Oh, Come On!
New explanations from Trump don’t add up, plus a CBS investigation the Epstein cell block video raises serious questions.
The White House wants the Epstein files to go away, but as I’ve reported before, they’re going about things exactly wrong with repeated unforced errors.
Two more stories resurfaced this week that put Epstein—and what feels more and more like a cover-up—back into the headlines. And since it’s Friday, and I’d rather cover this than more Trump tariffs that he’ll inevitably back down from, I want to focus on two new ones from this week alone.
First, there were Trump’s responses to reporters about exactly why he and Epstein had a falling out. To put this charitably, this has been a shifting story. And it involves, if you can believe it, Russian oligarchs, shady real estate deals, “stolen” spa girls and a timeline that just doesn’t add up.
Then there was the Epstein prison video tape, which is back under the microscope again. There were already reports that the raw footage had been edited, with one minute missing. Now, a CBS report has called the entire video into question, raising further big questions that need answers.
Let me first be clear: This is not an invitation by me to engage in further speculation about the unknown. And none of this proves that Trump was involved in pedophilia or sex trafficking with Epstein, or that Trump had anything to do with Epstein’s death.
But these developments do raise important questions that affect the current political crisis over the Epstein matter: 1) Why can’t the White House provide consistent explanations about Trump’s relationship to Epstein, including what he knew and when did he know it, and 2) Why does the Justice Department keep making the Epstein prison video worse by making demonstrably false claims about it?
The timeline of a falling out: A real estate dispute?
It has been widely reported that the real reason Trump’s long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein ended concerned a real estate dispute. The Washington Post reported in 2019 that there had been a bidding war between Trump and Epstein over a Palm Beach oceanfront mansion 15 years earlier, back in 2004. Before the auction, the estate’s trustee, Joseph Luzinski—the property had been put on sale as part of a bankruptcy auction—described Epstein and Trump as “two very large Palm Beach egos going at it.”
Trump wound up outbidding Epstein, buying the 62,000 square-foot mansion for a cool $41.35 million. Epstein’s final bid had been shy of that at $38.6 million.
Why the dust-up over this? According to Trump biographer Michael Wolff, who spoke with Meidas+ News about the bidding war on the property, the whole final transaction was shady from the get go. And the fallout actually may have led to Epstein’s first brush with the law—all because of Trump:
“Epstein’s explanation for why this friendship ended is as follows. In 2004, Epstein believed himself to be the high bidder on a piece of real estate in Palm Beach—a house. His bid was $36 million. He took his friend Trump around to see the house, to advise him on how to move the swimming pool. Trump thereupon went around Epstein’s back and bid $40 million for the house—and got the property. Epstein, who was well acquainted and in fact deeply involved with Trump’s scattered finances, understood that he didn’t have $40 million to pay for this house.”
Wolff explained:
“If that was the case, it was someone else’s $40 million. At the time, Epstein believed this to be the $40 million of a Russian oligarch by the name of Rybolovlev. Less than two years later, this same house that Trump had bought for $40 million was sold for $95 million—and it was in fact sold to Rybolovlev. This is all a red flag of money laundering. Epstein after this began to threaten lawsuits and going to the press saying that Trump was a frontman for a money laundering deal.”
Did Trump turn the tables on Epstein to keep himself from further exposure as a Russian money launderer? Wolff speculates that he did.
“Trump panics at this point, and Epstein believed that it was Trump who went to the police and, as Epstein said, dropped the dime on him - informed the police of what was going on. And an investigation began, and all of Epstein’s legal problems for the next 15 years began to unfold.”
Trump asserts Wolff is a hack and makes everything up about Trump. But it has been widely reported and confirmed that Trump bought the property (Wolff asserts with the help of Rybolovlev) and then sold the same property just two years later for $95 million—more than twice the amount he paid for it.
What a great deal! Trump made over $40 million for essentially doing nothing.
The transaction makes little financial sense from the new buyer’s perspective. After paying some $20 million in taxes and upkeep, the oligarch Rybolovlev razed the entire mansion and subdivided the lot into three sub-plots. Two of those parcels were bought by shell companies with no clear owners of record. And the total Rybolovlev would net from sale of the three subdivided properties would not even cover the sale price plus carrying costs for those 11 years.
According to Rybolovlev’s ex-wife, however, the real reason behind the transaction was that her then husband was trying to hide his assets from the Russian courts as the couple went through a messy divorce. His ex-wife Elena accused him in a lawsuit of “secreting and transferring assets in order to avoid his obligations.” Rybolovlev’s name in fact later appeared in the Panama Papers as a party that used shell companies to hide assets.
So did Trump knowingly help launder a Russian oligarch’s money? And was Wolff’s story correct that Epstein tried to expose this, and this was the real reason behind their falling out? We don’t know, but the transaction stinks of it.
What we do know is that any time Trump’s “falling out” with Epstein comes up and their real estate battle for the property gets cited, it brings reporters and the public one step closer to this highly dubious transaction. It risks that the details come out again and make headlines.
And that may be why Trump keeps steering reporters and the public away from that narrative.
A “real creep”
On Nov. 28, 2004, which was 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, according to then-Police Chief Michael Reiter who testified to this under oath at a deposition. (Note: Reiter may well know who tipped the police off or have documentation relating to it.)
