"Pay No Attention to That Pedophile Behind the Curtain!"
--Donald J. Trump
Here's an excerpt from my September 13, 2020 SALON article entitled "What Are the True Goals of QAnon? It’s the 21st Century’s Ultimate Catfish Scheme" (which is reprinted in its entirety in my 2022 book, OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP):
The strange case of Jeffrey Epstein is left for the very end of [the documentary] “Out of Shadows.” What the filmmakers choose to report regarding the Epstein affair is intriguing. Why does the documentary spend so much time talking about the known or alleged crimes of the convicted sex offender who died in a Manhattan jail cell last year, but never mention that the name of Donald J. Trump appears in Epstein’s infamous little black book, alongside those of Bill and Hillary Clinton? (Trump’s name and contact information are listed on page 85.)
As you no doubt know, Epstein was a wealthy financier with endless connections to the rich and famous (including businessmen, politicians, scientists, Hollywood stars and royalty) who ran a child sex ring operation out of his luxurious “temple” in the Virgin Islands. On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested for trafficking underage females in Florida and New York. On Aug. 10, while incarcerated in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, Epstein won the “Most Improbable Suicide of the Year” Award after he was found dead in his cell under suspicious circumstances.
An informant who told New York Post reporters he had spent several months in the same “special housing unit” at the MCC where Epstein died claimed, “There’s no way that man could have killed himself. I’ve done too much time in those units. It’s an impossibility.” The informant said that the height from floor to ceiling in those cells “is like eight or nine feet. There’s no way for you to connect to anything. You have sheets, but they’re paper level, not strong enough. He (Epstein) was 200 pounds — it would never happen. … There’s a steel frame, but you can’t move it. There’s no light fixture. There’s no bars.”
Whatever really happened in that cell, there are a lot of powerful people in the world whose lives were made much easier the second Epstein checked out of existence. The real point, however, is this: Instead of focusing on real-world methods of preventing other Epsteins from torturing innocent children, Team QAnon wastes its time searching for Satanic, Illuminati-related symbols hidden in the décor of celebrities they dislike.
For example, in one episode of the aforementioned “Rick B2T” QAnon talk show, Rick’s anonymous buddy “Gene” flashes a photo of Ellen DeGeneres sitting on the set of her daily talk show. On the wall behind DeGeneres, to the right, one can see a series of horizontal lines; to the left is a mural that depicts a row of palm trees. “Gene” then flashes a photo of Epstein’s mosque-like temple, the walls of which are decorated with a series of horizontal lines. The temple is surrounded by palm trees. A horrified expression darkens the face of “Rick B2T,” immediately after which he snarls, “Can you believe that? Her set is Epstein Island! That is just sick!”
Horizontal lines.
Palm trees.
Based on these uncanny symbols, one can only conclude the obvious: Ellen DeGeneres is involved in sex trafficking, just like Epstein.
One wonders how Rick would react if he ever encountered a real Satanic symbol.
If these QAnon people could take a step back from their own weird neuroses, they might realize that there’s absolutely no evidence connecting Epstein to Satanism or the Illuminati. (In fact, there’s no evidence connecting the historical Illuminati to Satanism either.) The Epstein story is sordid enough without having to drag ancient secret societies into it. These are red herrings that merely deflect attention from the real story, which is that Epstein’s sex trafficking ring was being used to collect blackmail material against some of the most powerful people on the planet.
Here’s an excerpt from a Daily Mail article published on May 27:
Epstein’s victims have spoken in depth about his camera [surveillance] system and artist Maria Farmer has described how he had a room at the front of his $75 million Upper East Side mansion full of screens.
Court documents show that other victims told officials that Epstein had his private island in the Caribbean wired up too, as well as his mansion in Palm Beach.
Some have speculated that Epstein could have made his $650 million fortune by blackmailing his powerful friends, such as Prince Andrew and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Among the others who Epstein knew were former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, magicians David Blaine and David Copperfield, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and Michael Jackson.
And in an interview with New York Times journalist James B. Stewart, Epstein claimed to know a “great deal” about his powerful friends, some of his knowledge was “potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.”
How did Epstein get this complex operation up and running in the first place? Was this elaborate intelligence-gathering plot funded by the money he made as a hedge fund manager? If not, who gave Epstein the resources to get this show on the road in the first place? And how did these blackmail schemes affect the national policies enacted into law by the politicians mentioned in the article above?
