of Maxwell’s transfer to Bryan.

“It is mainly because of the fact that she’s a sex offender, and sex offenders don’t belong in camp,” she said. “She’s the first one I have ever heard of.” Halling’s sentence was reduced by a judge, and she is now expected to be released in 2039.

In August, she said, she applied to the Bureau of Prisons to be moved to a low-security camp.

Mar-a-Lago sent an 18-year-old spa worker on a house call to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. She complained to her bosses that Epstein pressured her for sex.

By Joe Palazzolo, Rebecca Ballhaus and Khadeeja Safdar

Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t just a frequent visitor to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The club was also sending spa employees—usually young women—to Epstein’s nearby mansion for massages, manicures and other spa services, according to former Mar-a-Lago and Epstein employees.

The house calls went on for years, even as spa employees warned each other about Epstein, who was known among staff for being sexually suggestive and exposing himself during the appointments, according to the former Mar-a-Lago employees. 

The spa occasionally provided house calls for members. Epstein wasn’t a dues-paying member of the club, but Trump told staff to treat him like one, the employees said. Epstein had an account at the spa where his companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, booked appointments on his behalf.

They came to a halt in 2003, after an 18-year-old beautician returned to the club from a house call to Epstein and reported to managers that he had pressured her for sex, former employees said.

A manager sent Trump a fax relaying the employee’s allegations and urged him to ban Epstein, some of the former employees said. Trump told the manager it was a good letter and said to kick him out.

The beautician disclosed the house call to the club’s human resources team, one of the former employees said. The incident wasn’t reported to Palm Beach police, according to the former employees and police.

The department didn’t begin investigating Epstein until two years later, when a parent told them Epstein molested a 14-year-old girl from a local high school. Epstein was arrested in 2006 after several underage teens told police he paid them for sex.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the Journal was “writing up fallacies and innuendo in order to smear President Trump.” 

“No matter how many times this story is told and retold, the truth remains: President Trump did nothing wrong and he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar a Lago for being a creep,” Leavitt said in a text message.

Representatives for the Trump Organization didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The beautician’s allegations, and the Mar-a-Lago spa’s practice of dispatching workers to Epstein’s home, have not been previously reported. Employees sent on house calls, like the 18-year-old beautician, were typically licensed by the state boards of cosmetology or massage therapy.

The allegations came three years after Maxwell recruited another employee, Virginia Giuffre, who said she was 16 years old when she left the spa to work for Epstein. Giuffre died by suicide this year.

The Wall Street Journal identified four other Mar-a-Lago employees who were listed in Epstein’s address book, which was obtained by the FBI in 2009.

By the time Epstein was banned from the spa in 2003, disquiet over his presence at the club had been bubbling for years—including from Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, who in the mid-1990s warned her husband and others there was something “off” about Epstein, according to former employees. 

The relationship between Epstein and Trump, spanning from the 1980s to the early 2000s, has been the focus of intense scrutiny this year. The Justice Department, in response to a law passed by Congress in November, has recently begun releasing thousands of documents from its files on Epstein, some of which reference Trump. Being mentioned in the files isn’t an indicator of wrongdoing. Trump has said he cut ties with Epstein years before Epstein’s 2006 arrest.

Trump and Epstein continued to cross paths after the spa banned Epstein and Maxwell in 2003. They were in fierce competition for a Palm Beach property up for grabs in bankruptcy in late 2004, and Epstein’s message book showed two calls from Trump the month of the auction, which Trump won.

In 2008, Epstein reached a controversial deal with federal prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution and procuring a minor to engage in prostitution. He was arrested a second time on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019 and died in jail awaiting trial. A medical examiner ruled it suicide.

Trump has given a variety of answers about when and why he cut Epstein off from Mar-a-Lago and then ended their friendship altogether. “I had a falling-out with him. I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years,” Trump said after Epstein’s 2019 arrest.

When asked this summer why he stopped socializing with Epstein, Trump said it was because Epstein had lured away some of his staff. “Because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non grata.”

Trump, in a social-media post on Christmas Day, said he was the “only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so.”

The White House, meanwhile, has said that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for “being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre.”

Into the early 2000s, Trump continued to associate with Epstein, saying in a New York magazine profile in 2002 that he was “a lot of fun” and “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” A letter bearing Trump’s signature and a drawing of a naked woman was part of a book celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday in January 2003.

Trump sued The Wall Street Journal in July over its article about the letter, calling it “nonexistent” and alleging defamation. Congress has since obtained the letter from Epstein’s estate and publicly released it. The Journal has moved to dismiss the lawsuit.

Maxwell regularly visited the Mar-a-Lago spa, where she booked Epstein’s in-home appointments and charged services for herself to the account in Epstein’s name. The spa made house calls for some members but preferred that they come in for services, former employees said.

Maxwell also used the spa to recruit young spa workers for side jobs, which weren’t authorized by the club. She said they could make some extra cash by giving massages to her friend, former employees said.

Maxwell went to other spas in the Palm Beach area in search of massage therapists for Epstein, according to a 2009 deposition by Epstein’s house manager, who said he drove her as she made her rounds. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Representatives for Maxwell declined to comment.

Maples, who married Trump in 1993, widely shared concerns with Mar-a-Lago staff about Epstein soon after the club opened in 1995, according to former employees.

She was vague about her reasons for disliking Epstein. She told employees that something about Epstein was “wrong” and “off,” and that she worried about his influence on Trump. The comments were out of character for Maples, who rarely spoke ill of anyone to staff, the former employees said.

Some of the former club employees said that Maples communicated her concerns to Timothy McDaniel, who worked as a bodyguard for the Trump family and oversaw security at their Florida properties. McDaniel didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

Maples told Trump that she was uneasy about Epstein’s presence and that she didn’t want to spend time with him—and didn’t want Trump to either, according to former employees and people close to Maples.

But Epstein continued to attend parties and events at Mar-a-Lago.

Representatives for Maples didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Trump and Epstein had known each other since the 1980s and once made a bet over whether Maples was pregnant, according to a story Epstein retold in emails sent in 2015 and 2016 that were recently made public by Congress. 

As payment for losing—Maples gave birth to a daughter, Tiffany, in October 1993—Epstein wrote that he sent Trump a truckload of baby food worth $10,000. 

Trump’s friendship with Epstein outlived his second marriage. He and Maples announced their separation in 1997 and finalized their divorce in 1999.

By then, Epstein had developed a reputation among spa staff for being inappropriate on house calls, former employees said. 

A massage therapist who worked at Mar-a-Lago in the late 1990s and early 2000s recalled asking managers why Epstein couldn’t come to the spa, as they talked about sending someone 2 miles away to his house. 

The bosses told her that Epstein preferred spa services in the privacy of his own home, and warned the employee that Epstein sometimes exposed himself during massages.

In 2000, Maxwell offered Giuffre, then an attendant in the spa, work as a massage therapist for Epstein. On her first visit to the mansion, Giuffre said that Maxwell brought her into a room where Maxwell took off the teen’s clothes, including a Mar-a-Lago polo shirt, and Epstein sexually assaulted her, according to her posthumous memoir, published this year.

Over the next two years, Giuffre alleged, Epstein sexually abused her and trafficked her to other powerful men. Giuffre said in a 2016 deposition that she never observed Trump participating in any abuse of women or girls and wrote in her memoir that “Trump couldn’t have been friendlier” when she met him. 

Trump was asked by a reporter this year whether Giuffre was one of the employees that Epstein had poached. “I think that was one of the people, yeah. He stole her,” Trump said in July.

Maxwell continued to scout for women in the spa in the early 2000s, handing out a phone number to young staff, former employees said. She told them to call if they or their friends wanted to make extra money.

