New photos and footage of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein have been unearthed offering fresh insight into the pair’s relationship despite the president’s repeated attempts to distance himself.
Epstein and Trump appear in a number of pictures surfaced by CNN and aired Tuesday night. Among them are images showing Epstein as a guest at the president’s wedding to Marla Maples.
CNN’s KFILE uncovered two photos showing the disgraced financier at Trump’s December 1993 wedding at the Plaza Hotel in New York. It also obtained footage from a 1999 Victoria’s Secret runway event in New York, showing Trump, accompanied by his future wife Melania Trump, chatting to Epstein.
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In another image from the Oct. 1993 opening of the Harley Davidson Cafe in New York, Epstein is pictured standing next to Trump, who has his arms around his young children, Eric and Ivanka Trump, who were 9 and 11.
“Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples in 1993 was dubbed the wedding of the century by the media at the time,” CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, whose team uncovered the images, told OutFront of the new reporting. “And although we know that Trump and Epstein were friends during this period, this is really the first time that it’s actually been reported that Trump invited Epstein to his wedding.”
One image shows Epstein entering the wedding reception at the Plaza Hotel, he said. Another, from the LIFE photo archive, shows Epstein in the background of a photo of four people at the wedding: radio star Howard Stern, his then-wife Alison Stern, reporter Robin Leach of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Swedish model Cecilia Nord.
The photo of Epstein entering the wedding reception was taken by photographer Dafydd Jones, who wrote a 2024 book, New York: High Life/Low Life, about his time snapping images of New York high society in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Trump and members of his family feature in it. That image has not been published before.
The other images had not been widely reported previously, according to CNN, and the Victoria’s Secret event footage was found in raw footage during KFILE’s review of archival video of Trump.
Jones was assigned by a media organization to cover the Trump wedding a couple of months after photographing the real estate mogul and Epstein together at the Harley Davidson Cafe opening.
“There was this guy there who struck me—the way he was looking—and he gave me his card. It said: Jeffrey Epstein, financial advisor,” Jones told CNN of the cafe opening in an interview.
He said he “must have recognized” Epstein going into the wedding, snapping a picture.
“I wish now I took more of him with Trump,” he said, adding, “The image you have is from the contact sheet—the negatives were lost.”
Trump was asked about the wedding photos in a short phone call with CNN on Tuesday, and responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He called CNN “fake news” and hung up.
White House communications director Steven Cheung issued a statement to the network that read: “These are nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious.”
“The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep,” Cheung added. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”
The White House did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
CNN’s reporting follows a bombshell report last week from The Wall Street Journal describing a birthday card Trump was said to have sent Epstein for his 50th birthday. It reportedly depicted an outline of a naked woman with a message that ended, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret." Trump said it was “fake” and is suing over it.
Allegations that Epstein sexually abused underage girls first emerged in 2005. He was arrested the following year and in 2008 pleaded guilty to two state-level felony prostitution counts. He served 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail under a lenient work‑release deal.
A decade later, he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and died in jail. His Aug. 2019 death, the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, was ruled a suicide.
Trump’s friendship with Epstein has been documented in various images and interviews from the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
They eventually had a falling out, apparently over a real estate deal in Florida. After Epstein’s reputation was tarnished, Trump distanced himself.
“Well I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach,” he told a reporter in 2019.
“I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan. I was not—yeah, a long time ago, I’d say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his. That I can tell you."
Trump has been furiously working to gloss past the Epstein drama after the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigations refuted Epstein conspiracy theories in a July 7 memo stating that no incriminating “client list” exists and that no further information would be released about the case.
Hours before CNN published the images, Trump had raged on Truth Social: “We had the Greatest Six Months of any President in the History of our Country, and all the Fake News wants to talk about is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax!”
The controversy earlier this month has triggered ongoing furore amongst his supporters, many of whom view Epstein’s crimes—and the secrecy surrounding them—as proof of Trump’s long-standing claims about “deep state” elites protecting their own.
