Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein bragged about flying on his private plane with President Donald Trump and a “French girl” he was dating, a former fellow inmate said.
Former inmate William Mersey told the story on camera in “Jeffery Epstein: How He Did It,” a TMZ documentary released Thursday. Mersey, now a writer and journalist, was jailed with Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan in the days before Epstein died there in 2019.
“One day I went down, and I said verbatim, ‘Give me one anecdote that’s emblematic of Donald Trump’s essence,’” Mersey said in the documentary.
“That fired Jeffrey up immediately. He said, ‘I got it,’” Mersey recalled.
“So, we’re on my plane flying from New York to Miami. It’s just me and Donald and a French girl that I was dating,” Mersey quoted Epstein as saying.
“And Donald said, ‘Why don’t we stop in Atlantic City so I can show your friend my casino?’” Mersey continued.
“And Jeffy said, ‘No, we’re not stopping in Atlantic City. It’s all white trash down there,’” Epstein's prison mate recalled.
“So the French girl asks, ‘I don’t understand what this is white trash,’” Mersey went on.
“And Trump says, ‘It’s me without money," he said, concluding the story.
“I was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in January 2024.
The Justice Department released a January 2020 email in December 2025 in which a federal prosecutor wrote that flight records listed Trump as a passenger on at least eight flights on Epstein’s private jet between 1993 and 1996, the BBC reported.
On one 1993 flight, the email says Trump and Epstein were the only two listed passengers. Appearing on the records does not indicate wrongdoing, and Trump has denied any wrongdoing tied to Epstein.
One of Epstein’s planes, a Boeing 727, became known as the “Lolita Express,” and survivors have alleged it was used to traffic and abuse young victims. The nickname refers to the novel “Lolita,” about a man’s sexual obsession with a young girl.
Ownership records show a company tied to Epstein acquired the 727 in 2001, years after Trump’s flights were logged.
Epstein also operated a Hawker and two Gulfstream jets, and a 1997 flight log lists Trump aboard a Gulfstream II, Business Insider reported. It is not clear which plane Epstein described to Mersey.
Epstein described his companion as a French girl, and girls are at the center of the notoriety his private planes gained.
In the same conversation, Epstein then turned, unprompted, to a story about former President Bill Clinton, TMZ reported. Clinton’s representatives did not respond to TMZ’s request for comment.
A White House spokesperson did not deny Mersey's claims but told TMZ that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because Epstein was a creep.