Finger-pointing, disorganization and unforced errors by Trump advisers made the problem worse; ‘Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?’

By Josh Dawsey, Rebecca Ballhaus and C. Ryan Barber

President Trump had reached his limit.

It was mid-July, and some of his longtime allies were whipping up the audience at a conference in Tampa by complaining that his administration wasn’t delivering the real story on Jeffrey Epstein, as his aides had promised.  

“How many of you are satisfied—you can clap—with the results of the Epstein investigation?” Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked on the first day of the event organized by Turning Point USA, the group co-founded by Charlie Kirk. The crowd erupted in boos and shouts of “not satisfied.”

Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in New York and Florida and has said he fell out with him before his first arrest in 2006, told aides he couldn’t understand why people were so obsessed with the deceased financier and sex offender, according to people familiar with his comments. People don’t understand that Palm Beach in the 90s was a different time, he groused.

On the second day of the Tampa conference, he called influential allies. Why is everyone so fixated on the issue? he wanted to know. What would make it die down?

For much of the summer, the president has battled a crisis of his and his allies’ own making. He and his advisers, including the top two officials he appointed at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had previously stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein’s 2019 jail-cell death and his ties to prominent Democrats. 

Trump was used to having absolute control over his base. The Epstein issue was an anomaly: a negative story on which many of his supporters didn’t seem inclined to follow his lead.

White House officials said they underestimated how sticky the issue would prove to be, believing it would blow over and people would move on. Instead, it spurred White House Situation Room meetings and months of strategizing by senior administration officials. 

Disagreements, finger-pointing, disorganization and unforced errors by Trump advisers made the problem worse. Attorney General Pam Bondi complained to other officials that FBI leadership was “trying to destroy her” by leaking information about internal discord, according to people familiar with the disputes. Other administration officials who tried to repair the ties concluded the issue had spiraled largely because the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation had mishandled it. 

Trump has told aides he was worried some of his friends might be mentioned in the files, and has complained that people should be talking about the administration’s wins, not about Epstein, according to people familiar with the comments. At other times, he worried aloud that the files might have been doctored to hurt him. 

Trump and his allies made calls to MAGA influencers trying to calm the waters. Vice President JD Vance spoke to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who had pushed for the administration to release files. 

Another White House official called Laura Loomer, who had taken to belittling the blonde Bondi as “Blondi” and criticizing her for what Loomer said were missteps on the Epstein files. Loomer recalled that the official told her that Bondi needed to be more careful, but that Trump had no intention of firing her.

The outreach didn’t make much of a difference. In fiery congressional hearings last week, Patel faced pressure from lawmakers in both parties over the administration’s handling of the Epstein investigation. “This issue is not going to go away,” Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) told Patel.

In early September, lawyers for Epstein’s estate gave Congress a copy of the birthday book put together for the financier’s 50th birthday in 2003, which includes a letter bearing Trump’s name that he has said doesn’t exist. Lawmakers appear on the cusp of forcing the Justice Department to disclose all of the Epstein files.

‘The truth will come out’

Trump and the allies who he has since named to top law-enforcement roles spent years talking about Epstein’s ties to prominent politicians and the circumstances around his death. In 2023, Trump said it was possible Epstein had been murdered, though he had “probably” died by suicide, as the New York City medical examiner concluded. 

That same year, referring to the Epstein case, Patel, then a podcast host, called for Republicans to “put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.” Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, a former political commentator and radio host, had long questioned whether Epstein actually killed himself. 

When Trump began his second term, however, dealing with the Epstein investigation wasn’t on his mind, and White House officials were largely uninterested in pursuing the topic, some of the officials said.

Conservatives had long clamored for a list they believed existed of Epstein’s clients. In February, less than three weeks after Bondi was confirmed as attorney general, she told a Fox News host that such a list was on her desk awaiting her review. Officials in the West Wing were flummoxed. What document was Bondi talking about?

A few days after Bondi’s Fox News interview, a team at the bureau pulled an all-nighter to assemble some Epstein materials into thick binders stamped with the Justice Department seal and titled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.” FBI officials said the Justice Department had asked the FBI to assemble the binders but didn’t say what they would be used for. 

On Feb. 27, Bondi brought the binders to a meeting at the White House with conservative influencers. Justice Department officials gave Trump’s top communications aides only a few minutes’ notice that she would distribute them to the group. They didn’t know she planned to talk about Epstein in the meeting. 

After the meeting, the White House aides complained to DOJ officials that drawing such attention to the matter wasn’t helpful, and instructed Bondi’s team to coordinate TV appearances with the White House. Top White House officials pulled Bondi aside, telling her she needed to tamp down the issue with the right, not draw attention to it. 

It turned out that most of what was in the binders had already been made public. Elon Musk, at that time near the peak of his influence in the administration, mocked the episode. “There is a mountain of evidence. So where is that mountain?” Musk asked in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan.

In May, after a Justice Department review of the case files, Bondi and her deputy updated the president. They told him, according to senior administration officials, that his name was in the files, along with many others—itself no sign of wrongdoing. They told him there were no criminal cases to be made against anyone else, and they didn’t plan to release any more of the documents because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information. White House spokesman Cheung called The Wall Street Journal’s subsequent reporting on the meeting “fake news.”  

Later in May, Patel and Bongino told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo they believed that Epstein had, in fact, died by suicide. When she told them viewers might not believe them, Bongino said: “I have seen the whole file. He killed himself.” 

Trump had been telling administration officials for weeks that he wanted all the attention on Epstein to end, and White House aides encouraged all the officials not to play up any of the Epstein findings. 

But on June 5, Musk—then on his way out of the White House—accused the administration in a post on X of withholding Epstein documents because Trump was in the files. “The truth will come out,” Musk wrote.

Patel was recording an interview with Rogan at the time. “Jesus Christ,” Rogan said after reading Musk’s post. Patel put up his hands. “I’m just staying out of the Trump-Elon thing,” he said. 

Bondi, for her part, complained to the White House and Trump about a stream of criticism about her and the FBI’s handling of the Epstein matter. Trump encouraged her to buck up, and others told her to stop looking at social media and lashing out at those posting, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. She told White House officials that FBI leaders, including Patel, were out to get her, those people said.

Patel and others at the FBI wanted to release a statement explaining why they were dropping the matter, according to administration officials, and repeatedly pushed White House officials to release it over the long July 4 weekend. DOJ officials joined the discussions. Patel discussed it with Trump, who approved a plan to release the statement. Axios published the statement that Sunday night. 

The unsigned statement said the Justice Department review had found “no incriminating ‘client list,’” and no evidence that would predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties. “It is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” it said.

“It was like a bomb went off after that statement went out,” recalled one senior White House official. Inside the FBI, some officials viewed the Justice Department’s decision to label the statement an “FBI memo” as an effort to foist blame on the agency, an FBI official said.

Trump aides were flooded with calls from conservative allies saying they had made a mistake. Some called for Bondi’s ouster.  

Vance encouraged Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and other White House staffers to focus more on the problem, saying the president’s political supporters were upset. Wiles told others the FBI statement had been a mistake. 

Bongino threatened to quit, telling White House officials he was losing his credibility among conservatives. He grew angry in several meetings, including one in Wiles’s office, White House officials said.

Two days after the statement went out, Trump berated a reporter in a cabinet meeting for asking about Epstein. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” he said. “That is unbelievable.” 

Trump aides were flooded with calls from conservative allies saying they had made a mistake. Some called for Bondi’s ouster.  

Vance encouraged Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and other White House staffers to focus more on the problem, saying the president’s political supporters were upset. Wiles told others the FBI statement had been a mistake. 

