Jeffrey Epstein Allegedly Offered Plea Deal to Implicate Trump in Impeachment Effort, ex-cellmate says
Jeffrey Epstein was reportedly offered a favorable plea deal by federal prosecutors in exchange for providing damaging information that could lead to the impeachment of President Trump, according to his former cellmate.
Nicholas Tartaglione, a former Westchester police officer and convicted murderer who shared a cell with Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan before Epstein’s death in August 2019, claimed that Epstein revealed this after meeting with federal officials.
“He said, ‘When you were a cop, what do you know about proffers and cooperating?’ I said, ‘Jeff, it’s pretty simple, the prosecutors, you know, they caught a fish — you. They’re not gonna let that fish off the hook unless you give them a bigger fish,'” recalled Tartaglione in a phone call with Jessica Reed Kraus, a California-based self-described journalist who recorded the conversation and later posted it to her Substack.
“He said, ‘Yeah, well, that’s what they said,'” the quadruple murderer recalled. “He said, ‘They told me they’d let me plead out something small, and I’ll do just a couple of years in a camp, if I can give them something on Trump to get him impeached.’
“He says, but the government told me I don’t have to prove what I say about Trump, as long as Trump’s people can’t disprove it,” Tartaglione said — adding that Epstein considered “making stuff up” to save his skin. Tartaglione never said what Epstein ultimately planned to do.
Nicholas Tartaglione, 57, was convicted in 2023 for the brutal murders of four people, including a man he tortured and strangled over stolen drug money. The former Briarcliff Manor police officer was sentenced to four consecutive life terms last year.
Nicholas Tartaglione was Jeffrey Epstein’s cellmate when the financier was found with bruises on his neck on July 23, 2019. Epstein reportedly told his lawyers that Tartaglione “roughed him up,” an allegation the former cellmate denied.
Following the incident, Epstein was removed from the shared cell and placed on suicide watch. Three weeks later, on August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his cell, officially ruled a suicide. However, questions about possible foul play persist. Despite rules requiring him to have a cellmate, Epstein was alone at the time of his death, according to a report from the Department of Justice Inspector General.
At the time, Epstein was facing serious federal charges, including sex trafficking of minors, as well as sexual exploitation and abuse.
According to Nicholas Tartaglione, Jeffrey Epstein claimed he only knew Donald Trump socially and that the two were not friends. Epstein reportedly said that Trump once threw him out of a party at Mar-a-Lago after he was seen being flirtatious with young women.
“I said, ‘Well, do you know Trump?'” Tartaglione claimed in the phone call. “He says, ‘Well, you know, I know him. I met him, but we don’t like each other.’ I laughed. I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Trump threw me out of a party at his place in Florida.’
“I said, ‘Why he throw you out? He said, ‘Oh he got mad, I was talking to some girl.’
“By now I got wind of what he was in there for,” Tartaglione told the interview. “And I said, ‘How old was the girl, Jeff?’ And he says, ‘Oh about 18, 19.’
“So, I was a cop. I said, ‘Jeff, that means probably 14, 15.’ And he says, ‘Well he threw me out. I haven’t talked to him since.'”
It is not clear when the party was.
Tartaglione said Epstein admitted, “I don’t know anything” about Trump.
Tartaglione added that Epstein was additionally considering turning because he wanted to save his “girlfriend” — a likely reference to Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking in 2022.
Before his death, Jeffrey Epstein claimed he had so much damaging information on both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton that he could have caused the 2016 election to be canceled, according to his brother, Mark Epstein, who shared this with The Post last year.
Journalist Kraus, who shared her conversation with Nicholas Tartaglione on her Substack, also reported that the former cop was attacked by other inmates in October, suffering choking and stabbing injuries. A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to comment on the incident.
Kraus, 45, told The Post she met Tartaglione two years ago and believes he was “wrongly convicted.”
“We were introduced by a friend in common almost two years ago. Nick knows I record him. He believes I can help him prove his conviction is unjust,” Kraus said.
Tartaglione’s attorneys and representatives for Manhattan federal prosecutors both declined to comment on the allegations.
Legal experts told The Post that the alleged offer from federal prosecutors to Jeffrey Epstein sounded credible.
“Anything is possible when it comes to high-profile cases like this. They are career makers,” said Alan Dershowitz, a close confidante of Trump who represented him during his first impeachment trial.
“It could have originated at some point lower than the US attorney or one of the middle ranking officials at the Southern District of New York or the FBI. They are always looking to make cases.”
Added defense lawyer Jason Goldman: “Federal prosecutors in particular are known to conduct these types of proffer sessions. Defendants facing extreme sentences are pressured to name names and conform to the government’s version of the ‘truth,’ even where there may be resistance.”
“The threat to prosecute Maxwell is extremely plausible – the fact that she wasn’t simply arrested alongside Epstein but rather only later on, after his unwillingness to implicate Trump and after his apparent suicide, speaks volumes about the government’s tactics.”
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