For nearly 15 years, the two men socialized together in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., before a falling out that preceded Mr. Epstein’s first arrest.

He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau. Just how close was Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein? The president’s onetime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein — the well-connected financier who was indicted for sex trafficking underage girls and died in prison in 2019 — has long been a matter of public record.

A recent newspaper report claims Trump wrote Epstein a salacious birthday letter back when the two were friends.