Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s paramour, fellow sexual assailant and procurer of children for her and Epstein to rape and proffer to other powerful people, has reportedly been made eligible for work release according to an unverified but seemingly credible account. This comes after her being moved to a minimum security prison.
The recent timeline of events smells heavily of fear and cover-up. For years, Trump and his MAGA base loudly demagogued about the Epstein files and the far-right QAnon cult built baroque fantasies of a global liberal conspiracy of child torture that would be exposed in a second Trump administration. In February, Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi invited a slew of rightwing influencers to the White House and gave them binders full of documents labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase I,” hinting at much more to come. But it turns out those binders contained very little that wasn’t already public record. Then suddenly Bondi and the DOJ said they would be releasing no further information, that Epstein did in fact commit suicide and that no client list existed.
We then learned that Donald Trump’s name is, in fact, in the Epstein files. (Elon Musk had already made this accusation publicly on X before deleting the post.) Everyone in the MAGA media sphere who had been so vocal about Epstein leading up to this point suddenly began to clam up. Rumors swirled of major conflicts over the issue between Attorney General Bondi and former MAGA podcaster and Fox News personality Dan Bongino, who had been elevated to Deputy Director of the FBI. This even as new evidence comes to light of discrepancies in the video record suggesting a possible cover-up in the circumstances leading to Epstein’s supposed suicide on Donald Trump’s watch. (Trump officials say there is no such discrepancy, but have not provided direct evidence to the media.)
Donald Trump then started telling everyone to move on. He berated reporters who dared even ask about it, and even began outlandishly accusing, entirely without evidence, prominent Democrats including Barack Obama of fabricating the Epstein files, including falsely adding his name to them. All of this whiffed of desperation.
Then Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche scheduled an extremely unusual meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell in the top-security prison where she was being held. These meetings were cloaked in secrecy, without the usual witnesses or any lawyers for the victims allowed to attend. It is notable that this is the same Todd Blanche who had been Donald Trump’s personal attorney defending him from various criminal charges. It is further notable that Pam Bondi was the top prosecutor in Florida when Trump’s former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta reached an incredibly forgiving deal with Epstein that almost kept him out of jail before public outcry prevented it.
And then suddenly Ghislaine Maxwell was whisked to a much lower-security prison as rumors spread that she would absolve Trump of involvement in the rape and abuse of children by Epstein and Maxwell. If this reads to you like a bad screenplay of a corruption and cover-up scandal that goes all the way to the top, it probably should. Except this is real life.
Whatever he may or may not have done, Donald Trump and his minions in the Department of Justice are clearly so spooked by what is in the Epstein Files and what Ghislaine Maxwell knows, that they are willing to attempt an absurd and obvious dual cover-up: document suppression to prevent the release of the full files, and what seems to be an astonishingly transparent clemency-for-favors scheme with Maxwell.
The simple truth is that Donald Trump is a convicted sexual abuser. He has been multiply accused of sexual misconduct by over two dozen women. He is also the longtime associate and friend of the world’s most notorious criminal pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. And no wonder: Donald Trump is a man who bought the Miss Universe organization (really?), is credibly accused of walking in on Miss Teen USA contestants while they were changing clothes. He later bragged to shock jock Howard Stern generally about beauty pageant contestants that he would often walk in on them naked and “sort of got away with things like that.” And, of course, we all know what he said on the Access Hollywood Tape. He has even said incredibly creepy things about his own daughter Ivanka, including when she herself was a child.
Trump’s involvement with Epstein goes back for decades. Trump liked to joke about Epstein’s having predilections for women “on the younger side,” with hints of jocular admiration rather than disgust. He said that Epstein was a “terrific guy” and “fun to be with.” When Trump was recently asked why he and Epstein fell out, it wasn’t because Trump was offended by Epstein’s rape and abuse of children, but rather because Epstein “stole” underage female staff from Trump’s employ at Mar-A-Lago. Such conflicts over control of underage women seem to have been common between the two men: one victim, Maria Farmer, said that once when Trump and Epstein were together with her Trump was staring uncomfortably at her legs when Epstein said “no, she’s not here for you.”
And now, of course, The Wall Street Journal has published a stunning story alleging that Donald Trump sent Epstein a letter on his birthday with a drawn line form of a naked woman and his own signature in the place of pubic hair, a number of suggestive comments and the sign-off “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump has furiously denied writing the letter and levied a lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and the newspaper, but the Wall Street Journal stands by its reporting.
There is understandably an environment of fear around the story, and a lawsuit-happy regime wants to intimidate everyone into silence. But all of these stories, while contested, are a matter of public record. And it certainly smells like one of the biggest cover-ups of one of the greatest crimes in American presidential history.
The post Is Trump Protecting a Child Sex Trafficker? appeared first on Washington Monthly.
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