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Epstein suggested Kremlin meeting for Trump insights
The Independent
|November 14, 2025
Jeffrey Epstein claimed he could give the Kremlin valuable insight into Donald Trump ahead of a controversial summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, newly-released emails show.
The paedophile financier messaged Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe at the time, suggesting he could pass on a message to Mr Putin about how to handle Mr Trump.
In the June 2018 email exchange, shared among hundreds of emails released yesterday by congressional investigators, Epstein discussed how to understand Mr Trump, who was then in his first term as president. He indicated that Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN, "understood Trump after our conversations", and advised that Mr Jagland could "suggest to putin, that lavrov, can get insight on talking to me [sic]" as Churkin "used to" before his death in 2017, Politico reports. "Lavrov" appears to refer to Sergei Lavrov, Russia's veteran foreign minister.
This story is from the November 14, 2025 edition of The Independent.
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