Just under a month before President Trump met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Epstein tried to send a message to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: If you want to understand Trump, talk to me.
“I think you might suggest to Putin that Lavrov can gain insight by talking to me,” Epstein wrote in an email to Norwegian Thorbjørn Jagland, then Secretary General of the Council of Europe, in June 2018.
Jagland has commented on the case to Norwegian NRK.
"I have met many people in my profession, and many have put me in contact with even more. This is part of normal diplomatic activity," says Jagland, and continues:
For me, it is particularly important to understand Donald Trump and the developments between the US and Europe.
“Understood Trump”
In the email exchange, Epstein wrote that he had already talked about Trump with Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Tshurkin before his death in 2017, Politico reports .
"Churkin was great. He understood Trump after our conversations. It's not complicated," wrote Epstein, who had already served a shorter sentence for sex trafficking.
Jagland, who had previously been Prime Minister of Norway, replied that he would meet with Lavrov's assistant the following day and then suggest that the Russians contact Epstein. It is unclear whether this happened.
Holding hook?
Trump's unwillingness to put his foot down towards Putin has for years sparked speculation about whether Russia "has" something on Trump - a holdover or compromising information, what the Russians usually call "kompromat". The meeting in Helsinki was seen by many as an American failure, where Trump barely uttered a word of criticism towards Putin.
“Do the Russians have something on Trump? Today was disgusting even by his standards,” Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and economic adviser under Obama, wrote in an email to Epstein shortly after the summit.
Next week, the US House of Representatives will vote on whether to release all of the so-called Epstein documents.