[END OF EXCERPT]
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Now, here are some key excerpts from recent (and not-so-recent) news articles about the ever-unfolding Epstein saga:
1) From Steven Nelson and Victor Nava's 7-15-25 NEW YORK POST article entitled "Trump Says He Doesn’t Understand ‘Fascination’ with ‘Boring’ Jeffrey Epstein Case at Center of MAGA Firestorm":
President Trump told reporters Tuesday that he’s baffled by the interest in investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein — describing the convicted sex predator’s case as “sordid” but “boring.”“He’s [been] dead for a long time, he was never a big factor in terms of life,” Trump said of Epstein, who was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell in 2019.
“I don’t understand what the interest or what the fascination is — I really don’t,” the president continued, as he spoke with reporters outside Air Force One.
“The credible information has been given,” Trump insisted, before re-upping his belief that the files may contain “fake” material cooked up by previous presidential administrations.
“I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody,” he reiterated. “It’s pretty boring stuff. It’s sordid, but it’s boring, and I don’t understand why it keeps going.
2) From Josh Gerstein's 11-4-16 POLITICO article entitled "Woman Suing Trump Over Alleged Teen Rape Drops Suit, Again":
A woman who accused Donald Trump of raping her two decades ago when she was a 13-year-old aspiring teen model has again dropped a federal lawsuit over the alleged assaults.
The accuser, identified in the lawsuit by the pseudonym “Jane Doe,” was expected to appear at a news conference in Los Angeles Wednesday, but that appearance was abruptly canceled.
The lawyer who organized the event, Lisa Bloom, said Trump’s accuser had received threats and was too frightened to show up.
In the most recent suit, Trump’s accuser asserted that while she was exploring a modeling career in 1994, she attended a series of parties at the Manhattan home of prominent investor Jeffrey Epstein. She alleges that during those parties the real estate mogul tied her to a bed and raped her. She also claimed Epstein raped her during that series of gatherings.
The accuser’s lead attorney, Thomas Meagher of New Jersey, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He filed a one-page notice dismissing the case Friday evening in federal court in Manhattan. No explanation was given for the action [...].
Doe named Trump and Epstein as defendants in the suits and says they knew she was well under 17 — the age of consent. “I understood that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old,” she wrote.
Two earlier suits were filed over the same alleged events.
The first suit over the alleged rapes was filed in federal court in Riverside, California, in April by someone acting without an attorney and using the name “Katie Johnson.” That suit named both Trump and Epstein as defendants, alleging that the two men held Johnson as a “sex slave” and repeatedly forced her to engage in sexual acts against her will.
3) From Bernd Debusmann Jr.'s 7-8-25 BBC article entitled "US Justice Department Finds No Epstein 'Client List'":
The US Department of Justice and FBI have concluded that sex offender Jeffrey Epstein did not have a so-called client list that could implicate high-profile associates, and that he did take his own life - contradicting long-held conspiracy theories about the infamous case.While campaigning last year, President Donald Trump promised to release files relating to the disgraced financier.
But since he returned to office in January, some of his supporters have grown frustrated with the administration's handling of the case and for failing to deliver new revelations [...].
Some have claimed the conclusions reached in the memo contradict statements from Attorney General Pam Bondi in a Fox News interview that aired in February.
"The DoJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients, will that really happen?", Bondi was asked on Fox, to which she replied: "It's sitting on my desk right now to review".
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Monday the attorney general was referring to all the files that are related to Epstein's crimes, rather than a specific list.
Some conservative supporters of Trump had already voiced frustration with the administration's handling of disclosures regarding the Epstein files, particularly after Bondi released a tranche of case documents that had already been available publicly.
"This is not what we or the American people asked for and a complete disappointment," conservative lawmaker Anna Paulina Luna wrote on X at the time. "Get us the information we asked for."
Following the disclosure, Bondi accused federal investigators of withholding thousands of documents related to the case.
More recently, she told reporters at the White House that the FBI was reviewing "tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn", although she did not provide further details.
The White House said on Monday that some files related to Epstein were withheld due to their "incredibly graphic" nature.
On Tuesday, Trump shut down a reporter's question about the case.
"Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years," Trump said. "You're asking– we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable."
