Jeffrey Epstein’s brother has explained why he believes President Donald Trump took so long to release the files relating to his criminal sibling.
Mark Epstein has conducted a series of interviews since a fresh trove of emails from the late sex offender’s estate were released by the House Oversight Committee on Nov. 12.
Phoning into CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on Wednesday, just hours before Trump finally approved the release of the DOJ and FBI’s Epstein files, Mark said his late brother believed the reason for Trump’s hesitation to sign off on the files was clear.
“Well, I think it’s an obvious question, not just for me,” the elder Epstein said. “It’s just there’s things in there he doesn’t want people to see. I mean, that… seems to be obvious.”
Trump finally succumbed to pressure from Republicans and Democrats and posted on Wednesday night “I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES.”
Trump said “At my direction, the Department of Justice has already turned over close to 50,000 pages of documents to Congress.”
The DOJ now has 30 days to make the unclassified documents available.
The 79-year-old president continued to try and distance himself from Epstein and connect him with the Democrats in a lengthy Truth Social post, saying that former President Bill Clinton had traveled on the financier’s plane 26 times.
However, Mark Epstein told Burnett that investigators should check how many times his brother flew on Trump’s private plane.
“They used to fly in each other’s planes,” Epstein said. “They say Donald was on Jeff’s plane like, seven times, but have they checked Donald’s flight logs from those days to see how many times Jeffrey was on his plane? I know Jeffrey told me on a number of occasions that he flew up or flew down with Donald… they were good friends, everybody around knew that.”
Epstein also used his Wednesday interview to fact-check several claims made by Trump.
On Tuesday, a pressed Trump repeated his claim that he “threw [Epstein] out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert, I guess I turned out to be right.”
Epstein said Trump ally Steve Bannon was recording interviews he was conducting with his brother, who had sent him a Dropbox link to some of them. “On that tape, Jeffrey clearly stated that he stopped hanging out with Trump when he realized Trump was a crook. That’s a direct quote from Jeffrey.”
Mark also questioned Trump’s regular claims that he had not spoken to Jeffrey for 15 years, between their 2004 fall-out and Epstein’s death in prison in August 2019.
He claimed Trump called Epstein after he won the election in 2016.
“Jeffrey told me that it was after the election, Trump called him and it was sort of like ‘Can you believe this?’ Because nobody believed Trump was going to win. Trump was sort of surprised himself that he won.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said “Instead of amplifying baseless claims, why isn’t the Daily Beast concerned with their own employee — Michael Wolff — closely corresponding with, and even offering advice to Jeffrey Epstein?”
Mark Epstein also said he initially believed his brother could have taken his own life when in jail on charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors.
“When I first heard he was dead from an apparent suicide, I didn’t doubt it,” Epstein said. “Just because he was in a jail cell, I figured, OK, he decided to take himself out, and I respected that decision. He didn’t have any children… our parents were gone. There was no reason in that respect for him not to.”
However, an autopsy result changed his mind.
“When they did the autopsy the next day and they said it looks more like a homicide than a suicide, that’s when [I thought] ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?'”
Mark Epstein said there were several reasons why he felt his brother would have wanted to live.
“Jeffrey had a hearing coming up to appeal his bail decision, and he was going to be putting up what would have been the highest bail in the United States’ history. If there’s a chance he could have gotten bail, in which case he’d be living in his house with an ankle monitor on with armed guards and cameras to make sure he didn’t go anywhere… why would he kill himself?”
“I could see if they had the bail hearing and bail was denied again and he didn’t want to spend another year awaiting trial, he would take himself out, that would be more understandable,” Epstein said. “But knowing Jeffrey, he wouldn’t kill himself before that hearing.”
