Let me connect a few dots for you that may be a key part of the Trump-Epstein drama and may even be what Trump has been trying to keep hidden in those files. I’m not sure quite what we’re dealing with here. But I think this is significant.
Yesterday Speaker Mike Johnson was on the Hill talking to reporters running Trump defense on the Epstein files. It sounds like pretty standard stuff — and then he says this: “When he first heard the rumor he kicked [Epstein] out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant who tried to take this stuff down.” It’s an odd moment. Because Johnson says it in this kind of off-handed way and without explanation like it’s just one in a litany of talking points. But he clearly suggests that Trump played some role bringing about Epstein’s downfall, that he was an FBI informant who presumably told the authorities about Epstein’s sex crimes. The clip got a lot of attention on social media, unsurprisingly. One of Trump’s top surrogates is suggesting that far from being implicated in Epstein’s crimes, Trump is some secret good guy in the shadows, the guy who out of the limelight helped the authorities bring Epstein to justice.
Total fantasy, right?
Well, this reminded me of something I saw in one of those recent interviews with journalist Michael Wolff, who has been out in the media letting everyone know that he has some large quantity of taped interviews with Epstein from during Trump’s first presidency but before his rearrest and eventual suicide.
Wolff said that Epstein suspected that Trump was the guy who ratted him out to the authorities. So maybe some version of Johnson’s claim isn’t that far-fetched. But of course this isn’t actually exonerating at all. In fact, it implicates Trump about as badly as anything we’ve heard to date. You can’t tell what you don’t know. Trump was in a position to rat out Epstein because he knew all about his operation and had for years. They were close carousing buddies for years, partying and trying to one-up each other, competing to bed young women. Whether that also included girls under 18 for Trump we don’t know for certain. But we have abundant evidence about their carousing and bro-one-upsmanship with women just over 18. Even if he never touched a girl under 18, Trump clearly knew Epstein was. If he’s the one who ratted Epstein out to the authorities leading to his 2008 plea deal, that only confirms his knowledge more clearly.
But the details of why Trump appears to have turned on Epstein are key too. Wolff lays out the details starting just after minute 32 in this interview, which you can watch on Youtube. There’s a lot going on here. So I’ll try to walk you through the key points. (For more detail and flavor, I strongly recommend watching that five or six minute part of the interview.)
Epstein was trying to buy a South Florida estate. He brought Trump along to see it one time. A short time later Epstein found out that Trump had gone behind his back and placed a higher and ultimately successful bid on the property. He’d snatched it out from under him with a much higher bid. The problem was that Trump’s entire empire in 2004 was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It made no sense that Trump was coming up with $41 million to buy this property. Epstein suspected that Trump was acting as a front for a Russian oligarch as a money-laundering scheme. And in fact Trump did purchase and flip the estate two years later to a Russian oligarch named Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million, or a profit of over $50 million dollars.
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 led to his eventual 2008 plea deal.
Two of these points are well-known. The transaction with the Russian oligarch has been written about extensively and was the subject of criminal probes. Of course, Trump denies it was money-laundering. But that part of this story is well-known. It’s also well-known that Trump and Epstein fell out over this real estate transaction. Those two parts of what I’m explaining are established parts of the Trump story. What’s new is the idea that Trump was either the key source who started the Epstein investigation or one of them and that he did this to retaliate against Epstein’s threats and protect himself from being exposed in a money laundering scheme.
I can’t stress this point enough: You can’t tell what you don’t know. This isn’t an accusation. It’s formal logic. So even if we accept the idea that Trump played a role in Epstein’s downfall, it’s not exonerating. It shows what we’ve long suspected: that Trump had known about Epstein’s operation for years and was fine with it. (That’s assuming for the moment he wasn’t a direct participant — it’s the weekend, I’m being generous.) He only made a call when Epstein was threatening to expose a money laundering scheme.
Wolff said this a few weeks ago, apparently on the basis of recorded interviews from 2018 and 2019. But last night I saw a few articles from that period that strongly hinted at something like this. So I suspect reporters had heard something about this but couldn’t quite nail it down. In other words, I think this has been known as a rumor at least for some time.
So why did Johnson say this?
It’s conceivable, I guess, that he was just riffing and that there’s nothing to it. But that’s a helluva riff. I don’t think you’re just spitballing and land on the idea that the president of the United States was a confidential source who had inside knowledge and started the Epstein investigation. My best guess is that Johnson said this because Epstein was right and Trump did rat him out to the authorities. But as we said, this is not a good story for Trump, so why say it? Again, the best explanation is that it’s in those files the DOJ is sitting on. The White House fears it’s going to come out and so they’re putting the best spin on it they can. Trump was a real life Bruce Wayne type richie, wheeling and dealing by day, helping the authorities take down bad guys in the shadows. With Trump’s most ardent supporters, they might get some traction with that. But again, as noted above, it’s actually super damning. Yeah I knew he was a big time pedophile and we were big pals and partied together all the time and I was fine with it. But then he tried to expose my money laundering scheme so I called my friends at the FBI. I don’t think that’s a great story.
Needless to say, I’ve strung together several links in a chain here. There’s Johnson’s off-hand comment, the fact that what Epstein suspected or said he suspected isn’t necessarily what happened, there’s the lack of direct proof for Trump notifying authorities. But I think if you tug at the chain you’ll find that each link in the chain is actually pretty strong. So this is worth keeping an eye on because I think Johnson said it for a reason.