4) From Grace O'Connell-Joshua's 7-12-21 BUSINESS INSIDER article entitled "A Behind-the-scenes Look at How Insider Reporters Stumbled Upon Jeffrey Epstein's 2nd Little Black Book":
Angela Wang: The book was found by a woman named Denise Ondayko on a Manhattan sidewalk in the mid-1990s. She was a musician living in the East Village at the time. In her telling, she was walking down Fifth Avenue and happened to be looking down. Eventually she put it in storage and rediscovered it last year while cleaning out her storage unit with a relative. The relative recognized it as Epstein's, who by then was infamous.
Ondayko reached out to several media outlets but didn't hear back. She assumed the book was a copy of Epstein's previously published address book and listed it on eBay after some friends told her it might be worth some money. It was purchased by a graduate student in Vermont named Christopher Helali for $425. Helali collects historical artifacts, and according to him, was Googling for Epstein's little black book when he stumbled upon the listing. He was skeptical when he reached out to the seller, but Ondayko's account struck him as genuine — and made him realize that it might be a different address book altogether.
Helali reached out to several journalists, including Nick Bryant, who had published Epstein's little black book under Insider investigations editor John Cook's tenure at Gawker. Bryant reached out to John, who brought us together to start investigating the book and its backstory.
O'Connell-Joshua: What's new in the book that you found?
Wang: There are 221 entries for people that don't appear in Epstein's previously known address book, which dates to the early 2000s — nearly a decade later. Many of those people are prominent figures in the political, financial, and cultural elite, who had never previously been connected to Epstein before. The book also contains entries for more than 100 people who appear in both books, which helps us trace known Epstein relationships back to the 1990s.
Overall, the book contains much fewer entries than its successor, and the people listed are primarily located in the United States. By contrast, Epstein's later address book contains entries for more than 1,500 people, many of whom are located internationally, with particularly large networks in London and Paris. That suggests that the decade between about 1995 and about 2005 was significant in the widening of Epstein's orbit.
5) From Matthew Goldstein's 7-17-25 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "In Epstein Case, Follow the Money, Democratic Senator Says":
President Trump and his administration want to move on from Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sexual offender, who once associated with some of the world’s richest and most powerful people. Some of Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters insist there is more to uncover.
But it’s not just the MAGA faithful who are refusing to let it go.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has been digging into Mr. Epstein’s financial network for the past three years. Some members of his staff have viewed confidential files that shed light on the immense sums of money that, they say, Mr. Epstein moved through the banking system to fuel his vast sex-trafficking network.
In particular, filings by four big banks flagged more than $1.5 billion in transactions — including thousands of wire transfers for the purchase and sale of artwork for rich friends, fees paid to Mr. Epstein by wealthy individuals, and payments to numerous women, the senator’s office found. The filings came after Mr. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges.
Large money transfers to individuals, foreign countries or obscure companies are the kind of things banks are supposed to be examining as potentially suspicious. Some of the Epstein money transfers disclosed in a report from JPMorgan Chase involved accounts at two Russian banks before those institutions were subject to U.S. sanctions. A few transactions red-flagged were for as much as $100 million.
Mr. Wyden said his investigation into Mr. Epstein’s finances had taken on new urgency now that the Trump administration was balking at releasing any of the information seized by the F.B.I. from Mr. Epstein’s homes or information collected from the nation’s banks. Like many Republicans on the far right, Mr. Wyden and a growing number of Democrats believe there are more details about Mr. Epstein that the federal government needs to reveal.
“We felt from the beginning this was a follow-the-money case,” Mr. Wyden said in an interview. “This horrific sex-trafficking operation cost Epstein a lot of money, and he had to get that money from somewhere” [...].
In 2023, JPMorgan paid $290 million to Mr. Epstein’s victims and Deutsche paid $75 million to settle lawsuits that claimed the banks ignored red flags about potential sex trafficking.
Marijke Chartouni, who was sexually abused by Mr. Epstein when she was 20, said the furor between Mr. Trump and his supporters had obscured the harm done to victims. Ms. Chartouni, who is now 45, also said law enforcement was to blame for not having more aggressively pursued Mr. Epstein and his network.
“Sadly, all this noise around the purported ‘Epstein Files’ serves only to detract from holding the Justice Department accountable to victims for its failure in preventing this trafficking atrocity,” she said in an interview.
6) From Justin Baragona's 7-22-25 INDEPENDENT article entitled "Newsmax Star Defends Alex Acosta’s Sweetheart Plea Deal for Epstein — But Ignores the Network’s Conflict of Interest":
Newsmax may have its own Jeffrey Epstein problem.
