• Former Trump administration officials have expressed concern about President Donald Trump’s recent behavior, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
• On Wednesday, Trump shared messages from a conspiracy theorist claiming that Israeli Jews regarded him as the “second coming” of God.
• On the same day, Trump insulted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as “nasty” after she rebuffed his offer to buy Greenland, describing it as “absurd.”
• Former officials who spoke with The Times suggested that the president’s increasingly erratic behavior might be linked to private worries that a recession in the US could torpedo his chances of reelection in 2020.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Former Trump administration officials are concerned about the president’s behavior in recent days, speculating that his increasingly erratic outbursts are linked to private worries that a recession in the US could torpedo his chances of reelection in 2020, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

In recent weeks Trump has generated almost daily controversies, several of which came to a head this week.

The past four days have seen approvingly share a tweet where he’s described as the “second coming” of God, attack Denmark’s prime minister over her refusal to consider selling Greenland, and question the loyalty of Jews who vote for the Democratic Party.

Here’s a snapshot of the president’s comments so far this week:

• On Wednesday, Trump described Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as “nasty,” having previously canceled a visit to Denmark after she dismissed his proposal to buy Greenland as “absurd.” Trump later attacked Denmark, a NATO ally, on Twitter over its military spending.
• Earlier Wednesday, Trump quoted a right-wing conspiracy theorist who claimed that Israeli Jews saw him as the “second coming” and the “King of Israel.” In remarks to reporters at the White House later in the day, Trump described himself as the “chosen one” in the trade war against China.
• On Tuesday, Trump used an anti-Semitic trope in questioning the loyalty of Jews who voted for Democrats. He doubled down on the view in remarks to reporters Wednesday.

The unnamed former officials who spoke with The Times said these outbursts were most likely linked to fears from Trump that the US economy was weakening and might slip into recession in 2020, which could damage his chances of reelection.

Read more: Trump appeared to misunderstand the definition of a recession while arguing that the US having one was a price worth paying

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Several reports in recent days have suggested that economic data indicating a recession may be looming has rattled Trump — who has based his case for reelection on the strong performance of the US economy during his presidency.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters the US economy was strong and recession was not on the horizon, but he has privately expressed worries about the threat of a recession, according to The Washington Post.

Trump also said on Tuesday that an economic downturn, if it did happen, would be a price worth paying for winning his trade war with China.

Read more: Trump is anxious a recession could tank his reelection chances, but officials aren’t openly bracing for one because they’re worried about fueling the fire

But even as some link Trump’s recent behavior to recession fears, some analysts believe the president has simply been acting in accordance with his long-established playbook of fostering conflict with institutions he has portrayed as controlled by elites exploiting the American people — such as the Democratic Party or NATO.

Early Tuesday morning, three women filed separate lawsuits against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, whom federal prosecutors charged with sex trafficking just weeks before his suicide on August 10. Their allegations, which include sexual assault and coercion, closely mirror those lodged by prior accusers.

But one plaintiff, who remains anonymous, leveled a novel accusation: The wealthy financier, with the help of an unnamed attorney, forced her to enter a fraudulent marriage with another woman in his orbit.

The plaintiff, identified in legal filings as “Katlyn Doe,” described the second woman as a “a non-United States citizen and recruiter of females for Jeffrey Epstein” and said their marriage was designed to ensure the woman would continue to work for Epstein in the US as part of “a complex system of individuals … for the purpose of harming teenage girls through sexual exploitation, abuse and trafficking.”

But these aren’t the only allegations of a fraudulent marriage induced by Epstein: Business Insider has learned that at least two other women in Epstein’s entourage were married to each other, and a source familiar with the situation said they were directed to get married by the sex offender. As with Katlyn Doe’s accusations, one of these women was a noncitizen that Epstein may have wanted to maintain access to. The marriage has not been previously reported. The source said that Epstein orchestrated at least three such marriages.

Allegations that could change the trajectory of the investigation

The allegations could alter the trajectory of the Epstein investigation. Doe’s claims suggest, after all, that Epstein and his associates conducted an international human trafficking operation as recently as 2014 — six years after he pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of a minor, and more than a decade after the alleged crimes on which his federal charges were based.

The marriage identified by Business Insider took place in 2013. One woman was a U.S. citizen, the other was from Eastern Europe. While it’s unclear why exactly Epstein directed them to wed, a source with direct knowledge of the arrangement said both women were romantically involved with the multi-millionaire sex offender.

There are similarities between their marriage and the one described in Doe’s complaint. Beyond their participants’ connection to Epstein, both took place in 2013 and involved a citizen and a non-citizen. But other details, such as the age of the brides and the dates of their respective divorces, clearly show there were two different marriages, between two different pairs of women. What they all had in common was Epstein.

