Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficked young girl across state lines on Donald Trump's plane in 2000, claims journalist
Multimillionaire financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein may have secretly sex-trafficked an underage girl across state lines on Donald Trump's private jet, right under the current president's nose.
The claim was made by veteran reporter Michael Cocoran who was on that particular flight in March 2000 to interview Trump for an in-depth profile for Maximum Golf magazine, according to the Daily Mail.
Cocoran said that the plane, a Boeing 727, flew from New York's LaGuardia airport to Palm Beach, Florida, and that he remembers Epstein, his 'highest-ranking employee' and then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, and a girl that was aged "anywhere between 15 and 20" boarding the plane.
He said the incident was seared in his brain because Trump had been mad that Epstein was late and had screamed at him to "never be late for somebody else's plane."
"I remember flying on Trump's plane from LaGuardia to Palm Beach, with Trump and Melania and some of his relatives on board," Cocoran told the Mail.
"Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the girl in question were late for the appointed take-off time, which is why I remember it so well," he continued. "Trump was extremely angry about that, he was screaming, 'never be late for someone else's plane, that's the number one rule.'"
He said he also remembered that the girl was "pretty" and "attractive" and that she "could be anywhere be anywhere from 15 to 20."
"She seemed to want to go unnoticed. She didn't talk to anybody and decided to be a wallflower while we were on the plane," he revealed. "Her hair was darkish—a shade of brown, and she had a nice figure."
Cocoran, who is now an author and editor for a financial publication on the east coast, said the girl "wore noticeable makeup" and "had obviously spent time prepping to look nice for the flight."
He said he thought at the time that she was probably a neice of Epstein or Maxwell or "something along those lines" and that he didn't mention her in his article—which ran in the August 2000 issue of the magazine with a title of 'TRUMPED Jetting and Betting with The Donald'—because he was not sure who she was.
Cocoran told the Mail that he figured she might have been one of Epstein's underage victims following his arrest last month on federal charges for sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.
"At the time I had no idea who Epstein was, he hadn't been convicted of anything by then and I wasn't aware of his reputation, so there was no reason for me to think anything other than the girl was a niece or something," he said.
"But she was heavily made up to look older—it was obvious she had a little too much makeup on. When everything about Epstein began to come to light a few years after I wrote that story, I started to become very creeped out about it. In retrospect when I recall how she tried to not engage with people and everything else, she was uncomfortable. And it did seem she didn't really want to be there."