After Trump Split, Epstein Said He Could 'Take Him Down' [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/us/epstein-emails-trump.html

https://archive.ph/3XEAT

After Trump Split, Epstein Said He Could ‘Take Him Down’
Jeffrey Epstein cast himself as a Trump insider and wanted to leverage potentially damaging information about the president and his business dealings, according to emails with associates.
By David Enrich, Nicholas Confessore, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Steve Eder
Nov. 12, 2025, 9:01 p.m. ET

President Trump’s long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein came to an apparent end in the mid-2000s. But Mr. Epstein remained intently focused on Mr. Trump for years afterward, seeking to exploit the remnants of their relationship up until his arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.

In more than 20,000 pages of Mr. Epstein’s typo-strewn emails and other messages released by a congressional committee on Wednesday, Mr. Epstein insulted Mr. Trump and hinted that he had damaging information on him.

By turns gossipy, scathing and scheming, the messages show influential people pressing Mr. Epstein for insight into Mr. Trump, and Mr. Epstein casting himself as the ultimate Trump translator, someone who knew him intimately and was “the one able to take him down.”

The release of the messages instantly pushed the two men’s much-scrutinized relationship back into the public eye, re-energizing Democratic attacks on Mr. Trump and his Justice Department for failing to publicly disclose more information from the investigation of Mr. Epstein.

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