“The MAGA Department of Justice is trying to shield Trump from something in the Epstein Files!” a Senator declared Thursday on the floor of the U.S. Senate. But then 70-year-old Sheldon Whitehouse — a 19-year Democratic Senator from Rhode Island — laid out all the evidence that exists for Russia’s ties to Epstein — and its highly suspicious connections to Trump — in an extraordinary 48-minute speech.
Epstein’s crimes actually left a long money trail that winds back to Russia, the Senator said, noting Epstein had 4,725 different wire transactions with Russia worth over $1 billion between 2003 and 2019 (according to a report from JP Morgan. And as this evidence becomes widely known, it could prove fatal to Trump’s presidency. Just weeks ago Poland opened an official investigation into Epstein’s links to Russian intelligence, and the Senator says there’s finally “More and more leads… all related to the suspicion that this unprecedented pedophilia scandal was co-organized by Russian intelligence services.” The Senator warned there’s “a cover-up afoot at the Department of Justice…” Epstein’s $1 billion in Russian transactions were even flagged as suspicious at the time — and specifically as “consistent with alleged sex trafficking of minors.”
Epstein’s Russian bank transactions also involved “high-risk” Russian jurisdictions, JP Morgan acknowledged. (And that’s just oneof several banks Epstein used…) One financier also said Epstein allegedly hired “scouters” to transport underage girls, many 15 years and under, for sex trafficking and to give “massages”. (That financier was found hanged in hisFrench jail cell in 2022…)
“Epstein wrote many Russian and East European girls and womeninto his trafficking operation,” the Senator notes. (A few weeks ago sources even told the FBI Epstein was Putin’s wealth manager.) Putin is named 1,000 times in just the latest Epstein Files — and there’s 10,000 references toMoscow.
And then the Senator pointed out that “Many of Epstein’s victims have said they believe they were recorded.”
There’s proof in the Epstein files. There’s a 2014 email which shows Epstein directing a staffer to procure — yes, hidden cameras (which were installed in tissue boxes). And Virginia Giuffre even wrote in her posthumous memoir that Epstein had a “huge library” of videotapes at in a room at his New York home where monitors also displayed real-time surveillance footage from his properties. Giuffre even revealed that Epstein “explicitly talked about using me, and what I’d been forced to do with certain men, as a form of blackmail, so these men would owe him favors.”
And there’s more sources saying the exact same thing, the Senator added. “Another survivor said Epstein once walked her through his mansion, pointing out pinhole-sized cameras. He boasted that they were in every room.” [Maybe that’s why the parties were always at Epstein’s own properties, or on his resort that locals called “pedophile island”…] Epstein is even said to have once told an ex-girlfriend point-blank that, “I collect people. I own people. I can damage people.” (And one financier is quoted as saying that “wherever he was entertaining, he was taping.”)
The pattern is so clear. When police searched Epstein’s Palm Beach home in 2005, they located two hidden cameras located inside clocks. The New York Times also obtained photos of the interior of Epstein’s New York mansion which show a camera installed near the ceiling of the master bedroom, and another along the moulding of an adjoining room, and near a suite of bathrooms near his bedroom. Rolling Stone Journalist Vicky Ward heard from numerous people who believed Epstein decided to compromise influential people byrecording them doing things they wouldn’t make public.”
And this gets us to how “documents in the files about President Trump that should be released have not been released…” as the Senator pointed out. (Though hours later the Guardian “obtained the missing FBI form 302 reports” on that accuser who said Trump sexually assaulted her when she was 15.)
When Trump was asked about Epstein, his response was telling: “It’s just a Russia Russia Russia hoax,” Trump said. Notice Trump’s mind immediately went to Russia when asked about Epstein, the Senator pointed out, and that Trump reached for the word “hoax”, which the Senator calls “the word Trump uses when something is true.”
The Senator went through the evidence of Trump’s place in Epstein’s world. (There was even a 1992 Mar-a-Lago beauty competitionwhere Trump and Epstein were the only two men present.) One Epstein victim says she was taken to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump when she was 14. Epstein recruited a 16-year-old from Trump’s spa. Trump of course was close to Epstein for at least 15 years, and once said Epstein “Likes beautiful women as much as Ido, and many of them are on the younger side.”
The president of Trump’s Atlantic City hotel said he saw the twotogether so frequently he believed they were best friends — and thatTrump once illegally brought Epstein and a 19-year-old girl onto the casino gaming floor. (New Jersey requires you be 21 to enter a casino floor.) Epstein once took a model to Trump tower, “where she says Trump groped her with Epstein laughing.” Another survivor says Epstein once summoned her, and when Trump arrived Epstein said “No no, she’s not here for you.” And that Trump had thought she was a teenager. Meanwhile the Daily Mirror evenhas reported Ghislaine Maxwell “introduced several of her attractive friends” to Trump.
Epstein’s Russia connections are clear, and go back for decades. Ghislaine Maxwell’s father reportedly accepted secret payments from the KGB — and was described as “an opportunist in search of wealth with ties to British,Soviet, and Israeli intelligence”. (One newspaper flat-out claimed he was ‘a political asset” for the Soviet Union.) His file in the UK Foreign Office called him “a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia.” Ghislaine was said to be involved in her father’s work. Four separate on-the-record sources said Epstein’s dealings in the arms world inthe 1980s after he met Ghislaine’s father led him to work for multiple governments. Including the Israelis,” Rolling Stone reported — and there were also allegations he was involved in”influence trading” and blackmail. And in 2021 Rolling Stone remembered Epstein saying he’d worked on solving Mr.Maxwell’s “debt” issues.
Epstein even started his career at a New York high school where the headmaster was a former intelligence office who was William Barr’s father. (The “Barr report” later famously claimed an FBI investigation into Russia’s ties to Trump exonerated thepresident.)
In short, the Senator said, there’s proof of Epstein’s “links with Russia, girls from Russia, money from Russia, people from Russia, deals and transactions with Russia, contacts with people with Russian intelligence, news reports exploring contacts with Russia, and an official investigation from the government of Poland into an Epstein-Russia connection!
“Sometimes, with a little imagination, you have a chance to see what’s right in front of your face.”