'I am the one able to take him down': Epstein bragged to friends about power over Trump

A U.S. Virgin Islands, Department of Justice, photo of Jeffrey Epstein photo from February 2015 (U.S. Virgin Islands, Department of Justice/Wikimedia Commons)

Before launching his political career, President Donald Trump was close friends with multimillionaire financier (and eventual convicted child predator) Jeffrey Epstein. But after their falling out, Epstein reportedly bragged to friends and acquaintances about having compromising information about the eventual president of the United States.

The New York Times reported Wednesday evening that Epstein repeatedly insulted Trump in exchanges with various people, referring to him as "borderline insane" in a conversation with former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Larry Summers. He also referred to Trump as "demented donald" and "dopey donald" in correspondence with author Michael Wolff.

Epstein also hinted that he had what the Times characterized as "potentially damaging" information about Trump pertaining to his finances and business dealings, though none of the Epstein-related emails the House Oversight Committee released on Wednesday give specifics on what Epstein was referring to. But he gave several hints regarding Trump's debts and real estate holdings.

When Wolff told Epstein in 2016 that he was interviewing then-candidate Trump and asked for advice on what to ask him, Epstein gave him ideas for "provocative" questions relating to a casino bankruptcy and the failed Trump Shuttle airline that went belly-up in 1992. Epstein also told then-New York Times reporter Landon Thomas in a 2015 email: "would you like photso[sic] of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen?"

In 2018, when the first Trump administration's Department of Justice was investigating Epstein in a separate child sex trafficking case, he was corresponding with an unnamed recipient who wrote that December: "It will all blow over! They're really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can to do that," which led to Epstein responding with: "Yes. Thx. It's wild. Because I am the one able to take him down."

The Times then reported that in June of 2019, just weeks before Epstein was to be arrested on federal charges, his accountant reached out to let him know he had finished poring over Trump's federal financial disclosure form, calling it "100 pages of nonsense." However, he alluded to "interesting findings" about Trump's debts, income sources and charitable foundation. The accountant never revealed in those exchanges why he was probing Trump's finances, or what Epstein said in response.

Trump has maintained that he cut off contact with Epstein in the mid-2000s. While Trump has said he had a falling out with Epstein in 2000 over him preying on teenage girls who worked at Mar-a-Lago, journalist Barry Levine said that Epstein had a Mar-a-Lago membership up until 2007 — roughly a year after he was first indicted on sex trafficking charges.

Click here to read the Times' full article (subscription required).

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