House Speaker Moses Mikey Johnson made another attempt to get MAGA (and everyone else) to forget about the Epstein Files. His latest ‘What the Hell? effort was I think directly aimed at MAGA which has defiantly refused to let this go. Knowing MAGAs do so love picturing Trump as a hero, Johnson hinted that if Trump’s name comes up in all this it might be he’s been working with the FBI all along! Hence my calling bullshit and mocking about ‘Secret Agent Trump.’ THAT is something MAGAs would eat up with a spoon. However the truth is most likely any information Trump passed along was to save his own worthless butt.
So today’s question is: Is Trump an informant or is he a ‘rat’? Is he the proverbial good citizen Johnson wants us to believe who saw wrongdoing in different places and began working with authorities to stop it? Or is he what’s known in mob-speak as a ‘Rat” who cut a non-prosecution deal to save his own ass? I already know what I think is the answer to that and I suspect most reading this feel the same. For those who don’t, let’s unpack all this.
Look at Trump’s history. Over fifty years ago he and his P.O.S. father signed a Consent Decree to avoid federal prosecution over their racial discrimination when renting housing. Eager to get out from under his dad’s shadow Trump tried his hand at other things including the casino business. Not so coincidentally rumors started due to his seeming coziness with some organized crime folks. The FBI, always interested in OC of course knew the rumors (and likely more) and there’s an FBI memo about Trumpty “allowing” them to room at his Atlantic City Casino. Like he had a choice. But I’d bet the farm he let his mob pals know so steps could be taken to cover their and Trump’s butt.
Then we have the curious case of one-time mob enemy Rudy G. during his days at SDNY. They were well along in a case and Trump was bigly caught up in it. Rudy as we know had political ambitions. I’m sure it was pure coincidence the two sat down for a chat which resulted within a span of a few months of the investigation stalling. And Trump making an ‘Angel Investment’ (donation) large enough that Rudy could go to other potential donors with a suddenly credible “War Chest’ and attract enough donors to propel him into Gracie Mansion. The Trump part of the investigation melted away but other parts continued. It’s fair to assume Rudy knew how to use information Trump gave him while protecting Trump as the source!
So you ask, what does all this have to do with Epstein? This article from Talking Points Memo lays out a compelling case that Trump ratted out Epstein in a deal to avoid prosecution of himself on other matters like money laundering! The title of the linked article suggests THIS might be the hidden part of the whole Trump-Epstein scandal. Even if TPM’s title doesn’t say so this could turn out to be the most explosive part of the whole thing. Given what we know about Trump (and what I’ve written about above is only part of it) him selling out Epstein, cutting one of his “deals” is classic Trump.
Recently it’s been talked about that their falling out was over Epstein stealing away one of the girls Trump had employed at Mar a Lago. While I thought about Trump’s pettiness and thought it was the kind of thing he’d want some payback over something nagged at me. After reading the linked TPM article it all came flooding back. The motivating issue was MONEY. The mob rumors (first U.S., then Russian mobsters) seemed to center on money laundering. High end real estate in big cities makes for a great way to launder money and Trump is hardly the only sleazebag developer to take advantage of that. Plus he was in the casino business, another way organized crime has counted on to launder money.
New York City is the center of such action, being the largest city in the U.S. and also the financial capitol of the world. Every major bank both domestic and international has operations there and the amount of money that changes hands every day is staggering. It’s also a fact that even for the smartest of developers projects don’t always pay out the way they’d anticipated and financial difficulties ensue. And Trump was never, ever as smart as he was. The not so good folks in organized crime know all this, and that’s how they get their hooks into people. Bail them out in exchange ‘for a favor.’ Some idiots (and Trump is an idiot) might think it will just be the one time. SUCKERS!
U.S. Banks finally accepted they’d never get back what they loaned to Trump and stopped doing business with him. Luckily for him by that time the old USSR had broken up and there was a thriving Russian organized crime (both typical mob types but also oligarchs) set up in not just New York but other major U.S. cities. Including down in Florida and that’s where the the plot thickens. The linked article is worth every minute of time it takes to read but here are the main points.
Journalist and author Michael Wolfe has been in the news lately because he’s got hours and hours of tapes of interviews with Trump and Trump associates that had been authorized to speak on the record for the book he was writing with/about Trump. Jeffrey Epstein was one of the people Wolf interviewed and yes, he’s got the ‘receipts’ as in not just notes but audio tapes. Trump knows full well there are simply too many pictures and news clips of him and Epstein (and Maxwell) to try and use the ‘I think he/she might have been the coffee boy; bullshit to minimize his association with the child sex traffickers. He’s trying to play it off as just people he saw sometimes at social gatherings. That hasn’t come close to fixing Trump’s PR problem.
