Donald Trump was enraged when CNN confronted him with newly unearthed decades-old images of him and his young kids with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
After just 30 seconds on a call with Andrew Kaczynski on Tuesday, the president hung up when asked about the resurfaced images showing Epstein at Trump’s 1993 wedding to his second wife, Marla Maples.
The photographs also show Epstein that same year socializing with Trump and his children Ivanka and Eric at the Harley Davidson Cafe opening in New York.
The images are not new, but they have not been widely reported.
Kaczynski said that Trump dismissed the reupping of the images as his administration faces a slew of criticism from his MAGA base over the Justice Department’s botched Epstein files review.
‘We were not on the phone very long,’ he said on CNN after the article was published on Tuesday. ‘I think our call was about 30 seconds or so.’
‘When I asked him about the wedding photo… he sort of paused for a second and then said, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me,’ before calling CNN ‘fake news’ and then hanging up on me,’ the journalist recalled of Trump shutting down the conversation.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung doubled down on the fake news claims and reiterated how Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for ‘being a creep.’
CNN has unearthed a series of images of Jeffrey Epstein with Trump and his children – including one of him attending Donald Trump’s second wedding in 1993. Also pictured from left: Alison Stern, Robin Leach, Cecilia Nord and Howard Stern
Some of the recently unearthed images show Epstein at Trump’s wedding to second wife Marla Maples at The Plaza Hotel in New York City on December 20, 1993
‘These are nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious,’ he said in a statement on the resurfaced images.
It’s widely known that Trump socialized with Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in the 1980s and 1990s.
He is listed as one of the many famous and rich people who flew on Epstein’s private plane, known as the Lolita Express.
Family members of Trump are also listed on the flight log from the same period. This includes his son Eric, his second wife Marla Maples and their daughter Tiffany.
Previously revealed images show Trump and his third wife and current First Lady Melania alongside Epstein and Maxwell in 1997 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
No charges have been brought against Trump in relation to Epstein and there is no known wrongdoing by the president during his time associating with Epstein.
While CNN branded the latest images as ‘never been seen’ before, Kaczynski admitted in his article that the photos were available on Google images and content library Shutterstock.
The outlet paid to have exclusive rights to a few of the photos for a month.
Kaczynski said they ‘have not been widely reported and pre-date any of Epstein’s known legal issues.’
Trump’s association with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the 1980s and 1990s is no secret. The president’s name even appears on flight logs for the disgraced financier’s private plane. Pictured: Trump and Epstein pose for an image at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida in 1997
Donald Trump, his then-girlfriend Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together during a party at Mar-a-Lago on February 12, 2000
Trump is not pleased with how his base is still obsessing over the Epstein investigation.
When Attorney General Pam Bondi released a joint memo with the FBI earlier this month concluding no one else would be charged in relation to his child sex trafficking crimes, it immediately sparked fury among the MAGA base.
Many of Trump’s biggest fans have stoked conspiracies that Epstein did not kill himself in prison in 2019 and that he was actually murdered to keep quiet about co-conspirators.
Additionally, they were clamouring for a so-called ‘client list’ that would reveal those who worked with Epstein. But Bondi’s review found that no such list existed.
Epstein is seen in the background of an image of Trump with Belgian model Ingrid Seynhaeve during the Victoria’s Secret Angels party on April 28, 1997 in New York City
Trump was forced to give into pressure from his supporters’ demanding the administration continue pushing for more answers.
He directed Bondi last week to request the grand jury testimony from the court case in the Southern District of New York be unsealed.
Additionally, Bondi announced that deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is looking to speak with Maxwell ‘in the coming days’ to find out what she knows.
Maxwell remains the only living person paying the price for Epstein’s crimes.
She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence – though her lawyers tried to get the Supreme Court to take up her case arguing she shouldn’t have been charged due to a 2008 plea deal Epstein struck with prosecutors.
The DOJ opposed Maxwell’s request for appeal earlier this month.