Bongino threatened to quit, telling White House officials he was losing his credibility among conservatives. He grew angry in several meetings, including one in Wiles’s office, White House officials said.

Two days after the statement went out, Trump berated a reporter in a cabinet meeting for asking about Epstein. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” he said. “That is unbelievable.” 

Prison interview

The only other person ever charged in connection with Epstein’s crimes was his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who prosecutors said had managed Epstein’s employees, helped him find the girls he would subsequently abuse, and lied about it in a deposition for a civil case. She had never testified in the 2021 trial that resulted in her conviction and 20-year prison sentence. 

As the fallout over Epstein stretched on for the administration, her current lawyer, David Oscar Markus, called Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, with an unusual offer: Would the Justice Department want to interview Maxwell and see what she now had to say? Markus didn’t request a pardon or preferential treatment for Maxwell, and Blanche didn’t offer anything in return.

Markus had met Blanche years earlier at a legal conference. More recently, he had hosted Blanche, twice, on his podcast to talk about Blanche’s work representing Trump.

On July 15, as Trump left the White House for Pennsylvania, a reporter asked him whether Bondi had told him that his name appeared in the files—which she had, months earlier. “No, no,” he replied. “She’s given us just a very quick briefing.”

Soon after, aides told the president the Journal was preparing to report that in 2003, a letter bearing Trump’s name—containing typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman—had been included in a book of letters prepared for Epstein’s birthday.

Traveling back to Washington aboard Air Force One, Trump told his communications aides that such a letter didn’t exist, that he would never write such a letter, and that he would try to kill the story himself. 

From the plane, he called Rupert Murdoch, chair emeritus of News Corp, the parent company of the Journal’s publisher, and told him the story wasn’t true and that he should handle it, according to a person familiar with the brief call. After the article’s publication, Trump sued Journal publisher Dow Jones, parent company News Corp and several individuals including Murdoch for defamation, calling the letter “nonexistent.” (This week the defendants moved to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit.) A spokesman for News Corp declined to comment.

As backlash mounted to the Justice Department’s announcement that it was dropping the Epstein matter, Wiles convened a series of meetings in the Situation Room to chart an Epstein strategy. Vance, Bondi and Patel and others were invited, but Bongino wasn’t. Vance led the push for more disclosure, according to officials familiar with the discussions. Wiles and others argued that they would never be able to pacify the most rabid Epstein conspiracy theorists. 

Officials who attended discussed hypothetical scenarios for releasing or not releasing certain information, trying to determine how they would affect Trump’s political vulnerabilities, according to people familiar with the discussions. They focused on a key question: How could the administration better manage the Epstein saga?

Eventually, the officials decided to seek a court order to release grand jury testimony from the investigation. (A judge later denied that request.) They also decided to take up Maxwell’s interview offer, and that Blanche would do the interview himself.

Markus asked that the questioning not take place in prison. In late July, federal agents brought Maxwell to the U.S. courthouse in Tallahassee. Maxwell told Blanche she never saw Trump doing anything inappropriate or illegal. 

The second day of questioning began with breakfast from Chick-fil-A. When the session ended, Blanche told Maxwell: “So I do appreciate you being willing to meet with us. And I expect that we’ll be in touch soon.”

Blanche reported back to the White House that he believed Maxwell had been truthful and that she didn’t implicate Trump, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The next week, Maxwell, who had raised concerns about her safety in the Florida prison, was moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas. 

Some White House aides wanted to release the transcript and audio immediately, believing it could help put an end to the drama. After further discussion, the administration released both on Aug. 22.

Top White House officials, convinced that the scandal would soon blow over, told Republican lawmakers in late August and early September that voting to release the Epstein files would be viewed as an unfriendly move, and they wouldn’t forget those who did, according to two officials on Capitol Hill with knowledge of the calls. Still, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican leading the charge, has said he has nearly enough support to force the vote. 

Trump now dismisses questions about the Epstein files as irrelevant. In the Oval Office this month, the president said there was nothing more he could do. 

“Really,” he said, “I think it’s enough.”

Former president, Wall Street billionaire were listed along with Donald Trump as ‘friends’ in the 2003 book’s table of contents, which named around five dozen contributors

By Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo

The biggest name in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book back in 2003 was a past president rather than a future one. 

Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was keen for Bill Clinton and other boldface names to submit letters for the special gift, according to people involved in putting it together. 

In the end, she was successful. The leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—included a page with a single paragraph in Clinton’s distinctive scrawl:

It’s reassuring isn’t it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible word], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends.

A spokesman for Clinton declined to comment on the birthday message, which was reviewed by the Journal. He referred the Journal to a previous statement that the former president had cut off ties more than a decade before Epstein was arrested in 2019 and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes.

The former president was among around five dozen people, including Donald Trump, Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, fashion designer Vera Wang and media owner Mort Zuckerman, who ended up with letters in the 2003 book, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The letter bearing Trump’s signature, which had the outline of a naked woman, was one of the more memorable pages, according to the people involved in putting the album together. Trump has called the letter “a fake thing.”

“The Wall Street Journal is writing yet another defamatory story about the President of the United States about an alleged letter they don’t even have because the President never wrote it,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a text message.

The professionally bound birthday book had multiple volumes and included a table of contents that listed the contributions, organized into groups. While many letter writers weren’t famous, some categories had notable people.

Clinton and Trump were listed under the “Friends” group, along with about 20 other associates such as Black, Zuckerman, former Victoria’s Secret leader Leslie Wexner, attorney Alan Dershowitz, U.K. politician Peter Mandelson and the late Jean-Luc Brunel, who ran a modeling agency.

A “Business” group included the late Alan “Ace” Greenberg and the late James “Jimmy” Cayne. Both men worked at Bear Stearns when Epstein was at the investment bank in the 1970s.

Other people were grouped under categories such as “Science,” “Brooklyn” and “Family.”

‘Love and kisses’

Some of the messages were anodyne birthday wishes, but others were bawdy and made crude jokes about sex, according to the documents reviewed by the Journal. 

A letter from Nathan Myhrvold, a billionaire and former Microsoft executive, said he was sending photos from a recent trip to Africa. “They seemed more appropriate than anything I could put in words,” said the letter, which ended with a typed “Nathan.” It was followed by photos of a monkey screaming, lions and zebras mating, and a zebra with its penis visible. 

A spokeswoman for Myhrvold said he doesn’t recall the submission and that he is a wildlife photographer who “regularly shares photos of and writes about animal behavior.” 

The spokeswoman said Myhrvold only knew Epstein because he attended TED conferences and was a donor to scientific research.

The submission with Black’s name had a handwritten poem with a rhyme scheme. The poem included the acronym “V.F.P.C.” with an asterisk that said it stood for “Vanity Fair Poster Child,” a reference to a magazine profile of Epstein that was in the works.

Two lines in the poem read: 

Blonde, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically

With this net of fish, Jeff’s now ‘The Old Man and The Sea’

It was signed: “Love and kisses, Leon.”

A spokesman for Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, declined to comment on the letter. 

Black has said he met Epstein around 1996 and paid him for tax- and estate-planning. He has said he regretted having had any involvement with Epstein. Apollo said in 2021 that a legal review found Black paid Epstein a total of $158 million from 2012 to 2017, including $10 million for Epstein’s charity, and found no evidence Black was involved in Epstein’s criminal activities.

A letter from the current U.K. ambassador to the U.S., Mandelson, included photos of whiskey and a tropical island, and referred to Epstein as “my best pal.”

A spokesman for Mandelson declined to comment. In 2023, Mandelson told the Journal that he “very much regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein.”

