**Redacted Email Reveals Discrepancies in Trump’s Account of Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein**
An email dated October 14, 2009, from criminal defense attorney Jack Goldberger to his client, Jeffrey Epstein, was recently disclosed as part of a Justice Department release of files related to its investigation into Epstein, the late convicted sex offender who died by suicide in 2019. Epstein forwarded the message to his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The email’s subject line simply reads “Trump.” In the message, Goldberger states, “Spoke to Alan Garten, Trump’s attorney [redaction].” Garten, a legal representative for Trump, reportedly arranged a 20-minute phone conference with Donald Trump and attorney Brad Edwards in lieu of a deposition. The remainder of the email’s content, however, is entirely redacted.
ABC News has confirmed that some members of Congress reviewed the unredacted version of the document on Monday. Among them was Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, who described the redaction as “puzzling” and questioned why such information was withheld.
According to Raskin, the unredacted email included a summary provided by Epstein’s lawyers about Trump’s comments during the call concerning Epstein. This summary reportedly quotes Trump saying that Jeffrey Epstein “was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and he had never been asked to leave.”
Raskin noted, “I know it seems to be at odds with some things that President Trump has been saying recently about how he had kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club or asked him to leave, and this was at least one report that appears to contradict that.” ABC News has not independently verified the contents of the redacted section.
When asked if the redaction was made to avoid embarrassment to the president, Raskin responded, “No — I don’t know why that was redacted. It was puzzling to me that that conversation was redacted.”
The Justice Department told ABC News that the redacted portion of the 2009 email contained privileged communications between Epstein and his attorney. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At the time the email was sent, Epstein had recently completed a 13-month jail sentence in the Palm Beach County Stockade and was a few months into a one-year probation period. Several of Epstein’s victims were pursuing civil lawsuits against him, and Brad Edwards, an attorney representing some of the victims, had been seeking to depose Trump and other high-profile associates of Epstein.
Edwards told ABC News in 2019 that Trump’s legal team proposed a phone call as an alternative to a deposition. “His lawyer called the very next day and said, ‘Look, I’ll set up a telephone conference, and Donald Trump will tell you everything that he knows. You can take his deposition if you want to. You don’t have to take his deposition either. Nothing to hide here,’” Edwards recalled.
Edwards described Trump as cooperative in providing information pertinent to the litigation, explaining that Trump was never deposed. According to Edwards, Trump admitted to visiting Epstein’s Palm Beach home and seeing young women there, although he asserted these girls were not underage.
“That was only helpful to me because then I knew just because some important person is coming over, Jeffrey Epstein doesn’t change his lifestyle. He’s not hiding what he’s doing,” Edwards said. He added that Trump consistently acknowledged, “Look, yes, girls were always around him. In the public places where I socialized with him, they did not appear to be underage.”
Regarding Trump’s claim last year that he had expelled Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after Epstein allegedly “stole” employees from the club’s spa, the newly surfaced email and Edwards’s statements appear to contradict that narrative. Trump told reporters, “He did something that was inappropriate. He hired help, and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again. And I threw him out of the place persona non-grata.”
ABC News reached out to Edwards for comment following Monday’s developments, but he was not immediately available.
The evolving disclosures continue to shed light on the complex and sometimes contradictory associations between Jeffrey Epstein and several prominent figures, including Donald Trump.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/epstein-files-questions-swirl-redacted-2009-email-subject/story?id=130036353
