On September 14, 2016, someone named Richard Kahn sent Jeffrey Epstein an email with the subject line "trump making a nice move .." The message contained nothing but polling data showing Donald Trump gaining ground in key battleground states. The document appears in the FBI archive as EFTA00818213.PDF, a single page that raises questions about who was keeping Epstein informed about Trump's electoral prospects, and why.
The email went to [email protected], an address used by Epstein. It shows poll results from September 14, 2016. Trump led Clinton by 5 points in the LA Times/USC tracking poll. He was up 5 in Ohio. Up 10 in Maine's second congressional district. Up 12 in Kansas. The overall picture: Trump was surging in places that mattered.
The September 2016 Timeline
This email arrived at a specific moment. By September 2016, Epstein had been a registered sex offender for years. Trump was two months from winning the presidency. The two men had a documented history. They appeared together at Mar-a-Lago parties in the 1990s. Trump had called Epstein "a terrific guy" in a 2002 New York Magazine profile, adding that Jeffrey "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
But by 2016, Trump's campaign was actively distancing him from Epstein. When reports surfaced about their past friendship, Trump told reporters he hadn't spoken to Epstein in 15 years. He claimed they had a "falling out." The timeline of that falling out remains unclear, with various accounts placing it anywhere from 2004 to 2008.
Yet here in September 2016, someone felt it necessary to send Epstein detailed polling updates about Trump's performance. Not a news article. Not commentary. Just raw data showing Trump's electoral math improving.
Who Is Richard Kahn?
The sender, Richard Kahn, is not identified in the document beyond the email header. The archive contains no other context about who this person was or their relationship to Epstein. What we know: they had Epstein's email address, they were tracking election polls closely enough to compile detailed data, and they thought Epstein would want to see Trump doing well.
The subject line matters. Not "election update" or "latest polls." Instead: "trump making a nice move .." The phrasing suggests familiarity. It reads like someone who knows the recipient will understand why this particular data point matters. It assumes shared interest.
The Polling Data Itself
The email contains a table from RealClearPolitics showing results from multiple polls conducted that day. Some highlights from the data:
- LA Times/USC Tracking: Trump 47, Clinton 42
- Ohio Bloomberg poll: Trump 48, Clinton 43
- Maine second district: Trump 47, Clinton 37, Johnson 8, Stein 5
- Kansas: Trump 48, Clinton 36, Johnson 8, Stein 2
The bottom of the table shows broader metrics. Obama's job approval: tied at 48-48. Generic congressional vote: Democrats up 2. Direction of country: Wrong Track beating Right Direction by 43 points.
This wasn't cherry-picked data showing only good Trump results. It was a comprehensive snapshot of the electoral landscape on that specific day. Someone took the time to format it, compile it, and send it to Epstein with a note about Trump's momentum.
What the Archive Doesn't Show
The document contains no reply from Epstein. No follow-up emails in the thread. No indication of whether Epstein forwarded it to anyone else. It exists as a standalone artifact, preserved because federal investigators obtained access to Epstein's email accounts and stored everything they found.
We don't know if Kahn sent similar updates throughout the campaign. We don't know if Epstein asked for this information or if Kahn sent it unsolicited. We don't know what relationship, if any, either man had with Trump's campaign in 2016.
What we know is this: two months before the election, someone made sure Jeffrey Epstein saw detailed data about Donald Trump's improving poll numbers. They sent it with a subject line that suggested Trump's performance was noteworthy, perhaps even cause for satisfaction.
The Broader Pattern
This email appears in an archive that contains everything from flight logs to grocery lists. Its presence raises the same question as thousands of other documents: why did investigators preserve this? What investigative value does an election poll email have?
The answer likely relates to contact mapping. Federal prosecutors building cases don't just look for smoking guns. They map networks. They establish patterns of communication. They identify who stayed in touch with the target, when, and about what.
An email like this establishes that in September 2016, while Trump was publicly claiming distance from Epstein, someone in Epstein's circle thought he'd want regular updates on Trump's electoral prospects. It suggests ongoing interest, if not ongoing contact.
The Political Context
By September 2016, both Trump and Bill Clinton faced questions about their relationships with Epstein. Trump's "falling out" story was getting tested. Clinton's flights on Epstein's plane were documented. Both campaigns dealt with the Epstein problem differently, but both had one.
This document doesn't prove Trump and Epstein were in contact in 2016. It proves someone thought Epstein cared about Trump's poll numbers. That's different, but not irrelevant. It suggests Epstein's interest in Trump's political fortunes hadn't ended, even if their personal relationship had.
The email sits in the archive now, 154 views and counting. One page of polling data that documents a moment when someone made sure Jeffrey Epstein knew that Donald Trump was making a nice move in the race for president.