Jeffrey Epstein told a friend he was in Palm Beach with “all the trump boys” on Christmas Day 2016—a month after Donald Trump won his first U.S. election, a newly released email shows.
In a message sent on December 25 that year, following Trump’s victory in the November election, the convicted child sex offender wrote to Bill Gates’ advisor Boris Nikolic: “im in palm with all the trump boys. . = fun.”
A reply from Nikolic in the early hours of Dec. 26 reads: “Have fun!!”
Epstein did not spell out what “palm” means—although both he and Trump, 79, owned luxury homes in Palm Beach, Florida—or who exactly the wealthy financier was referring to when he said “the trump boys.”
It is also unknown whether the meet-up ever happened, or whether the president—who this week continued to try to shift media attention away from the files—was expected to be there himself.
Media coverage shows Trump had been spending the holidays at his Mar-a-Lago base in the seaside town. The Washington Post pool report on his Christmas Eve church service in Palm Beach says the service ended after midnight and the Trumps returned to Mar-a-Lago, where they were expected to celebrate Christmas with family and friends.
If Epstein’s boast reflected real plans involving Trump or his inner circle, it would suggest he may have been socializing with them just weeks before Trump’s January 2017 inauguration—much later than the president’s own timeline for their break.
When asked about Epstein after his death in 2019, Trump told reporters he had a falling out “a long time ago” and said: “I don’t think I’ve spoken to him in 15 years, I wasn’t a fan.”
Trump has since claimed he cut ties in the early 2000s after accusing Epstein of poaching young workers from the spa at Mar-a-Lago, including future accuser Virginia Giuffre, according to interviews reported by ABC News and other outlets.
Years earlier, in a 2002 magazine profile, Trump had called Epstein a “terrific guy” who was “a lot of fun to be with” and noted that “many” of the women around him were “on the younger side.”
A spokesperson for White House told the Daily Beast: “Epstein is a known liar and only the hacks at the Daily Beast—including disgraced Daily Beast employee Michael Wolff who was very close with Epstein—would believe his wild allegations.”
The latest email appears in the Justice Department’s latest public dump of Epstein records, compiled under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The Daily Beast reported Monday on a separate memo in the files in which a confidential FBI source alleged Trump visited Epstein’s home for lunch in spring 2015 and remained close to him after the election.
In response to the FBI-source report, the White House told the Beast: “This is nothing more than a false allegation that has no basis in reality.” Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein.
The Justice Department has stressed that the 3.5 million pages released under the Act include everything from official case files to raw public tips, and warned that some documents—particularly those about Trump—contain “untrue and sensationalist” claims that are “unfounded and false.”
Epstein, who was 66 when he died by suicide in a New York jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, had earlier pleaded guilty in Florida to state counts involving underage girls.
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