Were Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump friends? After birthday card, now wedding photo haunts Potus

Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced American financier who was accused of running a sex trafficking ring of underage girls, died in 2019. But his death has turned into a nightmare for US President Donald Trump, who has come under intense scrutiny for his ties with the convicted felon.

Now, even as many Americans demand for more disclosures from the Epstein Files, CNN has uncovered archived video footage and photos about Trump’s past relationship with Epstein. Notably, this comes at a very difficult time for the US president — just last week, the Wall Street Journal published a report in which it stated that Trump had sent a card to Epstein for his 50th birthday, featuring a sketch of a naked woman and a typed note that read, “Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Epstein spotted at Trump’s wedding

In December 1993, Donald Trump, then a wealthy business tycoon, tied the knot with American singer and television personality Marla Maples. The two exchanged their ‘I dos’ at a grand function at New York’s Plaza Hotel.

Now, 30 years later, CNN has accessed archival images from the event which show Jeffrey Epstein in attendance.

High-society photographer Dafydd Jones, who was present at the wedding and tasked with taking photos, told CNN that among the photos he took was one of Epstein entering the event. “I wish now I took more of him with Trump,” he told the American media outlet. “I had the job of photographing the Trump wedding, so I stood with the press and photographed him. The image you have is from the contact sheet — the negatives were lost.”

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NEW via CNN / @KFILE: Newly uncovered archived video footage and photos reveal fresh details about Donald Trump’s past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Photos from 1993 confirm for the first time that Epstein attended Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples.

In addition,… pic.twitter.com/sPP6Mtg7OQ

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 22, 2025

Another photo, this time from the LIFE’s archives, shows Epstein smiling in the background — his head is just visible as other attendees take a group picture.

CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, whose team uncovered the images, told OutFront of the new reporting, “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.”

When CNN asked the now US president about the wedding images, he replied: “You’ve got to be kidding me,” adding that CNN was “fake news” and then hung up.

Later, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a statement, “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. This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”

Trump, Epstein and Victoria’s Secret

Adding to the heaping pile of evidence of their close friendship are visuals from a 1999 Victoria’s Secret fashion show in New York. The video shows the US president and financier laughing and chatting ahead of the runway event.

Trump’s birthday wish to Epstein

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.

The US media outlet stated that Trump told Epstein in the card, “May every day be another wonderful secret.” It also featured lines of typewritten text framed by a drawing of a naked woman, with Trump’s name signed below the woman’s waist.

The president denied to the Journal that he wrote the letter or drew the picture. “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he told the Journal. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”

Later, he also sued the publication, seeking at least $20 billion in compensation. Trump’s legal team accused the Journal’s parent company of engaging in “glaring failures in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting.”

Many of his supporters such as far-right influencer Laura Loomer also called the letter “totally fake.” She wrote on X: “Everyone who actually knows President Trump knows he doesn’t type letters. He writes notes in big black Sharpie.”

Parties, private jets and a ‘terrific guy’

The images uncovered by CNN and the previous reporting by Wall Street Journal are just latest on the friendship that Trump and Epstein once shared. In fact, it is reported that the two first met around the time Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985, when Epstein was also living in Palm Beach.

Since then, the pair have been pictured together at various events and social dos. A display of their close ties was when Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least seven times during the 1990s, according to flight logs presented in court and cited by US media. The US president has denied this, and in 2024 said he was “never on Epstein’s plane”.

In a 2002, Trump even told New York Magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy”. “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,” Trump said.

A falling out

However, the friendship between Epstein and Trump wasn’t to last. Speaking in July 2019, just days after Epstein was charged with sex trafficking, Trump was eager to clarify that there pair were no longer friends – and hadn’t been for quite some time. “I had a falling out with him,” said the US president. “I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

But what caused a souring in their friendship? It was a property deal. In 2004, a Palm Beach property came up for grabs — an oceanfront mansion called Maison de l’Amitie, or the House of Friendship. The property was being sold as a result of its previous owner Abe Gosman’s bankruptcy, and according to a Washington Post report, both Epstein and Trump were keen to get their hands on it.

What ensued was an outright bidding war between the two men for the estate, which Trump eventually won. But it left a sour taste in Trump’s mouth and the two went their separate ways. Trump even claimed that barred Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago estate, and the pair were never photographed together again.

“He’s a real creep, I banned him," Trump is reported to have told his former aide, Sam Nunberg.

Trump’s Epstein Files saga continues

Since coming to office, it seems that the Epstein files have become a noose around Trump’s neck. Earlier this month, the US Justice Department claimed that there is no evidence that Epstein maintained a “client list” that named or implicated others in alleged sex crimes.

This has angered many of Trump’s core followers, including Tucker Carlson and former ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk.

Amid this ongoing controversy, the Justice Department announced that it is in touch with an attorney for Ghislaine Maxwell, a long time associate of Epstein, to try to arrange a meeting with her in the coming days.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the plan on social media, saying that the department is seeking any information from Maxwell — who is serving time for sex trafficking — as part of its quest to uncover “all credible evidence” in the Epstein case.

With inputs from agencies