The former cellmate of infamous financier Jeffrey Epstein has claimed that Epstein said New York federal prosecutors had offered him a deal if Epstein agreed to implicate Donald Trump, then serving his first presidential term. 

Epstein, who was arrested on child sex-trafficking charges in July of 2019, was transferred to the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan and shared a cell with former police officer Nicholas Tartaglione, who at that time was awaiting trial. Tartaglione was eventually convicted on a quadruple-murder charge, while Epstein died in the jail a month after being arrested.

In a pardon application obtained by the New York Post, Tartaglione wrote, “Prosecutors … told Epstein that if he said President Trump was involved with Epstein’s crimes he would walk free.”

“Epstein told me that [lead prosecutor] Maurene Comey said that he didn’t have to prove anything, as long as President Trump’s people could not disprove it. According to Maurene Comey, the FBI were ‘her people, not his [President Trump’s],” the filing stated. 

Tartaglione added in his petition that Epstein told him “President Trump was not involved in Epstein’s crimes.”

Epstein was found dead in his cell on August 10, 2019. His death has been ruled a suicide. The Department of Justice and FBI in July concluded that Epstein had killed himself, did not keep a client list, and did not blackmail prominent people. Just days after the release of the memo, Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was fired from her position. 

Tartaglione, a former K9 officer in Westchester, was convicted in 2024 for the 2016 killing of four men after a cocaine deal when wrong. He claimed in his pardon bid that the prosecution had been flaws and evidence was manipulated by police to frame him. He claimed in the request that the man who worked for Tartaglione, Marcos Cruz, had confessed to setting up the murders for a Mexican cartel, but was allegedly convinced to change his story by an investigator.