Tag Archive for: Prince Andrew

Update: In a Gaggle today, Trump did just confess this is about Giuffre and others.

Reporter 1: I’m just curious. Were some of the workers that were taken from you — were some of them young women?

Trump: Were some of them?

Reporter 1: Were some of them young women?

Trump: Well, I don’t wanna say, but everyone knows the people that were taken. It was, the concept of taking people that work for me is bad. But that story’s been pretty well out there. And the answer is, yes, they were. 

[inaudible]

Trump: 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. And um, other people would come and complain. This guy is taking people from the spa. I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it I told him, I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether they were 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 Out of here.

Reporter 2: Mr. President, did one of those stolen persons, did that include Virginia Giuffre? 

Trump: Uh, I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa. 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, as you know. None whatsoever. 

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Yesterday, Donald Trump offered an entirely new explanation for his falling out with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Not a fight, in 2004, over the purchase of the property from which Trump would soon earn a tidy profit from Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev.

For the better part of two decades starting in the late 1980s, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump swam in the same social pool. They were neighbors in Florida. They jetted from LaGuardia to Palm Beach together. They partied at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and dined at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.

And then, in 2004, they were suddenly rivals, each angling to snag a choice Palm Beach property, an oceanfront manse called Maison de l’Amitie — the House of Friendship — that was being sold out of bankruptcy.

[snip]

It is unclear whether Trump and Epstein were in contact after the house sale. That month, Trump left two messages for Epstein at his home in Palm Beach, according to records obtained by Vice News — the last known interaction between the two men.

Four years after he bought the Gosman mansion, Trump sold it to Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million, more than doubling his investment.

Not a generic recoil from “a creep” (as if a guy who wanted to make Matt Gaetz his Attorney General would be turned off by Epstein).

But instead because Epstein poached two of his employees. Or rather and perhaps more importantly, Epstein “stole” one employee, Trump told him not to do it again, and then Epstein stole another.

What caused the breach with him? Very easy to explain. But I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it. But for years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk. Because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help. And I said, don’t ever do that again. He stole people that worked for me. I said, don’t ever do that again. He did it again. And I threw him out of the place. Persona non grata. I threw him out. And that was it.

Epstein did, in fact, steal at least one employee from Trump: Virginia Giuffre, back in the summer of 2000 (and so years before even the most public date given for when Trump broke with Epstein, 2004). Within a year, Maxwell allegedly forced Giuffre to have sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions.

But a 2020 book told of another, later, incident when Epstein recruited (or attempted to) at Mar-a-Lago, that time with the daughter of a member.

Donald Trump severed ties with Jeffrey Epstein after the disgraced financier hit on the teenage daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member, threatening the Trump brand of glitz and glamour, according to a new book published about the president’s Palm Beach club.

[snip]

Another club member explained that Trump “kicked Epstein out after Epstein harassed the daughter of a member. The way this person described it, such an act could irreparably harm the Trump brand, leaving Donald no choice but to remove Epstein,” said Sarah Blaskey, a Miami Herald investigative reporter who co-wrote the book with Miami Herald journalists Nicholas Nehamas and Jay Weaver and Caitlin Ostroff of the Wall Street Journal. “The Trump Organization did not respond to our requests for comment on this or other matters.”

A footnote in the book says the authors were shown the club’s registry from more than a decade earlier and that Epstein in fact had been a member until October 2007.

To be sure, it would pathological to describe the recruitment of sex trafficking victims as simply hiring someone’s help away from them. But it is the case that Giuffre, at least, went from employ at Mar-a-Lago (where her father was a more trusted employee) to years of financial payment from Epstein.

Calling that “employment” is precisely the kind of fiction Trump engages in all the time — to treat the financially-lubricated sex trafficking of women as mere employ.

What I’m interested in with the possibility that Trump cut off Epstein for recruiting at Mar-a-Lago is the timing Trump just laid out.

Epstein stole an employee (hypothetically, Giuffre, in 2000). Trump told Epstein not to do it again. And then — possibly the event that led to the 2007 removal — “he did it again.”

Right in-between those incidents, in 2002, Trump told New York Magazine that Epstein liked his girls (Trump called them “women”) young.

Epstein likes to tell people that he’s a loner, a man who’s never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. And yet if you talk to Donald Trump, a different Epstein emerges. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

And then, according to WSJ, in 2003, Trump or his staff sent Epstein a birthday letter referencing secrets and enigmas, with Trump’s signature appearing like pubic hair.

“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is. 

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. 

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it. 

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that? 

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you. 

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

If Donald Trump learned what happened to Giuffre and warned Epstein never to recruit sex slaves at Mar-a-Lago again, it would mean he was aware of what happened to Giuffre, aware years before law enforcement first started investigating Epstein. It would mean he learned Epstein was trafficking girls, which that New York Magazine quote sure seems to reflect, and rather than do something to make Epstein stop, Trump just told him not to do it at Mar-a-Lago.

It would also mean that whatever records the FBI has on their investigation into Prince Andrew — an investigation that led the Prince to stop traveling internationally — would reflect personally on Donald Trump. Not because of what Trump did, but because of what he didn’t do.