Did former President Donald Trump fly on one of Jeffrey Epstein's planes? Yes, but that is missing context: The private jet that Trump flew on for campaign events on August 10, 2024, was a Gulfstream that was previously owned by sex offender Epstein and is now a leased aircraft under private ownership. This is not the same aircraft that was infamously known as the Lolita Express, another plane owned by Epstein. The Trump campaign said they were unaware that the jet they leased from a private charter company was previously owned by Epstein.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on August 12, 2024. It opened:
🚩Trump IS flying on Epstein's plane!!!🚩
No, this isn't in the distance past tense. He flew on it as recently as Saturday.
I noticed a short mention of it, so I decided to dig a little deeper. In this 🧵, I'll expose the evidence I uncovered and MUCH more.
(1/x)
Here is how the post appeared on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Aug 13 17:17:23 2024 UTC)
The Miami Herald (archived here) in an August 13, 2024, article quoted a spokesperson from the Trump campaign as saying, "We heard about the former owner [of the aircraft] through the media." The spokesperson said the campaign used the plane formerly owned by Epstein to fly from Bozeman, Montana, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Herald wrote. It then flew to campaign events in Aspen, Colorado, and to Denver, with all flights on the same day.
According to online records, the Gulfstream jet with tail number N550GP is owned by Threshold Aviation (archived here). The image of the plane matches the image posted on social media, without the Trump campaign logo on the side as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Threshold Aviation website screenshot taken on Tue Aug 13 17:20:34 2024 UTC)
Trump's larger private plane, which he nicknamed Trump Force One, was unexpectedly forced to land in Billings, Montana, on August 9, 2024, as NBC News reported (archived here).
Online records (archived here) show the aircraft, which formerly was registered as N212JE, was owned by Epstein's JEGE, LLC and Plan D, LLC until being sold in 2021 to Threshold Aviation.
The owner of another Epstein plane infamously dubbed the Lolita Express said they were destroying the aircraft in January 2024, according to a Daily Mail report (archived here).
The flight logs of Epstein's private plane, nicknamed Lolita Express, were obtained by reporters in 2015 after they were filed as an exhibit in a federal lawsuit. Trump flew on Epstein's jet multiple times. The flight logs are handwritten by pilot David Rogers and can be downloaded and checked here: Epstein Flight logs by Alan Duke on Scrib.
Lead Stories reached out to the Trump campaign for comment and will update the story when a response is received.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein can be found here.
