Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s former butler has surfaced with some wild claims about his boss and President Donald Trump.
Valdson Vieira Cotrin, who ran Epstein’s Paris home and worked for the disgraced financier for 18 years, gave a wide-ranging, on-the-record interview with The Telegraph.
Cotrin recalled having a conversation with his boss in 2016 about Trump while picking Epstein up in Paris from the airport.
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“A few days after Trump’s election, Mr. Epstein arrived in Paris on Monday or Tuesday, and I went to pick him up at the airport,” Cotrin told The Telegraph. “He said, ‘Valdson, you saw that Trump is the new U.S. president?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I saw it on the news in Paris.’”
“‘Well, Trump asked me to work for him in the new government,’” the butler claimed Epstein said. “I said, ‘Congratulations. I’m happy for you,’ in my bad English. He said, ‘No, I didn’t accept.’”
Cotrin told The Telegraph he remembered being surprised because serving in the administration could be “interesting,” but as Epstein’s employee, he said he did not ask further questions.
There is zero evidence to support the claim. While Trump and Epstein once publicly palled around at Mar-a-Lago and Trump praised Epstein in 2002 as a “terrific guy,” the pair had long fallen out by the time Trump took office.
As Trump recounts it now, he gave Epstein the boot after Epstein “stole” employees from his Mar-a-Lago club, which the Miami Herald and Wall Street Journal said occurred in 2007.
By the time Trump won in 2016, Epstein had long been convicted for soliciting a teenage girl for prostitution and had served 13 months in prison. He was released in 2009.
While Cotrin said he does not remember ever meeting Trump either in Paris or Florida when he was employed by Epstein, he did recall Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, driving over to Mar-a-Lago.
“She used to pop over there very often in her Mercedes shortly after I was taken on in the early 2000s,” he told The Telegraph, noting he did not know whom exactly she was there to visit.
Cotrin believes Maxwell would be the one who has more information on others connected to Epstein.
“If anyone knows things, it’s Ms. Maxwell. She was the boss and the lady of the house,” he said. “She didn’t give massages, but she was in charge.”
His comments come as the Epstein case is facing fresh scrutiny as the Trump administration deals with ongoing fallout over its handling of the Epstein files after backtracking on its promise to release more information.
Trump has faced backlash from his supporters after the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded in a July 6 memo that Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial in jail, rather than being murdered, and that no “client list” of wealthy co-conspirators exists—the subject of whirling conspiracy theories among Trump’s MAGA minions.
Maxwell is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and was moved to a minimum-security facility in Texas on August 8 after meeting with the second in command at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, as the Trump administration tries to contain the fallout from its botched handling of the Epstein files.
Trump said he did not know about Maxwell’s transfer beforehand, but he has not ruled out pardoning her.
Cotrin worked for Epstein from 2001 until his death in 2019 and was his one full-time employee in Paris, although he also worked for him numerous times in New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and at Epstein’s private island.
Other people Cotrin did recall visiting Epstein during his time of employment were Prince Andrew, Lord Peter Mandelson, Woody Allen, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and former President Bill Clinton.
The ex-butler also made other head-turning claims in the interview.
The longtime employee said he does not believe that Epstein killed himself.
The convicted sex offender was found hanged in his New York prison cell in August 2019. It was ruled a suicide.
Cotrin said the last time he saw Epstein was when he took him to the airport just before he was taken into custody in New York. He said his boss appeared relaxed.
“I don’t believe this was suicide. He loved life too much,” Cotrin told The Telegraph.
Cotrin and his partner, Maria Gomes de Melo, had previously declined to speak publicly, according to The Telegraph, because of concerns about their own safety.
The couple noted the deaths of Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein accuser, and Jean-Luc Brunel, who ran the modeling agency financed by Epstein. Cotrin said he was scared because of what happened to them.
Giuffre was found to have died by suicide in April 2025. Brunel was found dead in his Paris prison cell in 2022 after being arrested as part of an investigation into sex trafficking.
While the former butler had quite a bit to say during the interview with The Telegraph, he insisted that his late boss was not the monster he was made out to be, despite the conviction and mountain of evidence.
Cotrin said he never saw Epstein having sex with underage girls or other inappropriate activities. He said they were hired to give massages.
Despite the charges and accusations of horrors, Cotrin still had pictures of himself with his former boss, including one that still hangs on a wall, next to another of Cotrin with Clinton.