They were GOOD friends and Trump knew damn well who and what Epstein and Maxwell were. Just as importantly they knew who HE was! That brings us to the event that torched the relationship. It was over a chuck of south Florida real estate Epstein wanted to buy. He took his developer pal Trump along on a visit to get his opinion while he was putting together an offer. Epstein REALLY wanted this estate. (Why could be the subject of multiple articles) Trump turned around and snaked him. Made a better offer and signed a contract before Epstein knew what was going on.
If you recall during the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia money laundering with Russian oligarchs came up. Much was made of a transaction in Florida where Trump bought an estate at a highly inflated price ($41M). This went down in 2004 and Epstein and Trump were thick as thieves (pun intended) so in the lengthy description of the whole context of the matter TPM lays out what jumps out is Epstein couldn’t understand how Trump could shell out that kind of money while on the verge of another bankruptcy. But Epstein was really, REALLY pissed at Trump and enough it it would up damaging their friendship beyond repair.
It wasn’t right away but then it made sense when Trump FLIPPED the estatei for twice the price. That’s right, he sold it to an oligarch for NINETY MILLION, after which the dude razed the whole thing and rebuilt. Of course it was a money laundering deal. What matter is that THIS is the transaction that really tore it for Epstein. That’s where what Wolfe has to say might turn out to be a true bombshell:
Epstein was pissed for his own reasons (he wanted the estate). But he also suspected the money laundering scheme. So he threatened Trump that he would bring the whole thing out into the open through a series of lawsuits. Right about this same time authorities got a tip about Epstein’s activities which started the investigation that eventually led to his eventual 2008 plea deal.
There are several things to keep in mind, which were explored in the linked article. Epstein and Trump were too close for too many years for Trump to not know what Epstein (and Maxwell) was and what he was doing. Too many mutual friends who Epstein supplied with underage GIRLS for one thing. Distasteful as it is to say, given how sick they are I’ve sometimes wondered if some of Epstein’s girls that ‘aged out’ (got too old for him and his fellow pedophiles) he didn’t pass some of them along to his buddy Trump! (If you need a minute for Brain Bleach I get it) What matters is that Trump KNEW an awful lot.
As for Epstein I marvel that given how well he knew Trump and Trump’s history of throwing others under the bus he was boneheaded enough to threaten Trump. Perhaps give the crimes for which HE was on the hook Epstein never intended to follow through. However Trump as I keep saying isn’t smart enough to have known Epstein was likely bluffing and working on getting something from Trump in the future. However what Trump COULD see his how much he’d pissed off Epstein and worse, if Epstein went to the Feds he (Trump) would be in deep sh*t. Again. So Trump went full Trump and sold out his former best bud. “Do it to him before he does it to me” so to speak.
The way I see it Wolfe and TPM have connected the dots. There are an awful lot of instances of Trump decrying “Rats.” Johnson’s attempt (prompted by the White House?) to paint Trump as a virtuous guy with a history of ‘helping” the feds get the bad guys could blow up spectacularly. Names in the Epstein files are a big freaking thing that need to come out. However HOW those names became known, the original source is something that long ago ‘diffused’ through the Epstein case files. Too many people have seen the stuff the FBI and then U.S. Attorney had before they turned the case over to the state of Florida. And investigators and prosecutors at the state level have their own recollections and records.
If it were to come out Trump cut a deal, traded the goods on Epstein in return for immunity on money laundering in Florida (and there’s that HUGE deal Trump screwed Epstein on) even a lot of MAGAs will turn on Trump. Especially if regular Epstein journalism starts including the old Senator Baker quote from Watergate of ‘what did he know and when did he know it?’ That could be the political silver bullet that kills off the image Trump has created in the minds of MAGA.
Except for other pedophiles EVERYONE, even hardened criminals guilty of multiple rapes and or murders hates pedophiles. The contempt if not hatred towards those who people feel knew or damn well should have known about what a pedophile in their life was are held is almost as great in intensity. What matters for now is that Bondi might be smarter than the average Trump minion but she’s no Bill Barr. She doesn’t know the DOJ the way he did, and she’s terrified that for all the just in case redacting going on with the Epstein files there are records somewhere that reveal Trump cut a deal: Information going back years on Epstein and Maxwell in exchange for immunity on money laundering. Even Trump won’t survive that.
DOJ last night asked a judge who’s handling the estate not to release the two powerful donators who had something to do with witness tampering. it was NBC who’s trying to get the names released. see Raw Story article today
I’ve been following this too, and I think you got it about right. some details speculative/debatable, but basically right.