The letter from Wang, the fashion designer, joked about putting Epstein on “The Bachelor” and suggested they go on a shopping trip. 

Wang didn’t respond to requests for comment. The designer told the Journal in 2023 that she regrets ever associating with Epstein.

A letter from Zuckerman, who was then an owner of the New York Daily News, said that he had searched the newspaper for information about Epstein and joked he was born in Liechtenstein and had a wife and three children. Zuckerman didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Assembling the album

Maxwell enlisted the help of assistants and others to assemble the album, according to the people familiar with the process and people who received the invites. Maxwell requested drawings, photos or stories from Epstein’s associates to celebrate his 50th birthday. 

As the letters and images came in, they were scanned into a computer. Some of the people who assisted on the project recalled seeing the Trump and Clinton pages among the documents at the time. The letters were taken to a New York City bookbinder to create the calfskin album.

Brad Edwards, a lawyer who has represented more than 200 of Epstein’s victims, said on MSNBC Wednesday evening that he has multiple clients who remember the birthday book. “The existence of the book is an absolute fact,” Edwards said. 

Jeffrey Epstein’s brother Mark Epstein told the Journal that he recalls Maxwell putting together the book for his brother’s birthday. The album included a note from Mark Epstein.

Several digital copies of the album have been created. Pages have been reviewed by Justice Department officials who investigated Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people familiar with the matter. The album is part of Epstein’s estate.

It’s unclear if any of the pages of the album are part of the Trump administration’s recent review of the Epstein case files.

Epstein died in jail in 2019 after he was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 of helping Epstein’s sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. 

Maxwell, who is seeking to have her conviction overturned, didn’t respond to a letter requesting an interview. Her family issued a statement last week saying she didn’t receive a fair trial, and one of her lawyers, David Oscar Markus, called on Trump to intervene. 

The biggest name in the album was Clinton, who left the White House in 2001. Clinton was photographed with Epstein and Maxwell at a White House event in 1993 and socialized with Epstein in the early 2000s. At his Manhattan townhouse, Epstein hung a painting that depicted Clinton wearing a blue dress and red heels, according to people who saw it.

Clinton took four trips on Epstein’s private jet and once visited his Manhattan townhouse, each time with his Secret Service team and for reasons related to the Clinton Foundation’s work, Clinton’s spokesman said in 2019. 

Trump, who also socialized with Epstein in the 1990s and 2000s, said in 2019 when Epstein was arrested that he hadn’t talked to him for about 15 years.

On July 17, the Journal published an article about the letter with Trump’s signature. The next day, Trump sued the Journal’s reporters, Journal publisher Dow Jones, parent company News Corp and executives, calling the letter “nonexistent” and alleging the article defamed him.

A spokeswoman for Dow Jones said, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.” 

The letter from Wexner, the retail billionaire, contained a short message and a line drawing of what appeared to be a woman’s breasts. Wexner declined to comment through a spokesman about his letter. Wexner previously said he cut ties with Epstein in 2007.

The letter from Dershowitz, who represented Epstein in the first criminal case in the 2000s, included a mock-up of a “Vanity Unfair” magazine cover with mock headlines. “It’s been a long time and I don’t recall the content of what I may have written,” Dershowitz said.

Analysis of documents released this week by Congress shows President Trump was mentioned in more than half of the messages

By Brian Whitton, John West and Kara Dapena

Congress released a cache of documents this week that were recently turned over by Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. Among them: more than 2,300 email threads that the convicted sex offender either sent or received between 2008 and 2019.

The House Oversight Committee had subpoenaed the estate for all of Epstein’s communications with 92 people who were named in Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, including Epstein associates and assistants, as well as “all U.S. presidents and vice presidents.”

Not surprisingly, President Trump and former President Bill Clinton are both referenced hundreds of times in what was released this week, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Former President Barack Obama’s name appears as well. The Journal’s analysis didn’t identify messages that any of the U.S. presidents wrote directly to Epstein or received emails from him, just references to them by Epstein or his conversation partners.

The Journal examined all the documents released this week by Congress, which is a subset of Epstein’s correspondence.

Trump

In 1,670 out of 2,324 email threads

The messages shed light on Epstein’s fascination with Trump’s political fortunes and legal trouble. Trump’s name appeared in more than half of the email files, often in shared news stories about his policies during the 2016 election and his presidency—a time when Trump talk was inescapable. Epstein also criticized Trump with some friends, passed along tips to reporters and answered questions from his associates about his former friend.

Trump and Epstein socialized in the 1990s and 2000s when they were Palm Beach neighbors; Trump has said he cut off ties before Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution. This year, Trump said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for poaching staff. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a briefing Wednesday that the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”

Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime associate, was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in jail for her role in his sex-trafficking scheme. A lawyer for Maxwell had no immediate comment on the emails. Epstein died in jail in 2019 facing federal sex-trafficking charges.

Clinton

In 512 out of 2,324 email threads

Former President Clinton’s last name appeared in more than 500 of the files—most coming before Trump announced his presidential run in 2015. Some references were also to Hillary Clinton, who was running for president against Trump in 2016.

Bill Clinton socialized with Epstein in the 1990s and traveled on Epstein’s jet. A spokesman for the former president said: “These emails prove what we’ve been saying all along—and then some: President Clinton had no knowledge of Epstein’s heinous crimes, had not spoken to him in twenty years, had never visited the island, and there was simply no love lost.”

One of the exchanges is with former New York Times reporter Landon Thomas Jr., who left the paper in early 2019. Another is with Boris Nikolić, a former Bill Gates scientific adviser. Nikolić told the Journal in 2023: “I deeply regret that I ever met Epstein.” Thomas and Nikolić didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Prince Andrew recently lost his royal title over his past friendship with Epstein and allegations, which he denies, that he sexually abused an American teen introduced to him by Epstein. A representative for Buckingham Palace declined to speak on his behalf.

Larry Summers

In 117 out of 2,324 email threads

Many of the messages are with other well-known Epstein associates, such as former Harvard President Larry Summers. Summers emailed regularly with Epstein, including banter about women and an exchange in 2019 shortly before Epstein was arrested. Summers told the Journal in 2023 that he deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction. He didn’t respond to requests for comment on the emails.

Kathryn Ruemmler

In 155 out of 2,324 email threads

Kathryn Ruemmler, a former Obama White House lawyer, had dozens of meetings with Epstein after she left the White House. The messages show she regularly emailed with Epstein about Trump and other topics into 2019. Ruemmler, now Goldman Sachs’s general counsel, told the Journal in 2023: “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein.” She didn’t respond to requests for comment on the emails.

Michael Wolff

In 207 out of 2,324 email threads

The messages also show that Epstein, after avoiding the press for a long time after his 2006 arrest in Florida, spoke with reporters while he was trying to rehabilitate his public image. Among those was author Michael Wolff, who was working on a book about Trump. In a Daily Beast podcast this week, Wolff said he corresponded with Epstein to better understand Trump. He didn’t respond to requests for comment on the emails.

Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, told the Journal in 2023 that he visited Epstein to discuss politics. “In retrospect, [Epstein] seems to be a terrible version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but at the time seemed to be an intelligent person, socially well-connected,” he said. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the emails.

Methodology

The Wall Street Journal reviewed more than 20,000 documents released this week by the House Oversight Committee, parsing all text and image files to extract 2,324 email threads. The congressional production also included pages from books, reports and other miscellaneous documents.

To identify how frequently individuals were referenced, reporters searched for mentions of last names, then manually reviewed a subset of matches to correct obvious errors such as “trump card.” While most matches were accurate, a small number of false positives may remain.

