Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said Monday that it was unaware that a private plane used by Trump for campaign travel Saturday was once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender.
Trump flew from Bozeman, Montana, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Aspen, Colorado, on the jet, made by Gulfstream, to attend campaign fundraisers after Trump’s signature Boeing 757, often referred to as Trump Force One, experienced a mechanical issue en route to a campaign rally in Bozeman on Friday.
A Trump campaign official said that the campaign had called its charter jet vendor, Private Jet Services Group, after the mechanical failure to get a plane that could ferry the former president, and that the charter service had provided the Gulfstream jet. The official added that the campaign had used that private jet service as a vendor for years, and that it would take efforts to avoid using that plane in the future.
A representative for Elevate Aviation Group, which owns Private Jet Services Group, hung up on a phone call requesting a comment about the aircraft. Other phone calls and text messages were not answered.
Over the weekend, viral social media posts highlighted the apparent connection to Epstein. A report by the Miami Herald on Monday matched the charter plane’s tail number to a Gulfstream jet once owned by Epstein.
Epstein’s planes have long been a source of public interest; he was known to travel with high-profile passengers, including former President Bill Clinton, Trump, Prince Andrew and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running for president as an independent candidate. Epstein also brought young women — and girls, according to some who accused Epstein of sex trafficking — to entertain guests on board.
Trump and Epstein had routinely crossed paths over the decades, attending many of the same social events and being photographed together in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump spoke enthusiastically about their relationship in the years before Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of unlawful sex with minors. In 2002, Trump told New York magazine: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.”
Speaking in the Oval Office in 2019, Trump distanced himself from Epstein, saying that he’d “had a falling out with him.”
“I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years,” he added. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
