A 2017 Epstein email mentioned Trump, but records show they didn’t spend Thanksgiving together
President Donald Trump has distanced himself from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, saying the former friends had severed ties more than a decade before Epstein’s 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.
But one Democrat is using newly-released documents from Epstein’s estate to assert that the two remained friends after Trump first became president in 2016.
Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., highlighted one email exchange and said in a Nov. 12 X post: “Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected President with Jeffrey Epstein. 2017.”
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.