New emails suggest Trump made 'insulting' bid to fund Epstein-linked modeling 'project'
A new batch of more than 20,000 emails reveal that a "Mr. Trump" apparently offered to help fund a proposed modeling company spearheaded by Jeffrey Epstein in 2006, a proposal that was described in an email as “ridiculous and insulting.”
The new batch of emails was obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a nonprofit whistleblower group that shared them selectively with news outlets, including Raw Story. They differ from the document dump of 20,000 pages of files from Epstein’s estate, released by the House Oversight Committee last month.
In early 2006, an individual by the name of Cecilia Steen – who Bloomberg has described as an “assistant” of Epstein’s – sent Epstein an email regarding a new “project,” the creation of a new company, with proposed names being “e models,” “e=mc²,” and “e management.”
According to the email, the proposed company would “take over the assets” of MC2 Model Management, an international modeling agency that operated out of New York, Florida and Tel Aviv, Israel, and was founded by Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model scout who launched MC2 with considerable financial backing from Epstein.
In 2020, Brunel was accused of being involved in sex trafficking in association with Epstein, and died by apparent suicide while awaiting sex-trafficking charges in 2022, and in a manner similar to how Epstein died while also awaiting sex-trafficking charges in 2019.
While the email was sent to Epstein by someone named “Steen,” it was signed with the name “Alain Kittler,” the co-founder of Elite Model Management, a French modeling agency. Kittler co-founded Elite Model Management alongside John Casablancas, a French modeling agent who was friends with President Donald Trump and whose modeling agency represented Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, when she was 15 years old.
On the creation of the new company, the email sent by Steen – but signed by Kittler – describes an apparent funding offer from a “Mr. Trump.”
“Last week, we also received a last written proposal from Mr Trump; as expected it was ridiculous and insulting,” the email reads. “The problem for us remains in the payment of our loans and commissions for 2005. We will seek some advice on how to handle it.”
Epstein, responding to the email on Jan. 17, 2006, wrote that the details of the potential startup sounded “like a good begining,” but asked for “more details.”
“can you te%ll me how much is currently owed by trump to you, and what is his position.. will he try to attach any ownership in e=mc2 , maybe you should only have an irrevocable option on the shares to avoid his litigation,” Epstein wrote.
While it's unclear specifically who "Mr. Trump" refers to, it could potentially be President Trump, or Eddie Trump, a South-African born real estate developer with no relation to Donald Trump, and whose company purchased Elite Model Management in 2004 for just under $6 million. In the 1980s, Donald Trump sued Eddie Trump over a dispute regarding their shared last name.