The FBI may possess photographs showing Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein and “girls of an uncertain age,” the reporter and bestselling author Michael Wolff said.
“They were in the safe, and I have seen him [Epstein] on other occasions take them out of the safe,” Wolff said, discussing visits to late financier and sex offender's home in New York.
“And I think it's certainly not unlikely that they were in the safe when the FBI came in after his arrest and took everything from the house, including everything that was in the safe.”
Wolff was speaking to former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal and Princeton historian Sean Wilentz on their podcast, The Court of History.
Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in New York in July 2019, midway through Trump’s first term as president.
The next month, Epstein killed himself in custody in Manhattan.
Epstein’s connections to powerful men including Trump have long been the subject of speculation.
FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino, appointed by Trump, have angered conspiracy theorists by pouring cold water on claims about Epstein and his supposedly unreleased files, thought to detail links to powerful figures.
Patel recently told the podcaster Joe Rogan: “Do you think that myself, Bongino, and others would participate in hiding information about Epstein’s grotesque activities?
“The problem is there’s been like 15 years of people coming in and creating fictions about this that doesn’t exist.”
If confirmed, FBI possession of photographs of Trump and Epstein with young girls, as suggested by Wolff, would contradict such claims.
On Thursday, the FBI declined to comment.
Trump’s links to Epstein seem sure to remain in the headlines.
Last week, the Tesla billionaire, Republican donor and sometime Trump aide Elon Musk fell out with the president, then made explosive accusations on social media.
"Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files," Musk wrote. "That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!"
Trump told NBC Musk’s allegations were “old news,” saying: “Even Epstein's lawyer said I had nothing to do with it … and as you know, I was not friendly with Epstein for probably 18 years before he died. I was not at all friendly with him.”
Later, Musk backed down and his posts about Epstein were removed.
Wolff previously described the pictures he says Epstein showed him, to The Daily Beast last month.
Speaking to Blumenthal and Wilentz, Wolff said he spoke to Epstein “on and off from 2014 through to the Trump campaign, and then the first year of the Trump administration, when I was writing my book Fire and Fury, in which Epstein became a very, very helpful source, because Epstein and Trump had been the best of friends for almost 15 years.
“So, I mean, that's at the center of … trying to make this connection to Trump and Epstein, is that they came from the same place … they were instrumental, I think, in each other's rise.
“But at any rate, at one point after Trump had been elected [in 2016], I was sitting talking to Epstein, and he said, ‘Wait a minute, I gotta show you something.’
“And then he went into his safe and he came out with photographs. They were Polaroids, I think, and he kind of spread them out like playing cards. And it was Trump.
“I think there were a dozen of them and, and it was Trump with girls of an uncertain age at Epstein's Palm Beach house, where all of the things that [Epstein] would ultimately be accused of took place.
“And I remember very vividly three of them. There are two in which … topless girls are sitting on Trump's lap, and then a third in which he has a stain on the front of his pants, and the girls are kind of pointing at it, sort of bent over laughing … three or four girls, and those are the ones I specifically remember.”
Wolff told Blumenthal and Wilentz the photos were taken “either in 1999 or 2000, 2001 possibly,” and said it was “likely” Epstein showed them to other people.
Wolff also noted that such photos have been described by the Spectator, a British magazine.
Wolff discussed Epstein’s habit of boasting about relationships with world leaders, including “[Fidel] Castro, the Pope [and] MBS,” Mohammed Bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and former president Bill Clinton.
Wolff added: “I remember at one point he said he was going to see [Vladimir] Putin and he described the … flight pattern that he was taking, his flight to such and such a city, and then on from there via … possibly Putin's plane.”
Trump’s relationship with the Russian president has been the source of intense speculation, since US intelligence determined that Moscow interfered in Trump’s favor in the 2016 U.S. election.
Asked if Epstein claimed a “personal relationship” with Putin, Wolff said: “Let's not go overboard on these things … there was a reality, and then there was the somewhat augmented reality. I would say he didn't shy away from improving on a story.”
Speculation persists that Putin may have kompromat, or compromising material, on Trump. Asked if Epstein would have discussed his supposed pictures of Epstein and Trump with Putin, Wolff said he did not know.
But he said Epstein “very much liked to gossip, and I think one of the things that drew so many people to his house, so many powerful people, was that Jeffrey was within that circle … incredibly indiscreet and incredibly funny and incredibly entertaining.”
Offering an example, Wolff said former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak “knew everything about Jeffrey. They were very close friends. And certainly, I have been involved in discussions between Epstein and Ehud Barak in which the subject was Trump, and Ehud was interested in knowing everything possible that Jeffrey could tell him about Trump.”
