"I'm the only one who can take him down." The shadow of blackmail looms in one of Jeffrey Epstein's emails about Donald Trump. But what if the remaining files on the deceased pedophile financier, jealously guarded by the Department of Justice, contain even more compromising information than what has so far been leaked from his emails? This is the question looming before the vote on the House floor announced for next week by Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, after months of procrastination.
The swearing-in of newly elected Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva has allowed a quorum of 218 signatories to be reached on a petition to vote on the bill that would require Attorney General Pam Bondi to release all documents related to the case. The support of around 100 Republicans is expected, despite Trump accusing the Democrats of supporting yet another set-up. The Senate, however, faces an uphill battle: if the measure passes, the president could use his veto power. However, this will irritate his MAGA base and raise suspicions that he is indeed hiding something. This will also fuel conspiracy theories that Epstein did not commit suicide in his cell but was murdered, as his brother Mark has repeatedly insinuated.
Further revelations related to the more than 20,000 documents released by the House Oversight Committee are creating a toxic atmosphere. The documents suggest blackmail by Epstein, who monitored his former friend Donald's political decisions and sifted through his finances. He also hinted at possessing compromising information on the tycoon, even offering himself as an insider to the Russians before the infamous summit with Putin in Helsinki, through former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland, who at the time headed the Council of Europe. One of the most significant new emails in this regard dates back to late 2018, when authorities were closing in on Epstein and the Miami Herald pointed the finger at Trump's then-Secretary of Labor, who had approved the financier's controversial plea deal in 2008 for aiding and abetting child prostitution.
Epstein wrote to an acquaintance: "They're really trying to take down Trump and they're doing everything they can...! It's crazy, because I'm the only one who can take him down." Three years earlier, when Trump's presidential campaign was gaining momentum, the financier asked Landon Thomas Jr., then a New York Times reporter, "Do you want pictures of Donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen?" Epstein also told him of an incident in which the tycoon was "so focused on looking at young women in a pool that he slammed into a door, leaving a nose print on the glass."
"I know how shady Donald is," he wrote in another 2018 email regarding Trump's black market payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. In 2012, Epstein approached one of his lawyers, Reid Weingarten, suggesting an investigation into Trump's finances, including the Mar-a-Lago mortgage and a $30 million loan received from the tycoon. On June 13, 2019, his longtime accountant Richard Kahn informed him that he had just finished reviewing Trump's federal financial statements, calling them "100 pages of nonsense" and identifying nine "interesting findings" about Trump's debts, income, and foundations.
The correspondence also reveals that Epstein repeatedly insulted Trump: in a January 2018 email to journalist Michael Wolff, he called him "dopey Donald" and "demented Donald," claiming that his finances were "all a sham." But the strangest of the messages is the "memo" of February 1, 2019, that Epstein sent to himself: "Trump knew everything... and came to my house many times during that period. He never received a massage." This email clears the president of possible abuse allegations (as did Virginia Giuffre, one of the victims), but contradicts his own version of events, which claimed he was unaware of the financier's sex trafficking of minors.
(Unioneonline)