The analysis dated emails using the first identifiable timestamp in each file, typically from the most recent message in a thread. Due to varying date formats in the source documents, some dates were ambiguous. In a limited number of cases, the release included the same email thread at different points in time. Reporters excluded court filings that contained embedded email text.

The former Treasury secretary and Harvard president’s enormous network and clout kept him immune from past Jeffrey Epstein revelations. But this time was just too much.

By Joshua Chaffin, Melissa Korn and Justin Lahart

Last November, a collection of business, academic and political luminaries made a pilgrimage to a wood-paneled conference room at Harvard University. They were there to pay tribute to Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and university president, and one of the foremost economists of his era.

During a day-long event to mark his 70th birthday, Summers basked in praise from guests including former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Gene Sperling, who directed the National Economic Council for Presidents Clinton and Obama. 

This week, a chastened Summers found himself in different circumstances: standing in the well of a Harvard lecture hall, asking his students’ forgiveness as his professional life was unraveling.

“Some of you will have seen my statement of regret, expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein,” Summers said, according to a video taken by an attendee and posted to social media. “But I think it’s very important that I fulfill my teaching obligations.”

The question now is: Why did it take so long for Summers’s ties to Epstein to wound his highflying career?

This wasn’t the first time Summers was compelled to express regret to the Harvard community for his extensive ties to the late sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. Over the years Summers had flown on Epstein’s private plane, according to flight logs. The two had then maintained a personal relationship long after Epstein’s 2008 plea to underage prostitution charges in Florida prompted Harvard to refuse his donations. Summers courted him to help fund an online poetry project being developed by his wife, now an emerita Harvard literature professor. 

Those prior revelations never appeared to impede the career of a giant in both academic and policy worlds—one whose blessing could be career-making for young acolytes and whose gravitas and extensive professional network made him indispensable for organizations in moments of crisis. He was barely mentioned in a 2020 report Harvard published detailing its institutional ties to Epstein, who was arrested on sex trafficking charges the previous year. And in 2023—months after The Wall Street Journal reported new details of Summers’s correspondence with Epstein—he won a plum assignment: an appointment to a new board at OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT.

“He’s an extremely powerful man with an enormous network of people who have learned from him, been mentored by him. He’s powerful in D.C., powerful at Harvard. That counts for a lot, and that explains a lot,” said Susan Dynarski, a well-known Harvard economist affiliated with its Graduate School of Education.

But this time is different. The immediate cause of Summers’s undoing was the release of a passel of messages in which he asked advice from his friend Epstein on “getting horizontal” with a woman he was pursuing.

The messages, sent in 2018 and 2019—and up until the day before Epstein’s arrest—were needles in a roughly 20,000-page haystack of Epstein documents released by a House committee last week. They offer a glimpse into a more sordid side of the eminent economist, agonizing about how he might leverage a professional relationship into a romantic one. They reveal the intimacy of Summers’s relationship with Epstein, who described himself as a “wing man” for the economist, even as the scale of Epstein’s crimes against young women was becoming widely known.

“She’s already beginning to sound needy :) nice,” Epstein noted about Summers’s object of interest in a November 2018 message. In others, they appeared to refer to the woman Summers was attracted to by a code name: “peril.”

On Monday, Summers issued a more fulsome apology. “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused,” he said. “I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.” 

He said he would step back from public commitments “as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me.”

But institutions were soon rushing to cut professional ties with Summers. He was out at organizations including the New York Times, where he had been a contributing opinion writer, the Center for American Progress think tank, where he was helping to formulate a new slate of Democratic economic policies to rejuvenate the party, an advisory board at the bank Santander, Bloomberg TV, where he was a paid contributor, and the Yale Budget Lab. 

By Wednesday morning, Summers had resigned his seat on the OpenAI board. Then Harvard—a mainstay in his life and career—announced it would take a fresh look at his and other faculty members’ ties to Epstein. By evening, he would take leave from his teaching duties and post as co-director of a Harvard Kennedy School academic center, too.

Summers’s fall is a reminder of the Epstein saga’s potency six years after the man was found hanged to death in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The coroner ruled it a suicide. 

Seemingly from the grave, Epstein is still provoking ructions in President Trump’s MAGA coalition while costing several powerful men their careers and reputations. There is likely more to come: Trump on Wednesday night signed legislation ordering the Justice Department to release its vast store of Epstein-related materials.

Yet Summers’s travails are also uniquely his own. The flip side of his enormous intellect, say critics, is a towering arrogance that alienated many over the years. The smartest guy in the room could also be strangely inept at reading the room.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said in a 2013 piece that she observed him once yawn, check his watch and walk away while then-Vice President Biden spoke to a small group at a holiday party. She said Summers was “not exactly socialized” and called him “imperious.”

In 2005, Summers stoked outrage when he suggested at a conference that there may be fewer women than men in the sciences because they had less aptitude. He later insisted he’d been misunderstood, saying in a letter to the Harvard community, “I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologize for not having weighed them more carefully.” But the furor grew, especially among a contingent of Harvard faculty, and he resigned as president the following year.

More recently, Summers angered some colleagues in the tumultuous period that followed Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel. Pro-Palestine protests erupted on campus, along with complaints of widespread antisemitism. Summers was an early and public critic of how Harvard’s first Black woman president, Claudine Gay, handled the situation. Gay resigned early last year, in part after pressure mounted over her response to the protests.

The political ground had shifted at Harvard since Summers’s presidency. A centrist Democrat who came to prominence in the Clinton era and was a staunch supporter of Israel and critic of “wokeness” found himself on an increasingly left-wing campus.

His critics are now rejoicing. 

One economist messaged a Journal reporter late Wednesday night with an emoji showing celebratory party poppers. 

His comeuppance was validating for women economists, many of whom have suffered in a field that long celebrated brainy men. In a statement this week, a women’s committee at the American Economic Association condemned Summers and noted: “While abuse of power in the economics profession is not new, rarely has the intent behind such abuse been so clearly stated.”

Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who blasted Summers and others for sexism in a widely shared and highly critical 2020 blog post, sounded vindicated. “Okay, so maybe I wasn’t too mean to him…” she said on social media after the emails were made public last week.

Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, has known Summers since graduate school and coauthored one of the first papers Summers published in an academic journal. On Tuesday, he declared his one-time collaborator “not fit to continue service as a professor at Harvard.” 

“Character matters. It matters more than academic merit, power posts, and financial connections,” Kotlikoff wrote in a Substack post. “He was the smartest guy in the room. But his ego always trumped his IQ. It’s now done so in the worst possible way.”

‘Larry understood’

Smarts have never been in question for Summers, who counts two Nobel Prize-winning uncles—Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow. He received his undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from Harvard. In 1983, according to a biography for Summers on Harvard’s website, he became one of the youngest people in modern history to be offered tenure at the university. He won the John Bates Clark Medal, the award given to an extraordinary American economist under age 40 that has often been a precursor to a Nobel.

Summers gained wider acclaim for his handling of the 1998 emerging markets crisis as Clinton’s Deputy Treasury Secretary. He was featured alongside Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan on a Time magazine cover in early 1999 in which the trio were dubbed “the committee to save the world.” 

In an Instagram post last year, upon Summers’s birthday, Sandberg recalled meeting him when she was a 20-year-old Harvard student and the impact he would have on her life—and many others. 

“I am one of many who to this day think of themselves as ‘Larry Summers’ student,’” Sandberg wrote, noting how he had advised on her thesis, then hired her as a research assistant at the World Bank, and later as his chief of staff at Treasury. She lauded his support for girls’ education in the developing world, as well as his personal loyalty: “Larry understood that when people were up, everyone called. But when people were down, few did. Larry reached out to people when it was hard.” 

