Epstein passed information about Donald Trump to the Kremlin, Politico
Almost a month before President Donald Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Jeffrey Epstein tried to deliver a message to Russia's top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov. "I think you could suggest to Putin that Lavrov could get information by talking to me," Epstein wrote in a June 24, 2018 email to Thurbjørn Jagland, the former prime minister of Norway who headed the Council of Europe at the time of the exchange of letters.
Lavrov obviously meant Sergey Lavrov, who then and now holds the position of the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry. And in one of the letters, Jeffrey Epstein mentioned that he talked about Donald Trump with Vitaly Churkin, Russia's influential ambassador to the United Nations, before Churkin died in 2017. "Churkin was wonderful. After our conversations, he understood Trump. It's not difficult. You have to see how he understands that everything is so simple," wrote Epstein.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the emails, but press secretary Caroline Leavitt said at a Nov. 12 briefing that the dozens of emails that have been released to Congress "prove absolutely nothing other than that President Trump did nothing illegal.
" Later, Trump himself reacted to Epstein's letters, saying that it was the Democrats who were trying to bring up the issue of the Jeffrey Epstein hoax again, because they would do anything to distract attention from how "badly they handled the shutdown of the US government", referring to the shutdown, which lasted a record 42 days. In e-mails, Jagland said that he would meet with Lavrov's assistant the next day and suggest that he contact Epstein.
It is unclear if anything came of this alleged contact. However, Epstein later weighed in on Trump's fateful meeting with Putin, which drew criticism around the world for his apparent capitulation to the Russian dictator.
"Do the Russians have information on Trump? Today was terrible, even by his standards," Larry Summers, former Clinton administration treasury secretary and Obama administration economic adviser, wrote in an email to Epstein on July 16, 2018, the day of the Helsinki summit with Putin. "My e-mail is full of comments like that. That's it," Epstein replied the next day. "I'm sure he thinks it went great. He thinks he's charmed his opponent. . . . Really, he has no idea about symbolism.
He doesn't know much at all. " He also called Trump's behavior at the summit with Putin "predictable. " In addition, the new letters revealed that Epstein corresponded with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, advising him to have a physical presence in Europe to influence the continent. "You awaken hopes and emotions in them, and then abandon them. I think you need to be yourself, and not a stranger who is constantly running somewhere," wrote Epstein.