Trump administration officials are perplexed, as many people are, by House Speaker Mike Johnson’s claims that Donald Trump was an FBI informant in the case against Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges he sexually abused and trafficked scores of underage girls. The president and Epstein had a well-documented friendship.
How would it be damage control? How exactly does claiming Trump was laundering money for Russia (in part because he was relatively speaking broke at the time) without actually denying in any way his close relationship with Epstein do anything positive for Trump? It’s not like in this scenario he turned Epstein in out of the goodness of his heart or concern for the victims, it was a calculated attempt to silence him before he spilled his secrets.
I could see a variety of arguments for why this might not be true but “damage control” doesn’t make any sense at all. Being the guy that tipped off the cops about Epstein isn’t that much of a feather in his cap to offset all the crimes it implicated him in.
It suggests he turned in Epstein which he did not, the only one responsible for Epstein finally getting popped is the Miami Herald and the victims.
As if the FBI was looking for informants on this guy. They were fucking in on it, as the CIA must have been in on this Honeypot operation ensnaring our own politicians and business leaders to a foreign intelligence agency. In on it through action or inaction.
They went out of their way not to see.
You didn’t actually answer the question and just repeated yourself. How does implicating Trump in a new set of crimes without absolving him of the existing ones qualify as damage control?
Setting that aside, the second paragraph basically has nothing to do with the rest of this, that’s an entirely different claim. Your argument is basically that the CIA and FBI knew about all of this and were in fact involved in it. That the only reason Epstein was eventually arrested was because the Miami Herald made too much noise for them to sweep it under the rug. That may or may not be true, but doesn’t necessarily invalidate the claim that Trump told the cops in an attempt to silence Epstein.
There are a bunch of different angles you could come at this, but damage control by Trumps allies doesn’t make a bit of sense. Damage control by foreign agents, maybe, although how sacrificing Trump provides any benefit to them I can’t see. The only person I see getting any possible benefit in this scenario is the author making the claim and that’s mostly just in exposure, literally everyone else involved comes off worse. It exposes Trump as a Russian agent, implicates him just as much if not more in Epstein’s crimes, and paints his turning on Epstein as a self serving attempt to save his own skin. Nothing at all about this situation makes things better for Trump.
The FBI was going out of their way not to see this Epstein thing they weren’t looking for informants.
And they would have already known and been ignoring it purposefully.
It makes the president look better as if he informed on the guy doing the exact same thing he does himself, blackmail other people.
It is their wonderful secret they’re such enigmas. I do not see what there is not to understand here.
It is bs that he informed on epstein, and he would have already told us this if it was true. They would have spun him into quite the hero if they could back it up in the slightest and twist it.
The only reason Epstein went down was because the Miami Herald dogged them for years and years with the help of some of the victims.
OK, in isolation saying it makes him look better if he informed on Epstein is true, but that ignores the larger story where the reason he did that was because of all the crimes he (being Trump) was committing. The rest of this is plausible, the thing I’m saying makes no sense is that this is somehow a pro-Trump move. This is like saying that you blew up a hospital with thousands of people in it because there was a serial killer in it as well. Sure it might slightly reduce how bad it makes him look, but it still makes him look worse than he currently does.
There’s also the fact that Trump is currently doing literally anything he can think of to get people talking about literally anything but Epstein. The very last thing he’d want is to bring him up again even if it was somehow supposed to make him look better.
Seeing as Speaker Johnson is now pushing this narrative that he was an FBI informant on Epstein, it seems like they are trying that line out, and his surrogates and or Allies have been pushing that for a couple months.
If that was the case in any way shape or form they would have already pulled it out and painted him as the Great Hero. No matter the real story, if he informed on Epstein in any way shape or form they would have went public a long time ago taking sole credit for taking him down and such.
The Narrative also takes away the real credit which is due solely to the Miami Herald and the victims that followed him for years and years. That kept pushing even after the feds bailed him out with that sweetheart deal.
Really whether he did or didn’t inform on Epstein is the least interesting and important part of the entire story. The more important question is whether the part about him outbidding Epstein on a mansion to money launder for Russia is true or not, and likewise on whether Epstein tried to blackmail him. The accusation that Trump informed on him was based entirely on Epstein believing he had from the sounds of it entirely based on the timing of his arrest. If we assume Epstein was wrong about that and it wasn’t Trump that turned him in I don’t think that really fundamentally changes anything at all. You still have Trump and Epstein having a falling out over Trumps other crimes, and events still play out in exactly the same fashion.
That the president was in bed with the Russian mob and by extension Russian intelligence has long been known. They were neck deep in all sorts of his ventures, like signing up pre-lease agreements for different buildings so he could get financing, all sorts of money laundering at his casinos, propublica did a whole podcast and all this stuff in detail in the first term. Partially with information fed to him by the Russian mob as well to take out their rivals.
That birthday letter from the president is basically saying both he and Epstein were blackmailers. And the Russians as much as said that the Israelis are not the only ones with the Epstein info now and insinuated it is on the president as well, via press conference medvedickhead gave a month or so back.
What seems clear is he is so thoroughly implicated in all of this that even with total control of the FBI he cannot write himself out.