Epstein files: Questions swirl over a redacted 2009 email with the subject line 'Trump'
The subject line reads "Trump."
The date is Oct. 14, 2009.
The email is from criminal defense attorney Jack Goldberger to his client, Jeffrey Epstein -- which Epstein in turn forwarded to his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
"Spoke to Alan Garten, Trump's attorney [redaction]," Goldberger wrote. "Garten arranged a 20 minute phone conference with Trump and Brad in lieu of a depo.. Following was discussed:"
The rest of the message is entirely redacted by a big black rectangle.
The document, ABC News has confirmed, was among those materials reviewed in unredacted form by some members of Congress on Monday, following the Justice Department's major release of files from its probe into Epstein, the late sex offender who died by suicide in 2019.
Among those who reviewed the email was Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who said it was "puzzling" why the document was redacted in the first place. Raskin also said the message's content "seems to be at odds" with some of the things President Trump has said about the end of his association with Epstein in the 2000s.
According to Raskin, the document contains a summary that Epstein's lawyers provided Epstein about what Trump said during the call about Epstein, with whom he had previously socialized before they had a falling out.
"Epstein's lawyers synopsized and quoted Trump as saying that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and he had never been asked to leave. And that was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason," Raskin told ABC News.
"I know it seems to be at odds with some things that President Trump has been saying recently about how he had kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club or asked him to leave, and this was at least one report that appears to contradict that," Raskin said.
Asked by ABC News if Raskin felt the redaction was made because it could be embarrassing to the president, Raskin said, "No -- I don't know why that was redacted. It was puzzling to me that that conversation was redacted."
ABC News has not seen the unredacted document, and cannot independently confirm Raskin's account of its contents.
If Raskin's account is accurate, it would appear to be in conflict with what President Trump said about his claims that he booted Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago after discovering that Epstein was poaching employees from the club's spa.
"He did something that was inappropriate," Trump told reporters last year regarding Epstein. "He hired help, and I said, 'Don't ever do that again.' He stole people that worked for me. I said, 'Don't ever do that again.' He did it again. And I threw him out of the place persona non-grata."
A Justice Department official told ABC News that the redacted portion of the 2009 email was a privileged communication between Epstein and his lawyer.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
At the time of the email, in October 2009, Epstein was out of jail after spending 13 months in the Palm Beach County Stockade, and was a couple of months into the 12-month probationary period that followed.
Several of Epstein's victims were suing him, and attorney Brad Edwards, who was representing some of the victims, had been seeking to depose Trump and a host of Epstein's other high-profile associates.
As Edwards told ABC News in 2019, Trump and his attorneys offered to hold a call with Edwards in place of a deposition.
"His lawyer called the very next day and said, 'Look, I'll set up a telephone conference," Edwards said. "'And Donald Trump will tell you everything that he knows. You can take his deposition if you want to. You don't have to take his deposition either. Nothing to hide here.'"
Edwards described Trump as helpful and cooperative in providing information that he needed for his litigation, and Trump was not deposed.
"Some of the things that he said are that he's been to Jeffrey Epstein's house and saw young girls. Not underage girls. And that he's been to Jeffrey Epstein's house and saw girls in the backyard of his Palm Beach home," Edwards recalled in the 2019 interview. "That was only helpful to me because then I knew just because some important person is coming over ... Jeffrey Epstein doesn't change his lifestyle. He's not hiding what he's doing. I thought that that was important."
"And Trump did always say, 'Look, yes, girls were always around him. In the public places where I socialized with him, they did not appear to be underage,'" Edwards recalled.
Edwards was not immediately available for comment when ABC News reached out following Monday's developments.