That was the start of Epstein’s legal troubles. After more complaints from victims, and a police investigation, a grand jury indicted Epstein in 2006 on a single charge of soliciting a prostitute. Many news organizations had urged the FBI to take up the case, but after an investigation they agreed not to prosecute him if he would plead guilty to two felony counts, including soliciting a minor.
Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide, claimed in 2019 that he had pressed Trump in 2014 about his ties to Epstein as Trump considered a White House run. According to Nunberg, Trump responded, “He’s a real creep, I banned him.”
According to the Washington Post, Trump told Nunberg that Epstein had recruited a “young woman,” Virginia Giuffre, who worked at Mar-a-Lago, to give Epstein massages. (Giuffre was actually just a 16 year old teenager at the time.) That happened in 2000, according to court documents filed by Giuffre, who alleged that Ghislaine Maxwell had “recruited” her to come to Epstein’s Palm Beach place to make money by giving massages.
Nunberg said Trump told him he issued the ban against Epstein years before the police investigation became public. But that’s just not true. The ban occurred much later, in 2007. After Giuffre at age 16 was recruited in 2000 from Mar-a-Lago and then sex trafficked by Maxwell and Epstein, Trump continued to speak highly of Epstein.
For example, in a 2002 interview, Trump told New York magazine that Epstein “enjoys his social life.”
He even added, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Keep this timeline in mind during the next section.
“Taking people from the spa”
On board Air Force One, Trump told reporters two days ago that he had held conversations with Epstein about him “taking people from the spa” and that Trump warned him against it.
“Other people would come and complain, this guy is taking people from the spa, I didn’t know that. When I heard about it, I told him: ‘I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa. I don’t want him taking people. And, he was fine, and then not too long after that he did it again, and I said, ‘Outta here.’”
Asked whether one of those people who worked at the spa was Virginia Giuffre, Trump confirmed, saying, “He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know.”
Here is the interview Trump gave:
One big problem with this new explanation for his falling out with Epstein is the timeline. Giuffre was hired by Epstein for “massages” in 2000. If Trump’s newest statement is to be believed, his staff began to complain to him around this time about the poaching of staff.
Yet Trump and Epstein remained good friends for years after this. That included the 2002 interview with New York Magazine and the 2003 letter Trump allegedly sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday discussing a “wonderful secret” between them. (This helps explain why Trump doesn’t want solid evidence of their strong friendship continuing well past the time he knew Giuffre had been hired and trafficked by Epstein out of his own spa at Mar-a-Lago.)
This timeline establishes that Trump had no apparent issues with Epstein even after learning that he had “hired” the 16-year old Giuffre. Their falling out happened much later, likely due to the real estate bidding war when Epstein’s public problems with the law began.
Giuffre’s family was shocked by Trump’s statement about Virginia, who died by suicide despite five years earlier publicly posting that she would not choose to kill herself. The family issued a statement:
It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been ‘stolen’ from Mar-a-Lago. It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side … no doubt about it.’ We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.
The tape that keeps unraveling
As if Trump’s ever-changing account of his fallout with Epstein wasn’t bad enough for the White House, on Wednesday CBS reported that the video of the common area outside of Epstein’s cell is riddled with mysteries. And that has brought on a whole new round of speculation and conspiracy theories traded by the MAGA / QAnon right.
The first mystery is that the video actually doesn’t provide a clear view of Epstein’s cell block entrance, as previously claimed by the Justice Department during Trump’s first term.
Any good defense attorney would argue that this means every statement ever made that the video definitively proves Epstein died by his own hand can’t be relied upon. As CBS noted,
Attorney General William Barr said his “personal review” of surveillance footage clearly showed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed, leading him to agree with the conclusion of the medical examiner that Epstein had died by suicide.
It’s a claim that's been repeated by other top federal officials, including FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” in May, “There’s video clear as day — he’s the only person in there and the only person coming out.”
Only that’s not true. Not only does the video not cover the full area of the stairway going up to Epstein’s cell block, it also shows that there was a third person actually using that stairwell whom no one has ever mentioned.
Specifically, there’s an orange shape visible around 10:40 pm moving up the stairs. Who was this third party?
CBS also pointed out that the video released by officials, which was supposed to be “raw video” of the night of Epstein’s death, has a cursor arrow on it (no, it really does), meaning it was likely a screen capture, not raw footage at all.
Further, the metadata shows that the video released by the FBI was created May 23 this year, with two clips edited together.
It is unclear how the Justice Department had ever hoped to achieve closure on the Epstein matter by releasing the video and claiming it was “raw footage” proving Epstein committed suicide. As discussed above, it not only doesn’t fully show the access stairwell, it shows a third party never before discussed, and it is apparently doctored from a screen capture and not raw footage at all.
If this is a cover-up, as appears more likely with each new inconsistent statement or story, it’s a very sloppy one. If it’s sheer incompetence, it’s Keystone Cops level buffoonery. Jeffrey Epstein may well have died by suicide, but to have insisted upon that conclusion based solely on this video was dead wrong.
This drip-drip on the video is fast proving irresistible, especially to those who want to believe that it was satanic Democratic pedophiles who had Epstein killed. The rest of us simply want some very basic answers about what Trump did, what he knew, and when he knew and did it.
This explains the odd confluence of public opinion around full transparency over and release of the Epstein files. Partisans may have different theories about what happened and who the villains are, but we all want to know what the White House is trying so hard lately to hide.
I laughed out loud about the arrow on the screen!
Well done Jay.