Wait, Is Trump Why Epstein Got Caught?!?
There's zero evidence for it, but wow the timing lines up...
Just to be clear from the get-go, I have zero evidence for this scenario. Zero.
Which doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.
The whole reason Pres. Donald Trump is in what seems like the biggest battle of his political life since he began bamboozling the Republican Party is that his old buddy Jeffrey Epstein got caught.
So it would be too perfect, too just, if the reason Epstein got caught was that Trump made it happen. But, what if…?
You may have read that Trump split with Epstein in 2007 after Epstein tried to “recruit” a girl at Mar-a-Lago, banning Epstein from his club.
But in 2019, the Washington Post reported that Trump and Epstein split even earlier, in late 2004. Some ridiculous, amazing Palm Beach mansion was for sale.
Epstein wanted to live in and torture girls in it. Trump wanted to flip it.
Both men being liars, they reached out to the seller and trash-talked each other, trying to convince the seller that the other one couldn’t pay.
When that didn’t work, it went to auction. Trump won, but not until after Epstein had bid up the price. The last known interaction between the two men was that month, when Trump left two messages for Epstein.
Here’s why this matters.
The only reason The Epstein Files™ exist is that law enforcement got involved. But when and how did that first happen? What was the first domino? We know when it fell but to this day we literally still don’t know how. Or do we?
The auction was Nov. 15, 2004. Epstein had cost Trump millions of dollars and spread the claim that Trump didn’t have enough money to buy the house.
Epstein’s phone logs contain two notes of calls from Trump, believed to have been logged that same month.
Nov. 28, 2004, 13 days after the auction, is the first known instance of anyone contacting the police about Epstein. But we still don’t know who.
According to the Washington Post:
“On Nov. 28, 2004 — less than two weeks after the mansion auction — Palm Beach police fielded a tip that young women were seen coming and going from Epstein’s home, then-Police Chief Michael Reiter said in a deposition. Reiter declined to comment.”
Apparently, little if anything was done. According to The Daily Beast:
“Retired Police Chief Michael Reiter, in his own deposition, acknowledged that, in addition to earlier donations to the police department (which are fairly common in well-heeled Palm Beach), Epstein had recently given the department $100,000 for some sophisticated equipment. The police were still researching the purchase when Epstein came under suspicion, and Reiter ordered the money returned.”
So maybe Epstein’s money helped insulate him. Or maybe it wasn’t enough.
Either way, in March, police got another tip:
“Four months later, in March 2005, police received a complaint from a woman who alleged that her 15-year-old stepdaughter had been paid $300 by Epstein to massage the financier while partially undressed…”
As far as I’m aware, the woman and her stepdaughter were never publicly identified. Where did Epstein find this girl? Who advised her parents to go to the police? We don’t know. Or do we?
Epstein reportedly was a regular at Mar-a-Lago. His victims included a 16-year-old Mar-a-Lago “towel girl” he met there (Virginia Giuffre reportedly killed herself in April).
The Washington Post chose to describe the timing of the Epstein tips in relation to the auction. “[L]ess than two weeks after…” “Four months later…”
It’s doubtful the paper intended to imply that the tips involved, let alone were engineered by, a resentful Trump, less than two weeks after the auction. Or four months later. But it’s also not like Trump isn’t vindictive.
In fact, in 2009, Trump is subpoenaed to testify in a suit against Epstein. But Trump agrees to come in voluntarily. Also, Trump tells one attorney for some of Epstein’s victims, “I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
Trump was, apparently, happy to help with the civil cases. But what happened with the criminal case?
The Palm Beach U.S. attorney, a federal prosecutor, punted the case. The U.S. attorney punted it so badly that in 2008 a judge ruled that the prosecutor broke the law by excluding Epstein’s victims from the non-prosecution agreement. And lied to them by saying the FBI was still investigating.
Why would the feds back off in such a wildly inappropriate manner? Is it possible Trump just wanted to fuck with Epstein — maybe cost Epstein some money to the victims — but not fuck up the rest of Epstein’s life just for fucking girls without their consent?
Trump, of course, knew lots of people in Palm Beach, so it’s easy to speculate that he might have known the U.S. attorney for the district, or someone who knew the U.S. attorney. We don’t know.
What we do know is that when Trump became president in 2017, he appointed that U.S. attorney, Alex Acosta, to his cabinet, as the secretary of the Labor Department.
But is there any reason to believe that Trump even knew about Epstein’s criminal proclivities?
Just this week, we learned of a new claim, by the guy who ran Trump’s Atlantic City casino for four years, that a gambling commission inspector spotted Trump and Epstein illegally bringing three females, one of them 19, all of them under 21, onto the casino floor in the late 1980s.
The inspector knew the trio were under 21 because he recognized one of them as a 19-year-old tennis star. “'I know she’s 19 years old,” the inspector said.
Trump dated tennis pro Gabriela Sabatini in July 1989 when she was 19 and Trump was 43.
In 2016, according to the Washington Post, Trump advisor Roger Stone tried to do some damage control regarding Epstein. Stone in his book described Trump talking about visiting Epstein’s Palm Beach home. The home that police were tipped off about in 2004.
What caught Trump’s eye about the home? This is the quote from Trump, according to Stone:
“The one time I visited [Epstein’s] Palm Beach home, the swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls. ‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’ ”
How nice.
So Trump had seen “beautiful young girls” at Epstein’s house. “Neighborhood kids.” In Palm Beach.
Did Trump use that information to get revenge on Epstein for the house they both wanted? And did Epstein’s subsequent, ultimately permanent trip to the big house all stem from that purely hypothetical moment of spite?
We’ll probably never know. But if MAGA’s taught us anything, it’s that we can choose to believe.
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
For someone who makes it clear from the get-go he has no evidence, you sure do weave from prior publications a perfectly plausible tale of betrayal. Would anyone even deny the likelihood that Donald 'I am your retribution' Trump would stick it to Epstein? I choose to believe.
Let's also assume that Epstein was probably laundering Russian money. The bidding war for the Florida mansion then becomes a competition between "friends" to acquire a property that is later sold by Trump to a Russian oligarch for a huge profit - thus laundering the oligarchs cash. Epstein is edged out of the laundry business by Trump. But Epstein has evidence of Trump with underage girls, threatens him with it, and gives it to the Russians. Trump rats him out...but not destroyed because....Russians. Ain't conspiracies fun!