Over the course of the past week, its MAGA-boosting host Greg Kelly has repeatedly gone to bat for Alex Acosta, the former federal prosecutor who negotiated the secret so-called “sweetheart” plea deal with Epstein in 2008 the Justice Department later said was made in “poor judgment.”
Throughout multiple primetime segments, Kelly has described Acosta – who resigned as President Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary in 2019 amid renewed scrutiny of the Epstein plea agreement – as a “nice guy” and “great individual” who was only targeted by liberals to “embarrass” Trump by “rebooting” the Epstein story.
Kelly on Monday night suggested Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell didn’t deserve her lengthy prison sentence while claiming Acosta was the victim of “fake news” because “it wasn’t a sweetheart deal” he handed Epstein.
Left unsaid in Kelly’s efforts to rehabilitate Acosta’s reputation, amid the current uproar over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case, is that the former secretary now sits on the board of directors for Newsmax.
In a press release last month that was flagged by Media Matters, the MAGA network announced Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky had been appointed to the company’s board, and joined Acosta, who had joined as a board member following the closing of the network’s initial public offering in March.
“We are delighted to officially welcome Secretary Acosta and announce the addition of Ambassador Dobriansky to our Board of Directors,” Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy said at the time. “Their exceptional backgrounds in public service, regulatory policy and international affairs will provide valuable perspectives as we continue to execute our growth strategy and deliver trusted news to the American people and countries around the world.”
Besides noting Acosta’s time as Secretary of Labor during the first Trump administration, the network’s press release also highlighted his time as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, which is where he struck the controversial plea deal with Epstein.
Under the 2008 non-prosecution agreement – also known as an NPA – Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. That allowed him to avert a possible life sentence, instead serving 13 months in a work-release program. He was required to make payments to victims and register as a sex offender.
A Newsmax spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Kelly’s lack of disclosure about Acosta’s role with the company [...].
One network staffer told The Independent that it wasn’t shocking to see the lengths that Kelly would go to rehabilitate the image of the former Trump administration official and current Newsmax board member.
“After all, this is now the Trump network,” the staffer snarked, referencing the recent announcement that Newsmax had partnered with Trump Media & Technology Group to launch a TV streaming platform.
“Some people are very upset about partnering with Trump,” another Newsmax insider noted. “Even the most conservative people at Newsmax think it’s a terrible look and they feel like state-run media.”
7) From Francesca Chambers' 7-29-25 USA TODAY article entitled "Trump Says Poached Mar-a-Lago Spa Staff Included Prominent Epstein Accuser":
President Donald Trump says his falling out years ago with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was prompted by his former friend's recruitment of Trump's Mar-a-Lago spa staff, and that one of the people who accused the disgraced financier of sex trafficking had been a Mar-a-Lago employee.
Trump told reporters that the staff Epstein "stole" from him worked in the spa and staffers included Virginia Giuffre, a former attendant at his Palm Beach resort who said in a unsealed deposition for a defamation lawsuit against Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell that she was forced as a teenager to have sex with powerful men. Among the men Giuffre said she was directed to have sex with was Prince Andrew of Britain, according to a lawsuit. Prince Andrew has denied the allegation.
Giuffre died by suicide in April of this year. She is the only person Trump has named since he attested he'd ended his friendship with Epstein. He said he did so because the deceased multimillionaire, who was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges at the time of his 2019 death, "stole" workers from his
businesses.
Trump acknowledged on July 29 that some of the staffers at the Palm Beach spa were young women. He first declined to provide the detail, telling reporters who were on a flight with him from Scotland, "Everyone knows the people that were taken."
But he then affirmed that young women were involved, telling a reporter: "The answer is yes, they were." Asked what the workers did, Trump offered that they were "in the spa."
"People that work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago, and people were taken out of the spa – hired by him, in other words – gone," he said.
Trump was asked if Virginia Giuffre was one of the people Epstein had hired. At first, the president said, "I don't know." But after a short pause, he said, "I think so, I think that was one of the people, yeah. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us.
He could not say how many staffers Epstein poached from him, noting that the incident took place many years ago. He said that after Epstein was given an initial warning, "he took some others, and once he did that, that was the end of him."
"When they steal people, I don't like it," Trump said.