‘Epstein ties’

Summers was appointed Harvard’s 27th president in 2001, at a time when Epstein—a college dropout and onetime high school math teacher—was becoming a boldfaced name in Manhattan society, known as a shrewd, if mysterious, financier and generous patron of academia.

According to Harvard’s 2020 report on ties between Epstein and the university, compiled with the help of law firm Foley Hoag, Epstein contributed $9.17 million to the university from 1998 until 2008, when his conviction on prostitution charges prompted the administration to officially shun him. The biggest gift was $6.5 million he pledged in 2003—while Summers was president—to establish the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. (In one of his characteristic exaggerations, Epstein would later claim he had given $35 million for the project).

In its early days, the program’s website stated that it had been founded “by Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers following an imaginative proposal” by Epstein and an academic. 

The PED gave Epstein a campus office, where he would meet—often on weekends—with top researchers and government officials. According to Harvard’s review, he visited more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018. 

Summers also sought Epstein’s help for a more personal philanthropy project: an educational venture that his wife, Elisa New, was developing. “I need small scale philanthropy advice. My life will be better if i raise $1m for Lisa,” Summers said in an email to Epstein in April 2014. Two years later, a nonprofit connected to Epstein made a $110,000 donation to New’s nonprofit. 

New’s nonprofit later made a contribution “exceeding the amount received, to a group working against sex trafficking,” a spokeswoman later said.

In the ensuing years, Summers would remain in regular contact with Epstein. “How is life among the lucrative and louche?” he asked in October 2017, in an email included in the recently released House cache of documents. 

President Trump, whose 2016 election victory shocked the establishment, was a frequent subject of banter. “Is trump getting crazier as many of my pals think or is it steady crazy,” Summers asked his friend in a November 2018 email. Epstein called the president “borderline insane” the following month. 

Around that time, their usual exchanges about White House gossip, geopolitics and financial markets were interspersed with discussion of a particular woman, a Chinese economist then in her late 30s with whom Summers sought a romantic relationship.

Based on emails forwarded by Summers to Epstein in 2018, the woman appears to be Keyu Jin, a Harvard-trained economist whose father, Jin Liqun, was the founding president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and a former vice minister of finance in Beijing.

Jin Liqun wasn’t immediately available for comment. Keyu Jin didn’t respond to a request for comment.

She came to study in New York during high school before earning degrees at Harvard. A longtime lecturer at the London School of Economics and, more recently, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, she is known as an articulate and effective promoter to western audiences of China’s state-led economic policy.

Summers’s emails suggest he was smitten with her, and agonizing over whether to pursue an affair—and, if so, how to go about it. “Think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor. I think I’m right now in the seen very warmly in rearview mirror category,” he wrote Epstein from a conference at 10:53 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 30, 2018. “She did not want to have a drink cuz she was ‘tired.’ I left the hotel lobby somewhat abruptly. When I’m reflective, I think I’m dodging a bullet.”

The next morning, he was still fretting, telling his confidant: “I sent a note just asking her to txt when she was up cuz I had something brief to say to her. Didn’t want to push cuz she takes her 930 presentation here very seriously. Better after her talk.”

Then Summers asked: “Am I thanking her or being sorry re my being married. I think the former.“

Epstein concurred, replying: “thanking her for fortitude in dealing with what has obvioulsy [sic] been a tough situation. and acknowlegin [sic] both how difficult it has been coupled with your inate [sic] insensitivty. [sic] and apologizing for not fully recogbnizing [sic] how difficult it has been.”

By 10:29 a.m., Summers appeared infatuated. “Game day at conference she was extremely good,” he wrote Epstein in an update. “Smart Assertive and clear Gorgeous. I’m fucked.” 

The 2003 birthday book also includes a letter that references Trump with a crude joke about a woman from another Epstein associate

By Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo

Lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein’s estate have given Congress a copy of the birthday book put together for the financier’s 50th birthday, which includes a letter with President Trump’s signature that he has said doesn’t exist.

On Monday, House Oversight Committee members confirmed that they received a copy of the birthday book including the letter bearing Trump’s signature and a second letter that references Trump with a crude joke about a woman from another Epstein associate.

The Wall Street Journal in July reported on the book and the letter bearing Trump’s name, which contained typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman. The letter concluded: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” The signature was a squiggly “Donald” below the waist, mimicking pubic hair.

Trump has denied writing the letter or drawing the picture, calling it “a fake thing.” He also filed a lawsuit against the Journal’s reporters, Journal publisher Dow Jones, parent company News Corp and executives, alleging defamation and saying the letter was “nonexistent.” A Dow Jones spokeswoman said, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting.”

Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a social-media post that Trump’s legal team will continue to pursue its defamation case against the Journal. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” Leavitt said in a post on X.

The Trump administration’s shifting statements about whether it would release the files it has on Epstein have hung over the White House for months. On Sept. 3, Trump called efforts to make public more details about Epstein a politically driven hoax, just as some of the convicted sex offender’s victims visited Capitol Hill to tell their stories of sexual abuse and implored the president and Congress to release further records.

Allies of Trump have long sought release of Epstein-related materials, but the Justice Department said in July that there isn’t a client list of people who participated in Epstein’s trafficking of young girls, and new files wouldn’t be released. That determination triggered an uproar among some of Trump’s prominent supporters and efforts in Congress to seek the records.

Lawyers for the co-executors of Epstein’s estate turned over a copy of the birthday book on Monday in response to a subpoena from Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chair of the House Oversight Committee. In a July 25 letter to the Epstein estate’s lawyers, Rep. Robert Garcia (D., Calif.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) had pressed the estate to release the book.

“President Trump called the Epstein investigation a hoax and claimed that his birthday note didn’t exist. Now we know that Donald Trump was lying and is doing everything he can to cover up the truth,” said Garcia, who is the committee’s Democratic ranking member. “Enough of the games and lies, release the full files now.”

In a social-media post Monday, Comer accused Democrats of “cherry-picking documents” from the Epstein estate and said he was focused on running a thorough investigation.

The birthday book given to Epstein in 2003—before his first arrest in 2006—was professionally bound and contained letters from dozens of Epstein’s then associates, including Trump, former President Bill Clinton and billionaire Leon Black, the Journal has reported. Some of the messages were anodyne birthday wishes, but others contained sexual references and suggestive drawings or photos.

The Epstein estate also turned over another letter from the book that references Trump. It came from businessman and longtime Mar-a-Lago member Joel Pashcow, who made a crude joke about a woman whom Epstein and Trump each courted in the 1990s, according to court testimony and people familiar with the matter.

The Pashcow letter included a photo of a posterboard-sized check for $22,500, which had been mocked up to appear that it was sent from Trump to Epstein. Beneath it, a caption said: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women sells ‘fully depreciated’ [woman’s name] to Donald Trump for $22,500.” The woman’s name is redacted in the image.

The woman, a wealthy European then in her 20s, severed all ties with Epstein around 1997 and had no romantic relationship with either Epstein or Trump, her lawyer said. The lawyer added that she doesn’t know Pashcow and has no knowledge of the letter naming her, which he called a “disgusting and deeply disturbing hoax.” Pashcow and his attorney didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The woman became a point of tension in Epstein and Trump’s friendship, according to people who were close to Epstein. Epstein told these people that he believed the woman enjoyed spending time with him over Trump, and that he was bitter when she ended up choosing to go out with Trump.

