On Monday, Sept. 23 -- WASHINGTON - Jeffrey Epstein spent his final free years telling people he was afraid of Donald Trump. He just did not say so publicly. Now, in the Epstein files emerging piece by piece from the federal archives and the private notebooks of those who knew him, the shape of that fear is coming into focus.

"I may be a pedophile, but I don't have a death wish."

Wolff writes that by the time Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Epstein was "afraid of Trump, terrified perhaps," viewing Trump's rise to power not as distant political developments but as a potential personal threat.

The two men had been close during the 1990s and into the early 2000s, attending parties at Mar-a-Lago and moving within the same social ...