Both women have been photographed with Epstein or leaving his home

Business Insider is not naming the women because Epstein was accused of sex trafficking, and they may be victims. We are withholding significant details from this story in order to protect their identities. Both women are adults.

Both women, who have since divorced, have public links to Epstein, including published photographs of them either together with the secretive financier or entering or leaving his five-story mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Multiple sources who knew them said, and a review of public records showed, that they did not present themselves outwardly as spouses.

Both were members of a coterie of attractive young women — many of them from Russia and Eastern Europe — who frequently accompanied Epstein and his friends to events and traveled widely on his fleet of private jets, according to a source familiar with the arrangement.

One of the women, an American, has introduced herself to people as a member Epstein’s household staff but was in fact a girlfriend, according to the source. A different source recalled that Epstein once purchased this woman a car valued at more than $50,000. She has been captured by a tabloid photographer while entering and exiting Epstein’s mansion.

Both women lived in a building owned by Epstein’s brother

According to public records, the American has lived in a 16-story condominium on East 66th St. in Manhattan since the mid-2000s. The same address turns up repeatedly in records concerning Epstein and his circle of associates, including his attorney and the coconspirators named in the infamous nonprosecution agreement that allowed Epstein to escape federal prosecution in 2008.

Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, owns most of the units in the building through his real-estate company. The building has been described in court records and published reports as a location where Jeffrey Epstein housed young women. (Mark Epstein has denied any knowledge of his brother’s activities.)

According to New York City marriage records, the American was granted a marriage license in October 2013 to another woman in Epstein’s orbit from Eastern Europe.

Like her ex-wife, the Eastern European has been photographed leaving and entering Epstein’s mansion by tabloid newspapers. A separate set of paparazzi photos taken by a news agency in New York shows her and Epstein walking down the street together.

She has a professional degree from a US university and a professional license. The address on her license is the same address used by one of Epstein’s companies.

An intensely private Eastern European

In conversations with Business Insider, her professional-school classmates described her as an intensely private woman who rarely discussed her personal life with others. At the same time, her manner and appearance made her stand out in certain ways.

Three classmates described her as “Eastern European.” According to the professional school’s yearbook, she previously attended a college in Eastern Europe.

One former peer said she often wore expensive brand clothing that many graduate students would struggle to afford. In colder months, she donned a white fur-trimmed jacket that retails for around $900. One day, the same classmate said, she mentioned traveling back from Miami, without explaining why she was there or who she was with.

None of the classmates Business Insider contacted recalled any indication that she was married to a woman. However, most of them remembered hearing, through the campus grapevine, about her relationship with an older and much wealthier man. Three had hazy memories of seeing and discussing photos of her with the same man in a newspaper or on a website. Shown a photo of Epstein, one said it was the same man they had seen photographed with the classmate.

It’s unclear what came first: The rumors about her relationship with Epstein, or the photos her classmates saw in a newspaper or online. In any case, their recollections, combined with the photos, suggest she was involved with Epstein when she attended and graduated from the professional school.

The women divorced just 2 months ago

The source familiar with the arrangement told Business Insider that the Eastern European is not a US citizen and that she came to the US originally on a student visa. Business Insider was not able to independently verify her citizenship status. But according to public records, she was first issued a Social Security number sometime between 2009 and 2011, when she would have been in her late teens and early 20s. Most natural-born US citizens are issued Social Security numbers at birth. As a full-time student from a foreign country, she would have been required to obtain a Social Security number if she wanted to earn income.

Court records show that the women were granted an uncontested petition for dissolution of marriage in June, seven months after the Miami Herald published its blockbuster investigation into Epstein’s crimes and weeks before his arrest by FBI agents in July.

‘These were victims too. They were psychologically manipulated.’

Two sources who knew the American woman socially during the time public records indicate that she was married told Business Insider that she gave no outward indication of being in a committed relationship with a woman and that she dated men at the time. There is no public evidence that the women ever lived together; though public-record databases show that both are associated with the E. 66th St. building, they are linked to different units. Aside from their relationships to Epstein, the only public link between the two is a photo of the pair that the Eastern European posted to her Facebook account in 2015. The account has since been removed.

Neither woman responded to repeated phone calls, emails, and text messages seeking comment. An associate of one of the women agreed to pass a message to her; the associate declined to comment other than to say Epstein exercised some measure of control over the women.

“These were victims too,” the associate said before hanging up the phone. “They were psychologically manipulated.”

The FBI is seeking to interview the women

The source familiar with the arrangement said that FBI agents investigating Epstein were aware of the marriage and seeking to interview the two women.

Epstein had a long history of associating with young girls from Eastern Europe. He described his former girlfriend Nadia Marcinkova, who was accused by several of Epstein’s underage victims of participating in three-way sex acts with them, as a “Yugoslavian sex slave” that he had “purchased from her family” as a teenager, according to a 2006 police report. A former bookkeeper for MC2, the modeling agency in which Epstein was an investor, said in a 2010 deposition that Marcinkova was one of many young girls that MC2 brought to the US on model visas — paid for by Epstein — and housed in apartments on E. 66th St. Jean-Luc Brunel, MC2’s founder and a former friend of Epstein’s, has lived in an apartment in the building.