Trump and Pashcow were listed under the “Friends” section in the book’s table of contents, along with Clinton and about 20 other associates, the Journal reported. Trump and Epstein socialized in the 1990s in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet, flight logs show. Epstein was photographed multiple times at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

When Epstein was arrested a second time in 2019, Trump said he hadn’t talked to Epstein in about 15 years. This summer, he told reporters that he had a falling-out with Epstein because his wealthy neighbor poached some employees from the Mar-a-Lago club. 

The Justice Department informed Trump in May that his name appeared several times in the government files related to Epstein, the Journal reported. Many other high-profile figures also were named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the files isn’t an indication of wrongdoing. The White House called the story “fake news.”

Newly released images show the hideaway where Jeffrey Epstein brought his friends and victims; the FBI has a list of visitors

By Khadeeja Safdar, Carl Churchill and Brian McGill

Jeffrey Epstein bought this private Caribbean island, known as Little St. James, in 1998. The sex offender used it to entertain his powerful and famous friends, from politicians to scientists. 

Epstein also brought girls and women by boat and helicopter to the island, where the women were sexually assaulted, according to accounts of the victims and U.S. Virgin Islands authorities. 

The Justice Department faces a deadline this month to release files from its investigation into Epstein and associate Ghislaine Maxwell, including materials that could show who visited the island. FBI agents raided the 70-acre island in August 2019.

The House Oversight Committee recently released some images and videos provided by the Virgin Islands. They help give a glimpse of what it looked like in 2020—the year after Epstein was arrested and died.

The main structures were clustered at one end of the island around a pool with palm trees and a statue of an African warrior.

Four guest cottages were arranged around the pool area. Some of Epstein’s victims, including Virginia Giuffre, have said they stayed in the guest houses.

On the nightstand next to a bed in his main bedroom, Epstein had a phone with numbers for his longtime lawyer Darren Indyke and his accountant Richard Kahn. They are co-executors of Epstein’s estate and have denied knowing about his wrongdoing.

Next to Epstein’s main bedroom was a large shower and steam room.

Epstein’s carpeted office and library was in an oceanfront building that was a short walk from his principal bedroom and pool area.

Near Epstein's office was a room with a dental chair and tools. Police also found dentistry equipment in Epstein's Florida property in 2005.

Epstein kept mementos of his famous friends at his properties. Among the items authorities found on the island in 2020 was a framed photo of Epstein and Maxwell meeting Pope John Paul II.

The main living room had a video projector and screen. In 2020, it was being used for storage. It was attached to the kitchen. Meals were often outside at a white dining table.

There were several private beaches where Epstein sometimes got massages as well as a beachfront tiki hut.

Epstein and visitors were shuttled on helicopters from the St. Thomas airport to the landing site. Maxwell, who was a helicopter pilot, sometimes flew guests from nearby islands.

Guests and staff also arrived by boat at a private dock. A log of boat trips was seized by the FBI.

There were several watercraft on the island when authorities visited in 2020 including one boat called the “Little C.”

Epstein made renovations and additions, including building a cabana with a second pool on the other side of the island.

Epstein, a pianist, also built a remote music room, seen here in 2019 when it had blue stripes on the outside. Original plans called for an octagonal building with a grand piano.

In 2016, Epstein also purchased a larger island, called Great St. James, that was largely undeveloped and closer to St. Thomas. After Epstein’s 2019 arrest and death, his estate agreed to sell the islands, part of a 2022 settlement with Virgin Islands authorities. 

In 2023, the two islands were sold for $60 million in total, according to brokerage Bespoke Real Estate. The new owner, a firm run by billionaire Stephen Deckoff, had planned to build a 25-room luxury resort on the property. Deckoff didn’t respond to requests for comment about those plans.

—This article may be updated periodically.

After White House accuses Democrats of cherry-picking messages, Republicans release a cache of more than 20,000 pages

By Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo

Democrats released new emails from Jeffrey Epstein in which the late financier discussed Donald Trump, prompting Republicans to accuse Democrats of cherry-picking and to release 20,000-plus pages of other Epstein documents.

The emails initially released by Democrats include a 2011 exchange between Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, years after Epstein and Trump had a falling-out, as well as messages with journalist Michael Wolff in 2019 while Trump was in the Oval Office.

In the April 2, 2011, email, Epstein wrote to Maxwell: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [Redacted Name] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”

Maxwell responded that same day: “I’ve been thinking about that…”

The White House and House Republicans said the redacted name was Virginia Giuffre and accused Democrats of selectively leaking emails to smear President Trump. The emails were turned over to Congress by Epstein’s estate.

“The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre.”

Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers, died by suicide earlier this year. Giuffre alleged that Maxwell recruited her as a teenager working at the Mar-a-Lago spa in 2000 and that Epstein trafficked her to other men. Giuffre said in a 2016 deposition that she never saw Trump participate in any abuse and didn’t accuse Trump of any wrongdoing in her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” published this year.

It’s unclear when Epstein was claiming that Trump spent the time at his house.

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump said: “The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects. Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”

Trump has said he cut off ties long before Epstein was first arrested in 2006. Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008. Trump and Epstein socialized together in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump took several trips on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, according to flight logs, and told New York magazine in 2002 that “he’s a lot of fun to be with.”

The initial batch of emails were released by House Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia (D., Calif.) on the same day that the House is returning to work after more than a month on break. The House Democrats said they redacted the names of Epstein’s victims in the documents made public Wednesday as well as personal email addresses.

A spokeswoman for Republicans on the Oversight Committee said, “Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts.”

The larger cache released by Republicans included several emails where Epstein referenced former President Bill Clinton as well as messages with economist Larry Summers, political strategist Steve Bannon and others. A Clinton spokesman has previously said the former president cut off ties more than a decade before Epstein was arrested in 2019 and didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged crimes.

In several of the emails released Wednesday, Epstein criticized Trump in exchanges with longtime associates. In one of the emails, a December 2018 message to Summers, Epstein wrote “trump – borderline insane.”

In one exchange from February 2017, former Obama White House lawyer Kathy Ruemmler wrote that Trump was “so gross.” Epstein replied: “worse in real life and upclose.” 

Summers and Ruemmler, who is currently Goldman Sachs’ general counsel, have previously said they regretted associating with Epstein. They didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

The Oversight Committee opened its probe after the Justice Department announced in July it wouldn’t release more of the files, saying it found no evidence that would lead to an investigation of uncharged third parties and no additional documents that merited public disclosure.

In May, Justice Department officials had informed Trump that his name was in the Epstein files, The Wall Street Journal reported. Trump was told that many other high-profile figures were also named. Being mentioned in the files isn’t an indication of wrongdoing. 

Republicans and Democrats on the Oversight Committee have been releasing some materials turned over by Epstein’s estate, including a 2003 birthday book and schedules detailing Epstein’s meetings with politicians and businesspeople.

The newly released emails include a 2015 message to a former New York Times reporter where Epstein sent a link to an article about a woman that both he and Trump courted in the 1990s. Epstein wrote: “my 20 year old girlfriend in 93 ,, that after two years i gave to donald.” 

The woman severed all ties with Epstein around 1997 and had no romantic relationship with either Epstein or Trump, her lawyer previously told the Journal.

The emails also include a 2019 exchange between Epstein and Bannon during Trump’s first state visit to the U.K., where he met Prince Andrew.

“recall prince andrews accuser came out of mara lago,” Epstein wrote, referring to Giuffre, who alleged in a lawsuit against Prince Andrew that Epstein forced her to have sex with him. The case was settled for undisclosed financial terms in February 2022. 

“Can’t believe nobody is making u the connective tissue,” Bannon replied.

Bannon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

After years of damaging headlines over his friendship with Epstein and allegations that the prince sexually abused Giuffre, Prince Andrew was stripped of all his titles last month. He has denied the allegations of sexual abuse.

