Elon Musk says Donald Trump appears in files relating to the disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s the latest in a string of barbs between the men as they appear to have dramatically fallen out in a public spat.
In a post on X, the tech billionaire said: “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.
“Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”
He gave no evidence for the claim. Sky News has approached the White House for comment.
Image: Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida with Jeffrey Epstein in 1997. Pic: Getty Images
Epstein killed himself in his jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors.
It comes after the president said he was “disappointed” with Musk after the entrepreneur publicly criticised Mr Trump‘s signature tax bill.
The presidentsuggested his former backer and adviser missed being in government and has “Trump derangement syndrome”.
Image: President Trump has responded to Musk’s criticisms about his signature tax bill. Pic: AP.
He added: “I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
In a Truth Social post the US president said: “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”.
Image: Jeffrey Epstein. File pic: New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP
The bill, which includes multi-trillion-dollar tax breaks, was passed by the House Republicans in May and has been described by the president as a “big, beautiful bill”. By contrast, Musk has called it the “big, ugly bill”.
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Why doesn’t Musk like Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’?
In another post on Thursday, Musk said: “The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year.”
He also asked whether it was “time to create a new political party in Amerca that actually represents the 80% in the middle”.
Musk also said his company SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” following Mr Trump’s threats to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.
Dragon is the only US spacecraft available to deliver crew to and from the International Space Station.
Shortly after the president expressed his disappointment in Musk on Thursday, the SpaceX boss responded.
“False”, he wrote on X.
“This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!”
In another scathing post on X, Musk claimed responsibility for Donald Trump’s re-election success.
He wrote: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”
It came after Mr Trump told reporters the Tesla CEO was unimpressed electric vehicle incentives were being debated in the Senate and could face being cut.
The family of a Mexican man shot last week at an immigration and customs facility in Dallas say he’s died, becoming the second detainee to be killed in the attack.
Police previously said one person was killed and two critically injured after a gunman opened fire at an ICE field office in the Texas city last Wednesday.
A bullet engraved with the phrase “ANTI-ICE” was found at the scene, the FBI said, with the attack being investigated as an act of “targeted violence”.
Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez, 32, died from his injuries after being removed from life support, his family confirmed in a statement shared by the League of United Latin American Citizens.
He is understood to have been one of the two detainees left in a critical condition following the attack on 24 September.
Officials previously said the first man killed was Norlan Guzman-Fuentes.
Image: One of the bullet casings was engraved with ‘ANTI ICE’. Pic: Kash Patel/X
A handwritten note was also recovered after the shooting detailing the suspect’s desire to inflict “real terror” on US immigration agents, the head of the FBI said.
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Joshua Jahn, 29, from Fairview in Texas, was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said acting US attorney Nancy Larson.
FBI director Kash Patel said the agency had seized devices and had processed “writings” obtained at the scene and in the suspect’s home since the attack.
A handwritten recovered note read: “Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror, to think: ‘Is there a sniper with AP rounds on that roof?'”
Mr Patel said on X: “While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an ideological motive behind this attack.”
America’s military top brass have left their posts to attend a meeting with the US president and defence secretary about the “warrior ethos”.
Hundreds of officers travelled from around the world to attend the occasion at a marine corps base in Quantico, Virginia. It is a rare gathering of the US military’s top tier, all in the one place.
There has been much speculation about the substance of Tuesday’s meeting, given its scale and short notice with minimal explanation.
Donald Trump told NBC News, Sky’s US partner network, it is “really just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things”.
“We have some great people coming in, and it’s just an esprit de corps,” he said.
“You know the expression ‘esprit de corps?’ That’s all it’s about. We’re talking about what we’re doing, what they’re doing, and how we’re doing.”
Image: Trump and Hegseth watch a US anniversary military parade in Washington in June. Pic: Reuters
‘Department of War’
The officers were summoned by defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who has adopted the slogan “Make America Lethal Again”. Ahead of the meeting, he has said his intention is to outline a new vision for the military and restore what he calls the “warrior ethos”.
Hegseth is the former TV presenter picked by Trump to run the defence department, now rebranded the Department of War. He has a military background, serving as an infantry officer in the National Guard.
His audience in Quantico will number the country’s most senior generals and admirals. Over 800 of the rank of brigadier-general and above will be there, along with their navy equivalents.
Since he started in post, Hegseth has fired a number of senior officers. In May, he ordered a 20% cut in the number of four-star generals and admirals, and he targeted flag and general officers with a 10% reduction.
A controversial figure, Hegseth has accused some members of senior rank of being responsible for a woke culture and, in the past, has questioned the role of women in the military.
YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5m (£18.1m) to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump after it banned his account following the January 6 Capitol riot.
More than four years on from the violent scenes that left a police officer dead, court documents filed on Monday revealed that $22m (£16.3m) from the settlement will go towards a trust for Washington DC’s National Mall and the construction of a White House ballroom.
The remainder will be paid to other parties involved in the case, including the American Conservative Union.
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Capitol rioter: ‘I was convicted in a show trial’
Google declined to comment on the reasons for the settlement, which does not constitute an admission of liability.
Mr Trump’s YouTube account has been back online since 2023.
Google’s parent company Alphabet is the third tech firm to settle with Mr Trump over what he perceived as an illegitimate muzzling of him online following the riot.
He was also suspended from Meta’s platforms and Twitter, moves which saw him gravitate towards his own social media platform – Truth Social.
The president and his supporters have falsely maintained that the 2020 election was stolen.
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Trump: ‘Most Capitol rioters were innocent’
Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram – agreed to pay $25m (£18.6m) to settle Mr Trump’s lawsuit, and X (what Twitter became after being bought by Elon Musk in 2022) settled for $10m (£7.4m).
Alphabet boss Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Mr Musk all attended Mr Trump’s inauguration this year, with the latter having been a key contributor to his 2024 election campaign.
He led the Trump administration’s cost-cutting DOGE unit during the early months of 2025.