Emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s Yahoo account were made public on Thursday, September 11. Among the 18,000 emails, Epstein, a convicted pedophile, instructed his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell to “remove” Donald Trump’s name from a “power list.”
The power list included the names of many high-profile people, like politicians, financiers, and other influential figures, separate from the more mysterious Epstein files.
‘Remove Trump’
On September 14, 2006, Maxwell emailed Epstein saying, “Plse review list and add or remove peeps.” She included a list of 51 names for Epstein to check and decide who should stay or be removed.
Epstein’s reply was short: “Remove trump.”
The email does not explain why Trump’s name was on the list or why Epstein wanted it removed, and there are no other clues about the list’s purpose.
‘You Have to Assume They Went to Donald Trump’
The email asking for Trump’s removal came two months after Epstein was charged in Florida for soliciting a prostitute. A year later, on August 23, 2007, Maxwell emailed Epstein about who might have shared information about his dealings with underage girls, mentioning Trump’s name again.
“You have to assume they went to donald trump,” Maxwell wrote to Epstein, without saying who “they” were.
Bloomberg, which obtained the leaked emails, reported that Trump’s name appeared only “three minor” times in the entire collection.
Was Donald Trump an FBI Informant?
Earlier this September, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju at the Capitol that Trump “was an FBI informant” in the Epstein case.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later called the claim false during a September 9 press briefing. “I can affirm that is not true,” Leavitt said. “I think the Speaker was referring to the fact that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago property for reasons the president has already discussed.”
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s Friendship
Even though Trump has downplayed his connection to Epstein, he is on record in a 2002 interview calling Epstein a “terrific guy.”
Before Epstein died in August 2019, he also spoke positively about Trump. In 2017, Epstein told biographer Michael Wolff, “I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.”