13 August 2024 , 20:49
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The ex-president used the late convicted sex offender’s plane after his own jet developed engine problems
Donald Trump used a plane that was once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, to fly to several presidential campaign events last weekend, it has been revealed.
The former president flew on a Gulfstream G-550 jet whose previous ownership was subsequently traced to Epstein after Trump’s own private plane – a Boeing 757 known colloquially as Trump Force One – encountered engine troubles.
The former Epstein jet was emblazoned with the slogan “Trump 2024” for the duration of the ex-president’s use.
According to the Miami Herald, Trump flew from Bozeman, Montana, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and then to Aspen, Colorado, before a final trip to Denver on the jet to attend fundraisers as the Republican presidential nominee for November’s election.
The Trump campaign said it was unaware of the plane’s previous ownership when it chartered it from Private Jet Services Group, a charter jet vendor it occasionally uses, after the technical problems with the former president’s own aircraft.
The campaign had originally used a small charter plane to complete the flight to Bozeman last Friday night after the private Trump plane had been unexpectedly forced to land in Billings, Montana.
It switched to the larger Gulfstream jet the following day.
The Miami Herald said the plane had the same serial tail number – N550GP – as a jet that previously belonged to Epstein, Trump’s former neighbour in Palm Beach, Florida. Flight data indicated that the plane is now owned by the Threshold Aviation Group, a private charter company based in Ontario, California.
It is a different plane from another former Epstein-owned aircraft dubbed the “Lolita Express” that was at the center of a sex-trafficking case filed against him before his 2019 suicide. The late financier sold that plane in 2017, and it has since been destroyed.
“The campaign had no awareness that the charter plane had been owned by Mr Epstein,” a spokesperson for the Trump campaign told the newspaper. “We heard about the former owner through the media.”
She said the former Epstein plane was only used for one day.
Disclosure of its use is likely to add to the scrutiny of the relationship between Trump and Epstein. Despite Epstein’s death being ruled as a suicide, it has been the subject of various conspiracy theories.
The two men knew each other for decades and were photographed at the same social events in the 1990s and early 2000s, with Trump publicly extolling their relationship years before Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to state charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.” Trump told New York magazine in 2002.
No evidence has surfaced that Trump was involved in any of Epstein’s crimes. The two men had a falling-out in 2004 over a property in Palm Beach that they both tabled bids for, something Trump referenced in 2019 when he was president and Epstein’s reputation had been ruined by his conviction as well as charges that he later faced.
“I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years,” he told journalists in the Oval Office. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
Later that year, Epstein died by suicide while he was detained on unresolved federal charges of sexually trafficking girls as young as 14.
Flight records showed that Trump flew six times on Epstein’s planes between 1993 and 1997. Epstein was known to travel with other high-profile passengers onboard his aircraft, including Prince Andrew, the former US president Bill Clinton and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the son of the former attorney general who is now staging a presidential campaign as an independent candidate.