- Jeffrey Epstein hinted at his fallout with Donald Trump in an unaired interview, according to his brother.
- "He stopped hanging out with Trump when he realized Trump was a crook," Mark Epstein told Insider.
Jeffrey Epstein said in an unaired interview that he distanced himself from former President Donald Trump after realizing Trump was "a crook," according to his brother, Mark Epstein.
Mark Epstein told Insider he viewed a clip of the interview, conducted by Trump's former White House advisor Steve Bannon, after his brother forwarded it to him in the spring of 2019.
At the time, Bannon was conducting filmed interviews with the now-dead pedophile financier. Bannon sent Jeffrey Epstein a Dropbox link to a clip, which he forwarded to his brother. The link is no longer active, according to Mark.
"Jeffrey showed me the link to one of these interviews," Mark Epstein said. "And in that interview, Jeffrey said he stopped hanging out with Trump when he realized Trump was a crook."
Insider has not been able to independently view the video. Bannon could not be reached for comment.
Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on sex-trafficking charges and died in jail several weeks later while awaiting trial. A compensation fund formed after his death concluded he sexually abused at least 136 people overall.
Epstein and Trump were reportedly acquaintances between the 1980s and 2000s. The two ran in elite Manhattan social circles, and Epstein's home in Palm Beach was a short drive from Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, where he was a frequent guest. Footage obtained by NBC News in 1992 shows them partying together, talking about women, and cracking jokes.
Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's accusers, has testified that his associate Ghislaine Maxwell first picked her up at Mar-a-Lago when she was 16 years old before introducing her to Epstein. At Maxwell's own criminal trial, in 2021, one accuser testified that Maxwell introduced her to Trump at Mar-a-Lago when she was 14 years old. Other accusers said Maxwell and Epstein often namedropped Trump.
The nature of the fallout between Epstein and Trump, however, remains hazy. The Miami Herald reported that Epstein was booted as a member from Mar-a-Lago in 2007 after he harassed the daughter of a member. Trump has publicly said little about his relationship with Epstein, although he said "I wish her well" upon the news of Maxwell's arrest.
For the documentary project, Bannon recorded more than 16 hours of footage, Mark Epstein said. In November of 2018, the Miami Herald ran a series detailing how Jeffrey Epstein secured a secret, lenient plea deal with federal prosecutors in Floria 2007, even after law enforcement concluded at the time that he had sexually abused more than 30 girls.
"Steve Bannon was working with Jeffrey to try to help Jeffrey rehabilitate his reputation," Mark Epstein told Insider.
Bannon and Epstein had become close in 2017, after Bannon left the White House, according to the journalist Michael Wolff. Bannon lived lavishly off Epstein's vast wealth, using his Paris apartment and butler in 2018.
Bannon released a trailer in 2021 for his apparent documentary about Epstein, titled "The Monsters." The entire documentary has not yet been released.
Both Bannon and Trump now have their own legal issues.
The Manhattan district attorney's office has pending criminal charges against Bannon, alleging he participated in a scam nonprofit organization that raised funds to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. Trump pardoned Bannon on federal charges for the same scheme before he left office. Bannon's lawyers in the federal case are suing him for allegedly not paying his bills. Bannon was also found guilty last year of contempt of Congress for defying a House January 6 committee hearing subpoena.
Trump, for his part, is facing a potential indictment from the Manhattan district attorney's office for a hush-money scheme ahead of the 2016 election, a rape case headed to trial in April, and a litany of other legal woes.