“I think you could suggest to Putin that Lavrov would gain more insight if he talked to me,” Epstein wrote on June 24, 2018, to Norwegian ex-prime minister Thorbjörn Jagland, who led the Council of Europe at the time, according to the Politico website.
Epstein also indicated that he spoke about Trump with Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, before Churkin died in 2017. “Churkin was great,” wrote Epstein. “After our conversations, he understood Trump. It’s not complicated. He has to be seen to get something. It’s that simple,” added the financier, who was found hanged in a prison cell in 2019.
In response, Jagland stated that he would meet with Lavrov’s assistant the following day and suggest that he contact Epstein. “It is not clear whether anything came of the proposed contact,” adds Politico.
However, after Trump’s meeting with Putin, Epstein publicly commented on the reactions, according to which the head of the White House gave way too much to the Russian president. “I’m sure he thinks it went great. He thinks he charmed his opponent… It’s true that he has no idea about symbolism. He has no idea about most things,” Epstein wrote at the time, adding that Trump’s handling of the summit with Putin was “predictable.”
Epstein’s released correspondence also suggests that Trump spent hours at Epstein’s home with one of the victims of sexual abuse. The financier also wrote in the emails that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to CNN, apparently in reference to Trump’s claim that he fired Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida for soliciting young women who worked there. Some of them were minors at the time.
The head of the White House denies any connection with Epstein’s crimes. The published e-mails “prove absolutely nothing other than that President Trump did nothing wrong,” said his spokeswoman Karoline Leavittová.
“Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein fraud again because they will do anything to distract from how badly they did during the shutdown,” Trump wrote on the Truth Social network, referring to the recently ended record-long government shutdown.
