This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 9 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

In 2024, Donald Trump selected John Phelan as the 79th secretary of the Navy.

Phelan, a businessman and investor, never served in the Navy or the military and has no previous relationship with the U.S. armed forces.

In fact, he’s not known to have shown any interest in the Navy whatsoever before Trump put him in charge of it. What he is known for, however, is his art collection. 

Now, is his art collection perhaps Navy-related? Paintings of ships and things? No, it is not.

According to newly released documents, Phelan appeared to have traveled on at least two transatlantic flights with Epstein.

Around the time Trump named him secretary of the Navy, the art world press tried — kind of awkwardly — to sum up Phelan’s tastes and describe for the non-art-world public what he was known for, in case anyone was curious why the president might have landed on this man in particular for the job of Navy secretary.

A number of art world publications settled on a representative quote from a former executive at Sotheby’s, who described the art tastes of Trump’s new Navy secretary as “a celebration of the sexual side of life.”

According to ArtNet, Phelan’s collection includes a video art installation that he displays in one of his homes, which features “50 years of Playboy centerfolds.”

In an interview with The Art Newspaper, Phelan’s wife was asked about the “most surprising place” she’s displayed artwork, to which she replied: “In the living room of our Aspen home we have a 2011 Walead Beshty mirrored floor. It covers the entire space … It is amazing to see people’s reactions at parties when they realise what you can see in the floor — naughty and nice!”

That Aspen home is where Phelan hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for Trump in August 2024, a fundraiser that made news because it was one of the times then-candidate Trump stated his made-up claim that prisons in Congo were releasing all their murderers in order to ship them to the United States.

That was at the Colorado house with the “naughty” surprise mirrored floor, whose owner was soon named to run the Navy, despite having no connection to the Navy at all.

Incidentally, that was the fundraiser Trump flew to on a plane that previously belonged to Jeffrey Epstein. The campaign said at the time that it was all a coincidence.

Fast-forward to 2025, and among the many revelations from the millions of files released as part of the Department of Justice’s investigation into the late convicted sex offender was this headline: “John Phelan, Trump’s Navy secretary, listed in Epstein flight logs.”

According to newly released documents, Phelan appeared to have traveled on at least two transatlantic flights with Epstein.

As The Washington Post reports:

 The flight manifests list Epstein, Phelan and a handful of other men, including Jean-Luc Brunel,  a French model scout who was accused of rape during the 1990s and later of providing girls to Epstein. Brunel was found dead in his jail cell in France in 2022 after being charged in a related case; authorities ruled it death by suicide.

The Post also notes that the aircraft had a nickname, “Lolita Express,”  because, “as some of Epstein’s accusers have said, he frequently had young women and girls aboard to entertain his guests.”

CNN was first to report on Phelan’s flights with Epstein. It published a flight log where you can see the Navy secretary’s name listed among 12 other names. No one has claimed there were any young women on board the plane, but six of those names remain redacted.

MS NOW contacted the Navy about Phelan’s connections to Epstein and his time on board Epstein’s plane, and they offered no comment.

Monday marked the first day that members of Congress were allowed, under very strict restrictions, to physically go to the Justice Department and view unredacted versions of the Epstein documents. 

But judging by the reaction from members of Congress like Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, they seem just as frustrated as ever about what the Trump administration is doing with this material.

“There were to be no redactions in order to spare people embarrassment or political disgrace,” Raskin told reporters. “We didn’t want there to be a cover-up, and yet what I saw today was that there were lots of examples of people’s names being redacted when they were not victims.”

Raskin said lawmakers were still waiting to hear from the Justice Department about why certain redactions were made, but said the whole situation “seemed very suspicious and baffling.”

“I mean, Donald Trump’s name was redacted in a number of different places, and I saw one conversation between Epstein lawyers and Trump lawyers relating to the 2009 investigation, which had been redacted, and I don’t see any particular reason that it should have been,” he added, telling reporters he saw Trump’s name “thousands and thousands of times.”

It’s not just Trump. In addition to his Navy secretary, the president’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, is also named in the files, including in documents showing him trying to negotiate a trip to Epstein’s island.

The top Republican Party donor in the country, Elon Musk, was also featured, including asking Epstein which night would offer the “wildest party” on his island.

There are no criminal allegations against any of these men, but they’re all still in place in the administration and in Republican politics.

However, one guy who has lost his job in the wake of the Epstein files drop is the chairman of Paul Weiss, a very fancy New York law firm.

That law firm and its chairman, Brad Karp, became very famous in the past year as, Reuters has said, “the face of capitulation” to Trump.

Soon after Trump was sworn in, he started threatening elite law firms. Paul Weiss was one of those firms, and Karp was the one who rushed to the White House to do a deal with the president.

As Reuters reported, the conversation was described as beginning “with a prolonged discussion of golf” and ended with Karp promising that this elite law firm would donate $40 million worth of free legal services to Trump’s pet projects, to appease the president so he wouldn’t target it.

That bootlicking act cratered the fate and reputation of Paul Weiss and set in motion a race to the bottom in which more than a half-dozen other large, powerful, rich law firms did exactly the same thing.

Now, eventually some of the firms came to their senses, went to court and challenged the executive orders with which Trump was threatening them. In the end, all four firms that stood up and challenged Trump in court won those cases and got the executive orders struck down.

That bootlicking act cratered the fate and reputation of Paul Weiss and set in motion a race to the bottom.

But Paul Weiss didn’t bother to challenge Trump at all; its chairman just raced to the White House and signed the firm over to him.

Well, its now former chairman, as Karp has since stepped down from his role at Paul Weiss. 

There is no criminal allegation against him, but he is out as chairman because of his appearances in the Epstein files, including his strategizing with the convicted sex offender about efforts to discredit the “victims,” a word he put in scare quotes, like they’re not really victims of Epstein who had come forward to say what he had done to them.

But amazingly, Paul Weiss did not fire Karp. While it removed him as chairman, it’s keeping him at the firm — perhaps because the radioactive glow coming from his office is so warm, it allows the firm to cut down on its heating bills in this cold, cold New York winter.

Allison Detzel contributed.