8) From Ryan Lucas' 7-29-25 NPR article entitled "Todd Blanche's Past Hangs Over Him as Top DOJ Official on Epstein Case":
This time last year, Todd Blanche was Donald Trump's personal attorney, defending him in the face of multiple criminal indictments. Now, Blanche is the No. 2 official in the Trump Justice Department and spearheading damage control over the administration's handling of the Jeffery Epstein files.
Blanche met behind closed doors last week with longtime Epstein confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.
While the interview is part of the Justice Department's efforts to tamp down the public fallout from the Epstein matter and the conspiracies it's fueled, Blanche's personal involvement is raising questions of its own.
"The best thing for any administration is to project to the American people that they are handling a matter like this with impartiality and on a level playing field so that the president is not appearing to use the Justice Department to hide sensitive information about himself," said Claire Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school.
Blanche's hands-on approach here could backfire because of his previous work on Trump's behalf, she said.
"It is very concerning when you have someone who was formerly the president's personal lawyer then getting involved to possibly assist the president in protecting his own image in this — when he should be acting in a disinterested way for the Justice Department to ensure that justice is done here and that the interests of the American people are served."
It is highly unusual for a senior Justice Department official, let alone the deputy attorney general, to conduct an interview with a potential cooperating witness.
"Generally, the line prosecutors who are handling the matter are going to do the interview of somebody who is willing to provide information to the government, even in the most high-profile case," said Sarah Krissoff, a former federal prosecutor who worked under Blanche in New York.
The Maxwell interview took place over two days last week at the federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla., where she is serving her sentence.
Normally, law enforcement agents, in this instance from the FBI, would sit in on an interview like this, Krissoff said, adding that it would be "enormously unusual" not to follow that practice.
9) From Marc Cooper's 7-29-25 JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEARS article entitled "First There Was a File, Then There Was No File, Then There Was":
He’s not leaving tomorrow. And he can’t be voted out of office for more than three years from now. There are still a lot of very bad things to come and even if the Democrats sweep 2026 and 2028 and Trump is safely entombed in Timbuktu, America will be living the next couple of decades with MAGA, which controls half the states along with tens of millions of Americans and their children whose brains are already rotted.
With that caveat, and without knowing exactly how this Epstein chapter will play out, it's obvious that Trump peaked on January 20, 2025 and is now in the fast lane to political demise.
The rat-tat-tat of events of the last two weeks have been mind-boggling even for a world-weary cynic like yours truly. If you melded Robin Williams, Joe Rogan, and three psychiatric patients into one writer they would never have been able to write the script of just the Todd Blanche–Jizzlaine Maxwell chapter of this sordid saga.
The president’s former and current personal lawyer, the day-to-day chief of the Department of Justice Todd Blanche goes unaccompanied by any witnesses to spend two days to talk privately with Ms. Jizz, now serving a 20-year sentence for being the organizer and co-participant of Jeffrey Epstein’s depraved sex and lollipop ring, leaving behind a mind-boggling 1,000 women and underage girls as victims, to discuss exactly what with her? And her lawyer is also a BFF with Deputy Attorney General Blanche. A triple conflict of interest.
And as soon as this cozy threesome concludes their huddle, Blanche comes on the tube to tell us just how sweet and cooperative this diabolical sickie behind bars was and how she named “100” people whose names and deeds are still a secret.
Only those who believe that Mars is made of synthetic meat couldn’t see this was all laying the groundwork for Trump and the DOJ to spring her from the can and in return have her read a pre-written script swearing that she and Jeff barely knew Trump, they never saw him do anything except pick his nose and that it’s really Bill Clinton who should be shamed (which is probably true).
It didn’t take long for all this to become very real when on this Monday morning, 72 hrs after meeting with the Deputy Atty General Blanche, Jizz’s lawyer made a public plea for clemency from Trump as well as an appeal to the Supreme Court alleging his depraved client was somehow screwed out of some crooked plea deal.
Only a political and amoral idiot would let this monster out of jail early, but then again Donald Trump is an amoral political idiot and over the weekend refused to rule out such a move. A couple of loose screws in the MAGAsphere are trying to get ahead of the curve by trying to rebrand Epstein’s co-conspirator as a victim (!) but that’s not gonna work.
Personally, I hope Trump does unleash Jizz Max as I figure that about 90 percent of the electorate would be repulsed by it. Which is not that far off from some of the polling already out there that pretty much spells DOOM for Trump.
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