- In November 2025, a claim circulated online that U.S. President Donald Trump spent his first Thanksgiving as president with the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2017.
- The claim appeared to come from a since-deleted X post by the Democratic Party that based its claim on an email exchange that was part of a trove of documents about Epstein that the U.S. House Oversight Committee released on Nov. 12, 2025.
- In the exchange, dated Nov. 21, 2017, Epstein suggested both he and Trump were in Palm Beach over Thanksgiving 2017. The email exchange did not directly say the two spent any time together.
- Trump’s official calendar for Thanksgiving as published by Roll Call, an insider publication that covers all things Capitol Hill, showed that Trump was in Palm Beach, Florida, at his private member’s club and golf resort between Nov. 21 and 26, 2017, but did not show a meeting with Epstein. At the time, Epstein also owned a home in Palm Beach.
- Reports citing White House officials at the time indicated that Trump would celebrate Thanksgiving 2017 at Mar-a-Lago, the private member’s club he reportedly kicked Epstein out of 10 years prior. It was unclear who attended Trump’s Thanksgiving celebrations.
- White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson did not reply to a query about whether Trump spent time with Epstein during Thanksgiving 2017, instead writing, “These emails prove literally nothing.
In November 2025, after the U.S. House Oversight Committee released a trove of documents relating to the late, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a claim (archived) circulated online that U.S. President Donald Trump spent his first Thanksgiving as president with Epstein in 2017.
Trump and Epstein had a well-documented friendship in the early 2000s. The exact circumstances of how the friendship ended remained unclear. Trump reportedly kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club in 2007, 10 years before online claims said the pair spent Thanksgiving together. Epstein died in a New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
One X user who shared the claim about Trump and Epstein wrote, “Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected President with Jeffrey Epstein. 2017.”
The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived), Reddit (archived) and TikTok (archived). Snopes readers wrote in, asking if the claim was true.
The claim appeared to come from a post on the @TheDemocrats X account, the official account of the Democratic Party. According to screenshots (archived, archived), that post claimed an email exchange from the House Oversight Committee release showed that Trump spent Thanksgiving with Epstein in 2017. The post did not appear on the @TheDemocrats X account at the time of this writing.
The email exchange the post referred to between Epstein and Faith Kates, reportedly a fashion management executive, did suggest that Epstein and Trump were both in or near Palm Beach, Florida, during Thanksgiving 2017. At the time, Epstein owned a mansion in Palm Beach. According to Roll Call’s public schedule for the president, Trump spent five days at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach from Nov. 21 to 26, 2017. Roll Call is an insider publication that covers all things Capitol Hill.
In the released email exchange dated Nov. 23, 2017, Kates asked Epstein “When are you back in NYC?” suggesting that Epstein was not at his Manhattan townhouse. Later in the exchange, Kates asked, “Who else is down there?” to which Epstein replied, “david fizel, hanson. trump.” Given that Roll Call’s Presidential Calendar and reports at the time said Trump was in Mar-a-Lago, the email exchange suggested “down there” meant Palm Beach.
While both Epstein and Trump were likely in Palm Beach over Thanksgiving 2017 (the holiday fell on Nov. 23 that year), Epstein did not directly say in the email exchange that he had or would spend time with the president while in Florida. We did not find other reputable reports that Epstein and Trump spent time together during Thanksgiving 2017. Due to the possibility of a private meeting between the two, we leave this claim unrated.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson did not reply to an emailed question about whether Trump spent time with Epstein during Thanksgiving 2017. Instead, Jackson said via email, “These emails prove literally nothing. Democrats and the mainstream media are desperately trying to use this hoax as a distraction to talk about anything other than Democrats getting utterly defeated by President Trump in the [recent government] shutdown fight.”
Snopes reached out to communications staff at the Democratic National Committee, which runs the @TheDemocrats X account, to confirm whether it posted and deleted the X post in question, and why. We also reached out to Kates, the fashion industry executive who reportedly corresponded with Epstein, to confirm her role in the correspondence and whether Epstein told her he spent Thanksgiving with Trump. We await replies to our queries.
Trump’s calendar did not show meeting with Epstein
According to Roll Call and reports at the time, Trump arrived at Palm Beach International Airport on the afternoon of Nov. 21, 2017. Trump had no public events scheduled on Nov. 22, but met with pool reporters in the morning and went to Trump International Golf Club around 9:30 am, according to Roll Call. Trump posted (archived) on X on Nov. 22 that he would be “having meetings and working the phones from the Winter White House in Florida (Mar-a-Lago).”
On Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 23, 2017, Roll Call’s calendar showed Trump thanked members of the military on a virtual call and visited Coast Guard members at Lake Worth Inlet Station before heading back to Trump International Golf Club around 11 a.m. News reports and official records corroborated the two Nov. 23 engagements in or near Palm Beach.
Trump had no public events scheduled on Nov. 24, 25 or 26, 2017, according to Roll Call. He reportedly played golf with professional golfers Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson on Nov. 24.
Much of the time Trump spent in West Palm Beach was unaccounted for in Roll Call’s calendar. According to a CNN report at the time that cited spokespersons from the White House, Trump planned to celebrate the holiday with family at Mar-a-Lago — the private member’s club he reportedly kicked Epstein out of 10 years previously. It was unclear exactly who attended festivities at Mar-a-Lago.
According to a Guardian analysis of the House Oversight Committee’s document release, Epstein stayed informed about Trump’s travel as it related to his own after the pair fell out. The Guardian reported that Epstein would discuss Trump’s travel with employees as both regularly flew in and out of Palm Beach International Airport.
The Guardian reported that Epstein continued to discuss Trump’s whereabouts in New York City and Palm Beach and received news articles about Trump more generally from his associates after the two fell out and Trump became president.
Snopes previously reported on the content of the House Oversight Committee’s email release, including whether Epstein called Trump “the dog that hasn’t barked” or alleged Trump “knew about the girls,” referring to victims of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes.
Sources
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