Claim:
An email from an assistant U.S. attorney in New York said President Donald Trump had flown on the jet that belonged to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “many more times than previously reported” and “on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996.”
Rating:
Context
The email was included in the Epstein files the Department of Justice published in December 2025. The name of the federal prosecutor who wrote the email was redacted.
The release of files related to the case of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in December 2025 sparked a rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump had been a passenger on Epstein’s jet “many more times than had previously been reported.”
For example, on Dec. 23, left-leaning publication Meidas Touch shared a post on Facebook citing an alleged email from an assistant U.S. attorney who said Trump had flown on Epstein’s jet at least eight times between 1993 and 1996 (archived):
The post included an apparent screen capture of that email, showing the name of the email’s sender and its recipient had been redacted.
The claim was true. Snope identified the email in question in two separate batches of documents published on the Department of Justice website as part of the Epstein file release compelled by Congress in late 2025.
According to the document, an assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York whose name was redacted sent the email on Jan. 7, 2020 — with about one year left during Trump’s first presidential term. The name of the recipient also was blacked out. The prosecutor said the SDNY had received flight records containing “more than 100 pages of very small script” the day before. A review of those records revealed Trump was “listed as a passenger [on Epstein’s jet] on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996,” the email said:
(U.S. Department of Justice)
On at least four of these eight occasions, Epstein’s assistant Ghislaine Maxwell also was a passenger, according to the email. At the time of the email, the SDNY was investigating Maxwell for assisting Epstein in his sexual abuse of minor girls. In 2021, she was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The email went on to say Trump had once flown alone with Epstein and a 20-year-old person whose name was redacted.
“On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case,” the email read.
The assistant U.S. attorney said at the end of the email the team in charge of investigating Maxwell at the SDNY “didn’t want any of this to be a surprise down the road.”
Snopes has investigated several rumors that started with, or were fueled by, the DOJ’s release of the Epstein files, including the allegation that Trump once said a young female had “pert nipples” and another that a document linked Trump to a 14-year-old girl.
