The Trump/Epstein Affair: Shining a Light on Predators

I want to use this space today to tell you a story.

It is the story of Jeffrey Edward Epstein, the American financier and serial sexual abuser of children, and Donald J. Trump, his best friend from the 1980s to the early 2000s.

Before proceeding with the story, though, it is necessary to establish how close the Epstein/Trump relationship was. Epstein’ brother, Mark, often said Epstein and Trump were best friends.

The New York Times confirmed that by reporting that the two men “spent nearly 15 years mingling side by side” at Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion and enjoying “raucous parties” at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Trump once threw a “calendar girl competition” at Mar-a-Lago and, according to one of the contestants, had Epstein as his only guest.

Another time Trump said he and Epstein shared a taste for “beautiful women” and chuckled that Epstein liked his “on the younger side.”

Trump flew several times on Epstein’s notorious jet, the “Lolita Express.”

The author Michael Wolff claims Epstein once showed him photos taken at Epstein’s home of topless young women sitting on Trump’s lap.

And The Washington Post reported that Epstein’s friends sent him bawdy letters for his 50th birthday, and one of the letters was a drawing of a naked woman with Trump’s signature scrawled across where her pubic hair would have been. Trump said the letter “is a fake thing” and he doesn’t even draw (although he sells his drawings online).
The Post stands behind its reporting.

The Epstein/Trump story continues.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. He pleaded guilty to two charges under a deal that allowed him to be released after serving fewer than 13 months in prison.

In July 2019, federal agents arrested him on charges of soliciting children for prostitution. He died by hanging in his jail cell less than a month later, and the medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.

The FBI later said it had raw footage supporting that conclusion, but when the Department of Justice released the footage, it was found to have been modified and approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds of it was missing. It still is missing, but the FBI and the Department of Justice are believed to have it.

Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, but during the 2024 campaign against Kamala Harris he started claiming that the Justice Department had a list of Epstein’s clients but refused to release it because it contained the names of some top Democrats. He solemnly promised that, were he to become president, he would release it.

---

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE!

---

Here the timeline gets curious, to say the least.

January 20: Trump becomes president.

February 21: Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi says she has the Epstein files “on my desk.”

February 27: Bondi says the files contain“ a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information.”

May 7: Bondi says there are “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children, or child pornography, and there are hundreds of victims.”

May, day unknown: Bondi tells Trump his name is on the list “multiple times,” including potential instances of hearsay about him.

July 14: House Speaker Mike Johnson says all the files should be released to the public. He declares, “We should put everything out there and let the people decide.”

July 15: Trump denies that Bondi ever told him his name is on the list.

July 16: Trump calls the Epstein case “a hoax invented by the radical left.”

July 17: The Department of Justice says the FBI investigated and found there are no “incriminating client lists” or scandalous evidence involving Epstein.

Later that day: Trump orders Atty. Gen. Bondi to seek the release of grand jury testimony related to Epstein. (Grand jury testimonies are secret, so a judge will need to decide whether and how much of the material can be released, a process that could take longer than a year. Also, it is not clear how much of the testimony involves Epstein.)

July 22: House Democrats try to force a procedural vote on a bipartisan measure that calls for the administration to release all files involving Epstein.

Later that day: Johnson reverses his direction and suddenly adjourns the House for its summer recess one day early to prevent a vote on the Democrats’ measure. The House will not return from recess until September.

Entering our story now is Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend who is serving a 20-year sentence for procuring and training underage girls, some as young as 14, to serve as Epstein’s prostitutes and personal sex toys. She has made no secret of the fact that she wants out of prison, and Trump has reminded us he has the power to pardon her or commute her sentence, and he has floated the idea that he just might do that.

Possibly involving that, Pam Bondi had her deputy, Todd Blanche, interview Maxwell in her prison cell, although any involvement by either Bondi or Blanche involves huge conflicts of interest that should have forced both to recuse themselves. Bondi was one of the lawyers who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial, and Blanche represented Trump in the classified documents case in Florida, the election interference case in Washington, D.C., and in the New York criminal trial in which Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to hush-money payments he made to cover up his alleged sexual encounter with porn star Stormy Daniels. And Trump is, of course, Bondi’s and Blanche’s current boss.

But instead of recusing themselves, they went on with the interviews, although it seems that if they were interested in getting to the truth Blanche would interview the hundreds of victims identified in the Epstein files, not the perpetrator. He’s not, though.

Add it all together – his famously recorded boast about grabbing women by their crotches, his conviction of sexually abusing a woman that the judge said was rape, the 25 or so other women who have said he raped them, his broken promise to release the Epstein tapes once he learned it named him “multiple times”, the whole sordid Stormy Daniels affair, his close friendship with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during the years she was procuring children for Epstein to rape, Trump’s chuckling over Epstein’s fetish for young girls, the “raucous” parties he and Epstein shared – and it strongly hints that the president of the United States might be, and probably is, a pedophile.

Senate Democrats are doing what they can to get the information released, and they are trying a new tack that may be hard to deny. Seven Democrats on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee are employing a little-used federal law to make it happen. The law requires government agencies to provide relevant information if any five members of that committee request it, and the seven committee members requested “all documents, files, evidence, or other materials in the possession of DOJ or FBI related to” the Epstein case.

David Vladeck, a professor of government at Georgetown University, says the law was originally designed to “ensure that the minority” in Congress “has real access to what executive agencies are doing.” That’s especially needed now as Congress’ GOP majority is devoted to protecting Trump at all costs and has blocked Democrats’ efforts at oversight.

There are reasons to think this new ploy might do some good. Obviously the Justice Department will ignore the demand, but the Democrats then will take it to court and force the Department of Justice to defend its refusal to obey the law, which is very clear: the agencies “shall provide these documents(italics mine).” No room there for bargaining.

Frankly, I hope Epstein’s client list is made available. If it is, I expect that it will cast some glaring light on the ugliness of Trump’s lifestyle – he’s sure trying to hide something — but that’s not the whole point. I want that light to shine brightly on any and every person who has ever raped a child or protected anyone who did. I don’t care if that person is my best friend or family member or Donald J. Trump, if he is a pedophile he should be exposed and drummed out of government, or whatever position he holds, and hopefully into prison.

If those files were to demonstrate that Trump is a pedophile or some other form of pervert – and based on his friendship with Epstein and everything else we know about Trump, that is very probable — I cannot imagine anyone wanting him to remain in office. This could be Trump’s ticket to an impeachment that works, and a life of shame.

---