A New York author and journalist has released audio tapes that appear to detail how Donald Trump had a close social relationship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that he has long denied.

The tapes, released as part of the Fire and Fury podcast series by Michael Wolff, author of three books about Trump’s first term and 2020 bid for a second, and James Truman, former NME journalist and Condé Nast editorial director, include Epstein’s thoughts about the inner workings of the former US president’s inner circle.

Wolff says the recordings were made during a 2017 discussion with Epstein about writing his biography. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges two years later. Despite his crimes, the wealthy financier was at the heart of a social circle of the rich and powerful in the US and overseas that contained many famous names.

Wolff claims the excerpt tape is a mere fraction of some “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his longstanding, deep relationship with Donald Trump”.

Trump once praised Epstein in conversation with New York magazine in 2002, calling him “a terrific guy” and hinted at his interest in women “on the young side”. But he claimed the pair had fallen out 15 years before Epstein was convicted on a prostitution solicitation charge in Florida in 2008.

“I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” the president said after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.

The Fire and Fury tapes reveal Epstein recalling how then president Trump played his circle off against each other. “His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside,” he says.

The author names Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway as being among the acolytes and officials Trump played off each other like courtiers in a competitive court.

“He will tell 10 people ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kellyanne has a big mouth – what do you think?’

“‘[JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to [financier] Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson.’”

Epstein continues his exposition of Trump’s approach to management: “So Kelly[anne] – even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband – Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard. And then he tells Bannon: ‘You know I really want to keep you but Kellyanne hates you.’”

In response to the podcast, Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said, “Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics” and accused the author of making “outlandish false smears” and engaging in “blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris”.

Wolffs claims on the podcast that he became an “outlet” for Epstein “to express his incredulity about someone whose sins he knew so well, and then this person actually being elected president. Epstein was utterly preoccupied with Trump, and I think, frankly, afraid of him.”

In the broadest strokes, Wolff’s intention is to paint a picture of two wealthy men of the 1980s whose shared interests lie in money, women and status. He describes how they socialized together in New York.

The Guardian recently revealed that in 1993 Epstein had taken Stacey Williams, a Sports Illustrated model and his girlfriend of two months, to Trump’s Fifth Avenue penthouse and allowed or perhaps encouraged the former US president to grope her in what she described as a “twisted game”.

Speaking on the podcast, Wolff said: “Here are these two guys both driven by a need to do anything they wanted with women: dominance and submission and entertainment. And one of them ends up in the darkest prison in the country and the other in the White House.”

• Donald Trump
• Jeffrey Epstein
• US politics
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