Don’t look over there — over here! No, wait, I meant this way! Oh, brother. That’s what it’s like watching Donald Trump’s antics in Washington these days as he constantly looks for ways to divert our attention from stories that make him look bad or that could negatively affect his poll numbers. And, these days, he’s got one big reason to play "follow the bouncing news story."
Just this summer, he deployed the National Guard onto the streets of Los Angeles, under the guise of protecting federal property during his chaotic ICE raids. He also deployed the Guard and other federal law enforcement officials to help deter crime in our nation’s supposedly “crime-infested” capital city. It’s been a busy summer for the president, that’s for sure. Let’s not forget he’s supposedly working with war criminal and President of Russia Vladimir Putin to end the senseless conflict in Ukraine. A war that, as we know, Putin started without provocation. Trump even invited the murderous Russian dictator onto American soil. During the 2024 presidential campaign, we were assured that he would end the war in Ukraine on his first day in office. Lately, we're only hearing crickets on that one.
You could get a serious case of mental whiplash trying to keep up with Trump’s sleight-of-hand political maneuvers. But that’s his superpower. So, what’s he trying to divert our attention from these days?
Those of us able to walk and chew gum at the same time know all too well what Trump doesn’t want us or the media focusing on. The Jeffrey Epstein files. Few of us need to be reminded of who Epstein was: a registered sex offender and billionaire living in Manhattan. He was at the center of a network of mega-rich and privileged people rumored to have sexually exploited young women and girls as young as 14 years old.
While all of those alleged abuses were going on, Trump, then a private citizen, was identified by Epstein himself as his “best friend.” Granted, Epstein’s praise of Trump is no implication of wrongdoing. Still, it is worth noting that Trump returned the compliment, referring to Epstein as a “great guy.” Oh, really? Tempts a person to drag out that old idiom: You are the company you keep.
In 2019, during Trump’s first term, Epstein was arrested and jailed as he awaited trial for a long list of abuses. That trial never happened. Epstein would die behind bars in what has been labeled a suicide. The public jury is still out on that one. Did Epstein kill himself or, as many suspect, is his death the result of nefarious actions? We’re left to wonder, on so many levels, the truth about the exploits of Jeffrey Epstein and his compatriots.
Trump wants all of those stories to go away, but they won’t. And he can blame himself for that. The cog in the wheel is that, for years, he hinted that there was a list of Epstein’s “clients” and that, if reelected, he would make that list public. Here, it’s important to bring in one of those Epstein compatriots, another name you’ll recognize: Ghislaine Maxwell. The two met in the early 1990s and were, for a while, romantically involved. After the romance ended, they remained close until Epstein’s arrest in 2019.
Their partnership began when Epstein started a money-management firm servicing individuals with net worths in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He met many of his clients through Maxwell’s elite social circles in Manhattan. The pair’s business circle included big names on the world stage, like former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of Great Britain and, of course, Donald Trump.
Maxwell also served as a professional assistant to Epstein, hiring and managing his household staff. Besides Manhattan, he had properties in Florida where, in 2008, following state and federal investigations of his alleged sexual assault of more than 40 underage girls, he pleaded guilty on state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution. He would serve 13 months in prison under a plea deal that allowed him to spend six days a week in his Palm Beach, Florida, office. Following his conviction, Epstein and Maxwell were rarely seen together in public, although Maxwell continued her elite social life.
In 2015, Maxwell herself faced lawsuits, charged with sex trafficking of underage girls through deceit and false promises. One of the plaintiffs, Virginia Giuffre, went public with her story in 2011, accusing Maxwell of making some of her victims complicit in her crimes by paying them to secure other girls for sexual abuse. Giuffre took her own life earlier this year, succumbing to the emotional stress she’d faced with the Maxwell/Epstein fiasco.
Meanwhile, faced with a deluge of legal challenges, Maxwell sold her home in New York City and by 2017 had effectively gone into hiding. Even her lawyers claimed to not know where she was. In July 2020, almost one year after Epstein’s suicide, she was located and arrested at her home in New Hampshire. In December 2021, she was convicted on five federal charges related to sex trafficking of underage girls and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Maxwell would later file an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Second District to have the lower court’s decision reversed. That appeal was declined, and she’s now filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2024, as part of his campaign for a second term, Trump vowed to make public an alleged Epstein “clients” list — of those who’d utilized their “services” involving sexually trafficked underage girls. Many of his MAGA supporters had long believed that Epstein was murdered in jail at the behest of those “clients,” many of whom they assumed were high-profile members of the Democratic Party, to avoid their own prosecution.
Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, played along with those beliefs, stoking the MAGA faithful by saying on national media that Epstein’s client list was, in her words, “sitting on my desk right now to review.” Later in July, Trump’s FBI would upset the MAGA base, claiming that its “exhaustive” and “systematic” review of files related to Epstein did not find a clients list, at all. Nothing to see here.
Trump would later criticize those who demanded release of the “Epstein files,” claiming that they had been created by his Democratic opponents. But things have gotten even stickier. Last month, in an effort to resolve the administration’s contradictory claims about the Epstein files and to calm the MAGA base, Trump’s deputy attorney general conducted a two-day interview with Maxwell at the Florida prison where she was being held. The Trump White House version of that meeting was released last Friday and asks more questions than it answers.
First, it must be noted how unusual it is for a deputy U.S. attorney general to conduct an interview with a convicted criminal, a sex offender no less, serving prison time. Things get more alarming when you consider that he, Todd Blanche, is also (still) Donald Trump’s personal defense attorney who, just two months ago, was defending Trump in court. Blanche’s release of transcripts and recordings of the meeting reveal a Ghislaine Maxwell who cannot recall seeing any untoward behavior between Trump and any young girls; that he was, in fact, a perfect “gentleman.” She added how much she admired him. Sounds like somebody is fishing for a presidential pardon.
After her two-day meeting with the deputy AG, Maxwell would, within a week, be transferred from the low-security prison where she was serving time in Florida to a minimum-security prison in Bryan, Texas. One described as having a more comfortable, almost country club-like environment. Is that the smell of rotten egg in the air?
The White House minions trying to make all of this go away still have their work cut out for them. The dirty snowball that is the Epstein files may yet turn into an avalanche for the big names associated with Epstein’s parties in New York, Florida and on his private island in the Caribbean.
Donald Trump’s defense attorney’s report notwithstanding, Ghislaine Maxwell is a convicted pedophile and a proven liar, having perjured herself on more than one occasion. What, we’re expected to believe her now? And what about the girls, who are now women, carrying lifelong emotional scars, victims of Epstein’s, Maxwell’s and God only knows who else’s sexual abuse? Is Todd Blanche going to sit with them for interviews, getting their sides of the story?
In the meantime, let’s keep that deflection going. In the latest media circus, the home of Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton, now a fierce critic of the president, had his home searched by the FBI last Friday, the same day those Ghislaine Maxwell recordings were released. Coincidence?
Hey, look over here!
