Donald Trump Has Used a Private Plane Once Owned by Jeffrey Epstein at Least One Time

Things are not going all that well for Donald Trump. In early July, it seemed like he would be cruising to a second term, but since Joe Biden stepped aside in favor of Kamala Harris, the race for president has become much more competitive. On top of that, Trump's campaign was hacked, and now, we've learned that one of the private planes he's using has a pretty ugly history.

Reports suggest that Trump's campaign used a plane once owned by Jeffrey Epstein. Here's what we know about how his campaign wound up using such an ignominious plane.

The plane that Donald Trump used for travel on Aug. 10 was once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who was a convicted sex offender. Trump's campaign said that they were unaware that the private plane was once owned by Epstein, and only used it after Trump's signature Boeing 757, which is sometimes called Trump Force One, experienced a mechanical issue.

According to The New York Times, a campaign official said that the campaign called Private Jet Services Group, their charter jet vendor, following the issue in order to get a plane that could take the former president from Bozeman, Mont., to Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Aspen, Colo. for campaign fundraisers. They said the service provided the Gulfstream jet that was used, and that the campaign would make efforts to avoid that plane in the future.

While it seems that the Trump campaign took Jeffrey Epstein's plane largely by accident, the financier's planes have long been a subject of public speculation because of the high-profile visitors who often accompanied him on flights. Those passengers included Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and others. Epstein sometimes brought young women, or even girls, according to some accusers, onto the planes to entertain his guests.

Although this plane use may have been a mere coincidence, Trump and Epstein have been connected repeatedly over the course of their public careers. They were photographed attending the same social events throughout the 1990s and 2000s and were often seen together in public.

Following the revelations about Epstein's predatory behavior, which were public years before his death but crystallized in 2019, Trump distanced himself from Epstein.

“I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years,” he added. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you," he said in 2019, explaining that the two had had a falling out in the early 2000s.

While the use of Epstein's plane may have been pure coincidence, it was an unfortunate reminder of one of the seedier connections in Trump's life.

Trump himself has been convicted of sexual assault in a civil trial in New York and has been accused of sexual assault by several additional women. In spite of all that, he has been the nominee of the Republican party for president for three consecutive elections.