Epstein hurled 'money laundering' allegations at Trump in secret email as feds closed in

A newly unearthed 2019 email shows that Jeffrey Epstein was aware that President Donald Trump may have been misrepresenting the value of his assets — an allegation that would get president hit with a $454 million fraud judgment in 2024.

“Trump was a frontman for money laundering, according to Epstein,” wrote Mykhailo Golub, the general manager for the consultancy firm TLFRD, in a social media post on X Sunday. Golub shared an email unearthed in the latest release of a trove of Epstein messages last week.

Trump would be successfully prosecuted in civil court in New York for having inflated the value of his company’s assets, and was ordered to pay $454 million. But in 2019, Epstein appeared to be aware of Trump’s alleged financial crimes.

“Donald doesn't really own very much, he rents out his name. He puts it on buildings projects etc. for a royalty or piece of the upside. he then claims the asset is,” wrote Epstein in an email to himself, dated Jan. 15, 2019, just months before his eventual death in prison.

“He represents his ‘income’ as the GROSS receipts of his clubs. means nothing at all ZERO. no income as we [know] it. He lists his ‘assets’ and their VALUE – but not the corresponding loans, against it. So no net number, hence meaningless.”

As to why Epstein would write emails to himself, investigative journalist Barry Levine recently suggested that Epstein may have been aware that “feds would be closing in on him,” and that such emails were designed to document his connection to Trump in the event that his computers were seized by law enforcement, and hence, gain leverage should he be arrested.

Trump’s alleged inflation of the value of his assets would come to a head around three years after Epstein’s email in a New York courtroom when New York Attorney General Letitia James brought civil charges against Trump for allegedly inflating the values of his company’s assets to receive more favorable loan agreements.

While an appeals court would eventually throw out Trump’s multi-million dollar penalty, the Trump administration targeted James with fraud charges over allegations that she misrepresented her income and assets on a loan document, a criminal probe that critics have described as retaliatory and politically motivated.