Newly released correspondence suggests that Jeffrey Epstein sought to present himself to senior Russian officials as someone who could explain Donald Trump – at the same time as today’s Kremlin appears frustrated by the cancellation of a planned Trump–Putin summit in Budapest.
The overlap raises the question of whether Moscow’s information operators might now try to use the Epstein material inside the Make America Great Again (MAGA) ecosystem as indirect leverage on the US president.
The latest tranche of emails, published by congressional investigators and detailed by US media, shows Epstein telling associates that Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations until his death in 2017, “understood” Trump after discussions with him and that doing so “is not complex”. In another message, he described Trump as a politician who simply had to be “seen to get something” in order to be satisfied.
In 2018, ahead of the Helsinki summit between Trump and Vladimir Putin, Epstein appears to have attempted to turn that claimed insight into a concrete role. In an email to former Norwegian prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland, then head of the Council of Europe, he proposed that Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov “can get insight” into Trump by talking to him. Jagland replied that he would raise the idea with Lavrov’s office, though it is not known whether any meeting was arranged.
Further emails show Epstein commenting on the Helsinki meeting itself in an exchange with former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, suggesting that Trump would have judged the encounter a success because he believed he had charmed his counterpart, while remaining largely unaware of its wider symbolism. The overall picture is of a private individual seeking to market himself as an informal interpreter of the US president’s behaviour to foreign officials, including those of a strategic rival.
The Russia-related material emerged alongside separate emails, released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, in which Epstein referred to Trump’s contacts with a victim at his property and asserted in 2019 that Trump “knew about the girls”. The White House has rejected the significance of the files. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the documents were a politically motivated effort to “smear” the president, arguing that Trump had removed Epstein from Mar-a-Lago years earlier and that an alleged victim had publicly stated he had not harmed her.
The release comes after House Republicans made public some 23,000 pages of material from the “Epstein files”, following an initial, more limited publication by Democrats. It is this combined cache that has supplied both the Russia-related diplomatic references and the exchanges about Trump’s relationship with Epstein’s circle.
The timing has attracted attention in Moscow and Washington because it coincides with the shelving of a planned Trump–Putin summit in Budapest. The meeting, announced in mid-October as a follow-up to the earlier Alaska summit, was intended to address the war in Ukraine and wider economic issues, but was cancelled after a difficult preparatory call between Russian foreign minister Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. US officials briefed that Moscow had shown little flexibility on Ukraine; Russian officials in turn suggested that Trump had shifted away from positions discussed in Alaska.
Formally, both sides now say a Budapest meeting remains possible at a later date, and Trump has indicated that “it could be back on”. In practical terms, however, the initiative has stalled, and Russian commentary has portrayed the pause as evidence that Washington is either divided or unwilling to deliver on what the Kremlin regards as earlier understandings.
In this context, the Epstein emails offer a potentially useful tool for Russian information campaigns focused on Trump’s domestic position. Epstein’s name has long carried emotional weight in parts of the American right, where his crimes are often framed inside broader narratives about elite impunity and institutional cover-ups. The new material links that existing theme to Trump personally, and to Russia’s own diplomatic machinery, via the Churkin and Lavrov references.
Russian state-linked actors have repeatedly explored US conservative media spaces with tailored messaging, and have used scandal-driven stories as vehicles for wider narratives on foreign policy and domestic legitimacy. Although each operation is distinct, the method – amplification of already polarising content rather than fabrication from scratch – is now well established.
At present, there is no public evidence that Russian state outlets or covert online networks initiated the latest focus on Epstein’s Russia emails, or that they are coordinating any campaign around them. The documents originate from US congressional processes, and their initial framing has been set by American media and political actors. The possibility under discussion is therefore not that Moscow created the story, but that it could seek to steer or intensify it within the MAGA information space if doing so were judged useful.
For the Kremlin, such an approach would have a clear logic. Any narrative that complicates Trump’s handling of Ukraine, exposes him to pressure from parts of his own base, or distracts attention from frontline developments can be advantageous. For Trump and his advisers, the challenge is to manage the domestic political impact of the Epstein disclosures while pursuing – or declining – renewed engagement with Putin in Budapest or elsewhere.
Whether the Budapest summit’s difficulties will in practice be linked to a measurable Russian push around the Epstein files remains an open question. Indicators would include coordinated messaging on Russian state media, spikes in aligned narratives across anonymous social-media accounts, and convergence between Kremlin talking points and fringe US commentary. Until such evidence appears, the connection between Epstein’s overtures to Russian officials and today’s stalled summit diplomacy remains speculative – but it highlights how easily personal scandals, archival material and high-stakes negotiations can intersect.
