Donald Trump Faces Calls To Testify After DOJ Files Link Him To Epstein Business Ally

Donald Trump is facing renewed calls to testify in the United States after newly released Department of Justice documents linked Eric Roth, a private jet interiors executive whose company worked for the president, to a years-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, according to records reported by OK! Magazine.​

The news came after years of scrutiny over Epstein's circle and the people who stayed in contact with him long after his 2008 conviction in Florida, when he pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage person for prostitution, served 13 months in jail and was released in 2009.

More than a decade later, he was arrested again on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019 and died by suicide in a New York jail cell shortly afterwards.​

Donald Trump And The DOJ Paper Trail

At the centre of the latest disclosure is Roth, the president and chief executive of International Jet Interiors, a Long Island company that refurbishes luxury aircraft for wealthy clients, including Trump. The newly public records show Roth and Epstein exchanging emails from at least 2009 to 2019 about work on Epstein's Gulfstream jet.​

The reporting says Roth and Epstein were in touch over aircraft renovations for years.

The same tranche of records, as described by OK! Magazine, also shows Roth asking Epstein for personal help, including assistance with his daughter's college prospects after her University of Michigan application was rejected.

In one 2014 exchange included in the files, Roth wrote, 'Is there anything that you can do to influence/appeal... something? Devastated'. Epstein replied that the situation was 'complicated. But not hopeless.'​

Years later, according to the same report, Epstein also helped arrange a temporary studio apartment for Roth's daughter at a property he managed on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The files also place Roth and Epstein together at meetings tied to aircraft work at Long Island's MacArthur Airport. One meeting in 2017 reportedly happened shortly before Epstein left for the Caribbean, near his private island residence.​

Although Roth and Epstein appeared to maintain a long-standing professional relationship, the chief executive has not been accused of any misconduct in relation to Epstein's trafficking operation, in which he and Ghislaine Maxwell groomed and sexually abused young women and underage girls.

Why Donald Trump Is Being Drawn Back Into The Story

The new DOJ documents sits alongside earlier disclosures that Trump flew on Epstein's plane on multiple occasions in the 1990s. Separate files and flight logs, released previously, indicate Trump travelled on Epstein's private aircraft at least several times between 1993 and 1996, sometimes with other passengers whose names are redacted. Those journeys are documented.

Epstein's travel patterns were central to the federal investigation into his alleged trafficking network. Prosecutors said he used private aircraft to move between properties in Europe and the Caribbean, and he was eventually arrested at Teterboro Airport in July 2019 after arriving from Paris.​

The disclosures have intensified demands from critics and legal experts for testimony from Trump and other prominent figures whose names appear in Epstein-related files, especially after Bill and Hillary Clinton gave depositions before Congress at the end of last month.​