Regarding the ongoing scandal involving Donald Trump’s close connections with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, see below for some thought from Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA10) – who’s doing a superb job on this, by the way! – speaking on CNN yesterday:
- “You know, taking a step back, I mean, we got these documents from the Epstein estate, right? And they were releasing these in batches. So, it just so happens that they released this this past week and we were able to find emails involving President Trump, where Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were talking about him and it seemed to indicate that they had information about President Trump’s involvement. They seem to imply that President Trump had some sort of engagement or involvement with them. And so, you know, certainly that raises questions in a time where President Trump is the one preventing the release of the files that the FBI, DOJ have about the Epstein case. And so, it’s all starting to come together a little bit and the more evidence we get, I think the the better a picture we’ll get about what’s all going on with this cover up.”
- “I think Epstein is implying throughout these emails that he has information about Trump, that he has compromising information potentially about Trump, and that he knows Trump very well. And you know, they’ve said that they were very good friends right? And so again, you’re talking about a president that has withheld the files right and the files involve a former very good friend of his.”
- “Certainly those emails don’t prove that the president engaged in no wrongdoing. Quite the opposite. They also seem to indicate that the president has a lot of knowledge about what Epstein was doing; that Epstein has a a lot of knowledge about the president as well. And so it really does, you know, I would like to see more evidence and more information. And the president seems to have that information and I’d like to see those files released. And that’s why we just had the 218th signature. But this story is not going away. If Karoline Leavitt thinks that she can explain away the president’s actions, the president breaking his promise to the American people to release the files, they’re being naive about this. We’re going to continue to push, no matter how rich or how powerful the people involved are. And if it includes the president, it includes the president.”
- “I’m a freshman, but other Democratic members were introducing legislation as early as 2019 about Jeffrey Epstein, and they were asking for the files back then. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, my great colleague from Florida, was one of them. And so that’s not true that we weren’t interested in this, we weren’t trying to investigate this. But look, you know, the president campaigned on this for for a couple years actually. And so if he wants to follow through with that campaign promise, if he wants to clear his name, if he wants to do right by the victims, he will release the files. And now Congress has 218 signatures. He can stop whipping votes against those signatures and just let us have that vote and release the files.”
- “That tells me they have something to hide. That tells me that there’s more of a cover up. The reason why people are so interested in this whole Epstein saga is because you had rich and powerful people covering up for each other, influencing the highest levels of government and law enforcement. And it’s continuing. The victims that they’ve been disappointed so many times and that they almost don’t trust us, but they’re willing to help us because they’re hoping that this oversight committee investigation will be different. Well, Donald Trump does not want this oversight investigation, but we’re going to continue regardless.”
- “I’ll say, the community of victims has been so brave and so courageous and they’ve been willing to put their necks out there and, you know, put their life on the line in some cases and go through hell and back. And so, they’ve been very helpful to us in this investigation. One of the things they said was for us to follow the money and try to find out all the financial transactions that happened, that that would tell a story about the criminal enterprise that Jeffrey Epstein ran. And in the end, the victims deserve better than what we’ve given them. But you know it’s hard to say a victim coming out there and just listing a bunch of names, they haven’t been believed in the past, people have undermined them in the past, discredited them in the past. So we want to work backwards, get their intel and then go out and try to find the documentation and the proof. But the president has some of that documentation. We want to see it.”
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