Donald Trump has been traveling to campaign events on a jet that was previously owned by convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The former president’s usual mode of transport, a Boeing 757 jet nicknamed ‘Trump Force One,’ was temporarily grounded on Friday following what was described by the Secret Service as a “mechanical issue” that forced him to land in Billings, Montana.
After appearing at a campaign rally in Bozeman, Montana, Trump chartered a smaller Gulfstream that was once owned by Epstein, the disgraced financier who was found dead in his New York prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. He used that 16-passenger jet to fly from Montana to private fundraisers in Jackson, Wyoming, and Aspen, Colorado.
Pictures showed the Gulfstream G550 jet, which is now owned and operated by Threshold Aviation Group, landing in Aspen decorated with the Trump 2024 campaign logo and an American flag. Threshold Aviation Group did not respond to a request for comment.
Aircraft registration records show the Gulfstream jet’s serial number matches one registered to the same size and model of jet previously registered to Epstein’s company Plan D LLC, but with an amended tail number.
A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration told The Independent: “The serial number remains the same because it’s a unique identifier the manufacturer issues and it stays with the aircraft throughout its life.”
The Trump campaign said in a statement given to the Miami Herald that it had “no awareness that the charter plane had been owned by Mr. Epstein. We heard about the former owner through the media.”
The Gulfstream was the last jet Epstein ever flew on. He was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges when he landed at Teterboro airport in New Jersey on a flight from Paris in 2019. He died by suicide while in a New York prison awaiting trial on the charges and has been connected to several high-profile people throughout his life.
The news of Trump’s chartering Epstein’s former jet was first reported by The Air Current, an aviation industry publication, and highlighted by supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Customs records linked to the jet show that Epstein used it primarily to fly between Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, the US Virgin Islands — where he owned a private island — and Palm Beach.
Trump and Epstein were friends for two decades, dating to the late 1980s. They occasionally flew together from LaGuardia to Palm Peach, Florida, where both men lived, and were pictured partying together at Mar-a-Lago.
The jet used by Trump to campaign this weekend is not the so-called “Lolita Express” — a Boeing 727 that Epstein used to ferry young women between New York and Epstein’s primary residence in Palm Beach, where many of his alleged acts of sexual abuse are said to have taken place.
Flight logs released by prosecutors in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial show Trump flew with Epstein on his private jet numerous times, with his former wife Marla Maples and his children Eric and Tiffany, as well as a beauty queen and a senior aide to Bill Clinton,
The pair eventually fell out over a real estate dispute, and Trump has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s abuse.
“I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” he said in the Oval Office the day after New York authorities took Epstein into custody.
Trump’s 757 appeared to have been fixed by Sunday, when it returned to Palm Beach, presumably with the former president aboard.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent.