An email contained within the recently released Epstein case files indicates that Donald Trump travelled aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet on multiple occasions during the 1990s, a detail that has drawn renewed public attention but has not led to any criminal allegations against the former US president.
On Tuesday, the US Justice Department made public a fresh tranche of material connected to the investigation of the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The release comprises roughly 30,000 pages of documents, many of them heavily redacted, along with dozens of video recordings, some reportedly filmed inside a correctional facility. Epstein was found dead in a New York jail in 2019 in what authorities ruled an apparent suicide.
Among the documents is an internal email that references Trump in relation to Epstein’s flight logs. The email states that Trump travelled on Epstein’s private aircraft more frequently than had previously been known or publicly acknowledged. Dated January 7, 2020, the message appears in an email chain titled “RE: Epstein flight records,” although the identities of both the sender and the recipient have been redacted. The signature line at the bottom refers to an assistant US attorney from the Southern District of New York, though the name is also obscured.
According to the contents of the email, Trump was listed as a passenger on at least eight flights aboard Epstein’s jet between 1993 and 1996. The message notes that four of these flights included Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate who was later convicted in connection with his sex trafficking operation. The email further mentions that Trump travelled on some occasions with his then-wife Marla Maples, as well as with his children Tiffany and Eric.
The email highlights specific flights of interest. On one trip in 1993, only Trump and Epstein were listed as passengers. On another occasion, the only individuals recorded on board were Epstein, Trump and a 20-year-old person whose identity has been redacted. The email also refers to two additional flights on which women who could potentially have been witnesses in the Maxwell case were listed as passengers.
Shortly after releasing the latest batch of documents, the Justice Department issued a statement cautioning that some of the newly disclosed materials contained claims about Trump that it described as untrue and sensationalised. The department said these allegations had been submitted to the FBI shortly before the 2020 US presidential election and emphasised that they were unfounded. It added that if such claims had held any credibility, they would already have been used against Trump in earlier political or legal proceedings.
The newly released records follow an earlier disclosure of Epstein-related files made by the Trump administration in response to a recently passed transparency law. That legislation requires the public release of all remaining Epstein documents. The earlier batches, released on Friday and Saturday, were also heavily redacted and drew criticism from some Republican lawmakers, who argued that the disclosures failed to provide clarity and risked fuelling speculation ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Those earlier releases included photographs not previously seen of former President Bill Clinton with Epstein, along with a 1996 description of a criminal complaint involving the disgraced financier. Commenting on the controversy on Monday, Trump told reporters that the renewed focus on the Epstein files was being used to distract from what he described as the successes of his administration and his party. Despite Trump’s past efforts to keep the records sealed, the new law passed by Congress last month mandates their disclosure.
