Congressional Republicans issued a slew of subpoenas on Tuesday for information on the Jeffrey Epstein case. A number of high-profile individuals, including Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as many former Justice Department heads, have been hit with deposition subpoenas. The subpoenas, however, do not cover one very notable one-time Epstein associate — President Donald Trump.
The president was friends with the pedophile for 15 years. Interestingly, this development came just as news broke that, during her nine-hour discussion with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, convicted Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell “cleared Trump” of any wrongdoing. Maxwell told Blanche that Trump “never did anything inappropriate in her presence,” according to fresh news reports. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors. She is appealing her conviction.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) also issued a subpoena to the Justice Department (DOJ) for Jeffrey Epstein records. That subpoena, which legally compels cooperation, appears comprehensive. It includes the demand for “all documents and communications” related to the Epstein investigation conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida that led to the pedophile’s light sentence in 2008. It also demands all documents and communications tied to Epstein’s 2019 charges, as well as those of Maxwell’s 2020 case. Moreover, Comer is asking for anything the government has “relating or referring to the death” of Epstein. The committee seeks to depose the following people:
William Barr is being subpoenaed because he was the attorney general when Epstein was arrested and indicted in 2019. But that’s not the only connection between Barr and Epstein. It turns out that Barr’s father, Donald Barr, was the headmaster at the Dalton prep school in New York, where Epstein had a brief teaching stint before he was dismissed. Multiple sources allege Donald Barr hired Epstein in 1974, his last year there.
Donald Barr also wrote a science fiction book that includes themes of sex slavery and pedophilia called Space Relations: A Slightly Gothic Interplanetary Tale. These connections don’t prove that the former AG was part of a coverup.
The subpoena to Bill Clinton includes some damning tidbits. It mentions a photograph of the former president receiving a “massage” from an alleged Epstein victim. The photo likely refers to the picture taken of then-22-year-old Chauntae Davies following a trip on Epstein’s plane to Africa. The subpoena also alleges that Bill Clinton helped quash an early 2000s news story about allegations of Epstein’s sex trafficking. Here is part of the subpoena to the former president:
By your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003. During one of these trips, you were even pictured receiving a “massage” from one of Mr. Epstein’s victims. It has also been claimed that you pressured Vanity Fair not to publish sex-trafficking allegations against your “good friend” Mr. Epstein, and there are conflicting reports about whether you ever visited Mr. Epstein’s island.
But many are wondering why Trump isn’t being deposed.
According to a July 23 Wall Street Journal article based on talks with senior administration officials, once Justice Department officials began looking over the “truckload” of Epstein documents, as Attorney General Pam Bondi called them during a broadcast, “they discovered that [Trump’s] name appeared multiple times.” During a meeting following these discoveries, the president learned the DOJ didn’t plan to release any more Epstein files. The official reason was because they contain child pornography and would reveal the victims’ personal information. That excuse that has been excoriated with the rational rebuke that victims’ names can be redacted and that nobody is asking for the release of videos and images of child pornography.
The Journal report painted that meeting as the watershed moment the Trump DOJ decided there would be no “Phase II” of the Epstein files. It paved a path for the famous July 7 DOJ memo concluding that Epstein did indeed kill himself, that no list of clients who paid for sex with minors exists, and that there is no “credible evidence” that he blackmailed powerful people.
Trump never denied the meeting happened or pushed back on the allegations that his name is in the files. The fact that he’s named in the files is not proof of guilt. Epstein knew many powerful and famous people all over the world, Trump included. The president has never denied not knowing Epstein. But he has denied involvement in the pedophile and suspected intel agent’s sick activities.
Nevertheless, Trump’s perceived sudden change of mind regarding releasing the Epstein files has ignited a firestorm among some of his most ardent supporters. It has generated suspicion and a litany of theories as to why he’s risking the unity of his coalition over the matter. He has even stooped so low as to call his supporters “weaklings” and “stupid people” for demanding more information. The primary suspicion is that Epstein was an intelligence agent conducting blackmail operations on powerful people.
Trump has called the Epstein files a “Democrat hoax,” prompting conjecture about what exactly he meant. Clearly, documents related to the Epstein case exist. The man was convicted of sex trafficking, as was his accomplice. And, as this article suggests, Congress is taking the issue very seriously. Observers such as Glenn Beck have floated the theory that fake documents falsely implicating the president may have been planted in the Epstein files by members of the Deep State.
What is undeniably true is that the president had a 15-year relationship with Epstein. According to investigative journalist and author of the two-volume series on Epstein One Nation Under Blackmail, Whitney Webb, the two met in 1987 when Epstein began “branding himself a property developer.” This is corroborated by a 2002 New York magazine article in which Trump told a reporter that he had known Epstein for 15 years.
Epstein’s interest in property, Webb suggests, may have been part of an attempt to launder money, a practice that “is particularly common in specific American real estate markets like New York City and Palm Beach, Florida.” Moreover, Trump moved in the orbit of Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s father. Webb documents that Trump was photographed “attending parties in the late 1980s hosted by the media baron/intelligence asset on his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine.” Webb suspects Trump and Epstein may have met through Steven Hoffenberg. Epstein worked with Hoffenberg at Towers Financial Corporation. That turned out to be the largest Ponzi scheme before Bernie Madoff broke that record.
Webb also claims that, “during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Trump and Epstein, along with Tom Barrack, were a ‘set of nightlife Musketeers’ who frequently partied together.” Trump and Epstein were photographed together at a Victoria’s Secret party in 1997, and they attended an event in 2000 hosted by media magnate and convicted fraudster Conrad Black. Moreover, Epstein and Trump were even Florida neighbors, as Epstein bought a home in Palm Beach next to Trump’s in 1990.
The two were friends until 2004, when, according to Webb, “the two men had falling out, reportedly over their rivalry to purchase a Palm Beach property called Maison de l’Amitie that was being sold out of bankruptcy.” Trump bested Epstein in the deal. However, Trump recently claimed that their fallout was the result of Epstein taking workers from him.
The world now waits with bated breath to see what will come of the subpoenas — and what excuses will emerge for the ones that will be disregarded.