In another email released Wednesday, Epstein wrote in 2019 to Wolff: “trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

Wolff didn’t respond to a request for comment.

When Epstein was arrested in July 2019, Trump said he had had a falling-out with Epstein and hadn’t talked to him in about 15 years. A White House spokeswoman said at the time that Trump had banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club. 

This year, Trump has elaborated on their disagreement and said he banned Epstein from his club because “he was a creep.” In July, Trump told reporters he cut ties because Epstein had poached staffers from Mar-a-Lago and one of those people was likely Giuffre.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years for her role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking. Earlier this year in an interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way.” 

“In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects,” Maxwell said. A week after her interview with Blanche, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum security prison camp in Bryan, Texas. A lawyer for Maxwell had no immediate comment.

Jeffrey Epstein has been discussed in 3,123 conservative podcast episodes recently—and the White House has been unable to stop it

By Jack Gillum, Brian Whitton, Maureen Linke and Kara Dapena

Joe Rogan, one of President Trump’s most influential supporters, drew a “line in the sand” last week over the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. The president, Rogan said on his podcast that reaches millions, was mishandling the case—a topic that for weeks has consumed Trump’s most ardent backers.

The break exemplifies the latest in a swirling controversy among conservative voices over the government’s alleged delays in releasing more records related to the disgraced financier, who died nearly six years ago. And the MAGA movement, which propelled Trump to his second term, is splintering over it.

Epstein has been discussed by prominent right-wing podcasters in more than 3,000 episodes across nearly 125 podcasts this year, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. Those conversations grew more than eightfold in the last three weeks despite Trump’s admonishment that MAGA drop the issue.

During the 2024 presidential election, then-candidate Trump indicated he would release more of the files if elected. Allegations that Epstein had been sexually abusing girls became public in 2006 and he was arrested that year. (Epstein died in 2019 in jail after he was arrested a second time and charged with sex trafficking conspiracy.) Since Trump took office again, he began to walk back his promise and dismissed calls by supporters to release the files.

On Monday, Trump called the Epstein furor a “hoax” and suggested that his political enemies might have planted his name in files held by the Justice Department while Democrats controlled the government. The Journal previously reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files. Being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing.

However, his supporters on popular podcasts continue to discuss Epstein. Nearly 85% of podcasts in the Journal’s review mentioned Epstein in at least one episode, with more than half demanding the release of more information.

Here’s how Epstein shook up the Trump-MAGA romance.

FEBRUARY: Broken promises

In February, Bondi announced on Fox News that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk.” Soon after, she told Jesse Watters that Epstein files were coming “hopefully tomorrow” and contained “a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information. […] it’s pretty sick what that man did.”

The next day, the White House released a first batch of Epstein documents to a group of conservative influencers. But they contained few new revelations, drawing pushback from right-wing commentators.

Matt Walsh, a popular podcaster who has been amplified by people like Elon Musk, groused on his show the next day that the material was missing key information:

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that there is not a single new revelation in this 200-page binder.”

— Matt Walsh, Feb. 28

But Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a major Trump ally in Congress, seemed to shift the blame from administration officials to a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office:

“There was relatively little information in the files that were released, but then there was a bombshell because Pam Bondi accused the New York FBI office of withholding significant parts of the Epstein files.”

MARCH-JUNE: Demanding more

Some conservative figures began to turn on Bondi and push for more. Conservative commentator and former college president Dinesh D’Souza said on his podcast that the controversy was largely of the attorney general’s own making, echoing other influencers who criticized the handling of the file release.

“Well, if you have the Epstein files on your desk, let’s see them. And then we didn’t see them, or at least we didn’t see anything beyond what we had already seen, and the whole seeming fanfare-release of the folders to the influencers turned out to be a complete dud.”

— Dinesh D’Souza, March 3

During a public feud with the president in early June, Musk posted on X that Trump’s name was in the Epstein files.

What the public didn’t know at the time was that Trump had already been told by Bondi that his name was in the files, as previously reported by the Journal, along with other high-profile figures. 

In an appearance on Rogan’s podcast after Musk’s post, FBI Director Kash Patel restated the Trump administration’s commitment to releasing the Epstein documents.

“I’ve said it. Dan Bongino said it. We’ve reviewed all the information and the American public is going to get as much as we can release.”

— FBI Director Kash Patel, June 6

EARLY JULY: MAGA revolt

On July 7, the Justice Department said in an unsigned memo that a thorough review had turned up no Epstein client list nor any additional documents that warrant public disclosure. Chatter about Epstein surged on right-wing podcasts. Within a day of the memo’s release, mentions of Epstein came up in 127 episodes across 36 shows, the Journal’s review found.

The administration tried to shut the conversation down—“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump scolded a reporter a day after the memo’s release. Claims of a coverup spread across conservative podcasts.

“One theory that I am leaning into is that our deep state has a penchant for getting rid of evidence and delaying and delaying and delaying until they can destroy all the evidence and then saying, oh, there’s no evidence.”

— Rob Carson, July 8

Alex Jones, the far-right provocateur and conspiracy theorist, brought up Epstein at least once a week every week this year. He was more direct with his criticism:

“The Justice Department and the Trump administration doing a 180 on Epstein, and that giant fiasco, that has just made the Epstein case, if it was possible, 10 times bigger than it was and it was already the big enchilada.”

— Alex Jones, July 8

MID-LATE JULY: Fault lines

Since mid-July, the MAGA world has split on the Epstein narrative.

Some conservative commentators who had been frequent defenders of the president have pushed back against Trump’s repeated admonishments to drop Epstein, including Glenn Beck:

“And this is not a waste of bandwidth. This isn’t populism, this isn’t a tabloid story. This, in a nutshell, is being used as the vessel to carry all of the hopes and dreams that maybe someone will clean up Washington, D.C.”

— Glenn Beck, July 15

But after the Journal published an article about a letter bearing Trump’s name that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein, some in the MAGA universe began rallying around the president. Trump has denied writing the letter and filed a lawsuit against the publisher of the Journal, alleging the newspaper defamed him in the article. 

A Dow Jones spokeswoman said, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

The letter described by the Journal was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein. Pages from the leather-bound album are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It is unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review of Epstein materials.

Podcast co-host and conservative figure Catturd, who has nearly four million followers on X, started attacking the Democratic Party, accusing them of destroying files when Trump wasn’t in office.

“But that’s all they can do and then they’ll release it when they release it…. You are crazy if you think they hand over any pertinent information on anybody of the Epstein or anything.”

— Catturd, July 21

Not everyone rushed to Trump’s defense. Rogan continued to criticize the Trump’s administration’s handling of the controversy that helped get them elected.

“There’s a line in the sand. This one’s a line in the sand … we thought Trump was gonna come in and a lot of things are going to be resolved, we’re gonna drain the swamp, we’re gonna figure everything out. And when you have this one hardcore line in the sand that everybody had been talking about forever, and then they’re trying to gaslight you on that…”

— Joe Rogan, July 25

It isn’t clear how permanent the MAGA rupture will be, and Trump has a long history of weathering political storms.

But MAGA’s frustration over Epstein is simmering in Washington, too. About a dozen Republican lawmakers say they will join with Democrats to pass legislation forcing the administration to release the Epstein files when Congress returns in September.

Methodology

To track the evolving conversation about Jeffrey Epstein within the MAGA media landscape, the Journal analyzed more than 22,100 podcast episodes from 148 conservative and far-right shows. A combination of keyword-searching, classification by large-language models and a manual review by reporters narrowed the field to 3,123 relevant episodes across 124 shows. This final collection formed the basis for the Journal’s analysis of the Epstein narrative and its shifts.