More recently, the New York Post quoted a visitor to Epstein’s mansion in 2016 saying that the home was filled with young women and that “half of them are from the former Soviet Union.” The newspaper linked Epstein to a Russian “procurer” named Peter Listerman, who has described himself as a “matchmaker” between wealthy clients and “gentle, romantic” women. Svetlana Pozhidaeva, a Russian former MC2 model whose women’s empowerment nonprofit was funded by Epstein, has also been photographed leaving his mansion and is linked to the E. 66th St. apartment building.

When the New York Times reporter James Stewart visited Epstein’s home in August 2018, he was greeted by “a young woman, her blond hair pulled back in a chignon, who greeted [him] with what sounded like an Eastern European accent.”

Entering into a marriage for the purposes of evading immigration laws is a crime — one that is commonly enforced in the context of sex-trafficking investigations. Last year, prosecutors in Minnesota convicted five people — and secured guilty pleas from 31 more — in a wide-ranging probe of a Thai sex-trafficking network that forced victims to enter into fraudulent marriages in order to gain residency. In May, the Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team — an interagency task force with members of the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Labor — convicted a New Jersey woman on charges of forced labor and marriage fraud over her enslavement of a Sri Lankan woman. In 2012, prosecutors convicted three Belarusian nationals of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud. It is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Epstein’s attorney Reid Weingarten did not return an email, sent before his client’s suicide, seeking comment. A message left with the FBI’s New York press office was not returned.

Read more: The FBI raided one of Jeffrey Epstein’s private islands in the Caribbean, which locals call ‘Orgy Island’ and where airport workers say they saw him traveling with underage girls. Here’s an inside look at the properties.

Do you have a story to share about Epstein? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (773) 919-3832 using a non-work phone, email at jjcook@businessinsider.com, or Twitter DM at @johnjcook.

With reporting by Gabrielle Bluestone and Angela Wang.

• Read more about Jeffrey Epstein:
• William Barr has removed the US prisons chief from his position more than a week after Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide while in federal custody
• Just 18 workers were guarding 750 jail inmates on the night Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide
• Jeffrey Epstein reportedly purchased 2 small pairs of women’s panties from the Palm Beach jail’s commissary
• 10 of the most bizarre details people have reported finding in Jeffrey Epstein’s NYC mansion, from a painting of Bill Clinton in a dress to prosthetic breasts mounted on a bathroom wall
• After Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, Ghislaine Maxwell may have taken his place as the ‘kingpin’ prosecutors are looking to take down. But experts say don’t expect criminal charges anytime soon.
• In an unearthed 2003 interview, Jeffrey Epstein praised his private island retreat as a place where he could ‘think the thoughts I want to think’ and be ‘free to explore as I see fit’

Topline: Just hours after accusing Jewish people who vote for Democrats of “disloyalty” (which drew widespread condemnation), President Trump quoted a controversial radio host who called him the “King of Israel” and “the second coming of God,” in the latest of a series of inflammatory comments about Jews.

• In his tweet, Trump thanked Wayne Allyn Root, considered a “conspiracy theorist” by the Washington Post and others, for the tweets, calling them “very nice words.”
• Trump followed his tweets by saying “I am the chosen one” during an interview with White House reporters. He was referring to his role in managing the trade war with China.
• #DisloyalToTrump and #KingofIsrael soon began to trend on Twitter.
• Trump also caused a firestorm of controversy last week when he encouraged Israel to bar Muslim congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from visiting the country⁠—which Israel acted upon. 

Chief critics: A lot of Jewish people. The New York Times noted the “disloyalty” comment stems from an anti-Semitic trope that Jews are more devoted to Israel than the countries they reside in. It’s also a belief promoted by white nationalists. (Also, in the Jewish faith, there is no second coming of God.) Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted, “I am a proud Jewish person and I have no concerns about voting Democratic,” while Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer tweeted,“When [Trump] uses a trope that’s been used against the Jewish people for centuries with dire consequences, he is encouraging—wittingly or unwittingly—anti-Semites throughout the country and world.”

Meanwhile, on CNN, Anti-Defamation League director Jonathan Greenblatt said: “It is the height of hypocrisy to use Christian theology to bully Jews and to push out some messianic complex—literally, it’s hard to think of something less kosher than telling the Jewish people you’re the king of Israel, and therefore we should have some fidelity to you for that reason.”

Key background: The president has a history of aggressively (and awkwardly) courting Jewish voters, who overwhelmingly tend to vote for Democratic candidates (in the 2018 midterm elections, 78% voted Democrat).