Donald Trump: "I've known Jeffrey Epstein for 15 years - terrific guy!

Excerpt from ‘Jeffrey Epstein: Predator, Spy’ by Kirby Sommers

In 2005 Jeffrey Epstein came under scrutiny in Palm Beach for having a revolving door of teenagers traipsing through his mansion who told the police about giving the older gray haired “billionaire” massages that led to sexual impropriety. He had purchased the home located at 358 El Brillo Way for approximately $2.5 million in 1990. It is an 8,000 square foot house in a cul-de-sac off the Intercoastal highway. Its location, along with the tall hedges, partially obscures it from anyone’s view.

Donald Trump’s 20-acre resort, Mar-a-Lago, is about two miles away from Epstein’s home - less than a seven minute drive. The two men were as close friends as their homes are in proximity to each other. And then something happened.

Palm Beach is an 18-mile barrier island between the Intracoastal Waterway on the west and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. In most places it is only three-quarters of a mile wide and in some it is only 500 feet wide. In the 1890s it began to be known among the very rich as a “paradise” and attracted men like Joseph P Kennedy whose son, President John F. Kennedy used the family’s home as a Winter White House. President Donald Trump has also referred to his property in the same manner.

Palm Beach is perhaps the only county in the United States that still maintains in manner, style and customs the era of the Gilded Age. Although if you look dig a little deeper in recent history, you’ll find new money, and it’s not entirely what you or I would call clean money.

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship and appreciation of the opposite sex has been well documented. There are deep rooted ties underscored by shared friendships. This has been confirmed by some of Epstein’s like Virginia Giuffre (who worked for Trump as a locker room attendant when she was 15-years old), and Maria Farmer who in 1996 was the first person to report Epstein to the FBI. Farmer has made the allegation that Trump went to Jeffrey Epstein’s New York City mansion at 9pm one night when she happened to be in Epstein’s office. Maria remembers that the night in question was summer and she was wearing shorts. Trump walked into the room and stared appreciatively at her bare legs at which point she alleges Epstein said: “She’s not here for you.” And led him out of the room.

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“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump said of Epstein in a 2002 interview with New York Magazine. “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.”

After Epstein’s second arrest in New York City on July 6, 2019 Donald Trump contradicted his earlier comments on Epstein: “I haven’t spoken to him in probably 15 years or more. I wasn’t a big fan of Jeffrey Epstein, that I can tell you.”

That, however, was not how it appeared to the people who knew them or the people who socialized with them. Donald Trump’s first wife Ivana, for example, was best friends with Ghislaine Maxwell. The women would spend a lot of time together when Maxwell made the move from England to New York after her father, Robert Maxwell, jumped or was pushed off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in 1991.

Aside from friends, the men shared household help. Janusz Banasiak and his wife Rodica “Ofelia” Banasiak are a good example. They lived in a staff house behind Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach estate. Janusz began working for him as the house manager in February 2005 (one month before the police began their investigation), and worked for him for more than one decade. Rodica worked for Ivana (Trump’s first wife and mother to his eldest three children) until Ivana sold her home in 2014.

Included inside the pages of Epstein’s infamous Little Black Book are Donald Trump, Ivana Trump, Ivanka Trump, Robert (Trump’s younger brother) and his ex-wife Blaine, and now first lady of the United States Melania Trump.

President Donald Trump’s name appears as a passenger in his private jet from Palm Beach to Newark, New Jersey in 1997. Epstein also flew on Trump’s plane.

Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, 1997

The flight logs show that Donald Trump, Epstein’s brother Mark, Ghislaine Maxwell, Glenn and Eva Dubin (Eva was said to have been Epstein’s ex-girlfriend) and a person identified by one name either “Didler” or “Didier” flew on the “Lolita Express” from Palm Beach International Airport to Newark Liberty International on January 5, 1995. Mark alleges Trump flew on Epstein’s plane multiple times but that he flew with him only once. Mark also told a reporter: “They were good friends. I know Trump is trying to distance himself, but they were.”

I want to point out that when only one name is used on Epstein’s flight logs it has been discovered it belongs to one of his trafficked victims. It is also important to note that Eva and Glenn Dubin were named by Virginia Giuffre as people Epstein sent her to service with massages. “Massage” was his code word for sex.

On August 9, 2019 2,000 pages of court documents were released in connection to the defamation lawsuit by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell. Some of Epstein’s flight logs were included and the one showing Trump on the 1995 flight was among them.

Among these papers was a transcript of Virginia Giuffre’s deposition dated November 14, 2016. Giuffre had placed check marks next to a handful of claims on a list indicating some statements attributed to her by reporter Sharon Churcher were not accurate. One of the checkmarks was next to the sentence: “Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s. He didn’t partake in any sex with any of us but he flirted with me. He’d laugh and tell Jeffrey, ‘you’ve got the life.’”

Giuffre was asked to explain what was wrong with the statement. This is an excerpt:

A: “Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s.” That part is true. “He didn’t partake in any” of — “any sex with any of us but he flirted with me.” It’s true that he didn’t partake in any sex with us, but it’s not true that he flirted with me. Donald Trump never flirted with me.

Then the next sentence is, “he’d laugh and tell Jeffrey, ‘you’ve got the life.’” I never said that to her.”

Q: When you say “he didn’t partake in any sex with any of us,” who is “us”?

A: Girls. Just —

Q: How do you know who Donald Trump — Trump had sex with?

A: Oh, I didn’t physically see him have sex with any of the girls, so I can’t say who he had sex with in his whole life or not, but I just know it wasn’t with me when I was with other girls.”

The next day, August 10th, Jeffrey Epstein was found to have committed “suicide” in his jail Metropolitan Correction Center jail cell.

As I researched the specifics of Trump in relation to Epstein, I noticed that any reference to Trump being on Epstein’s private 727 airplane known as the “Lolita Express” in 1997 had been censored, downvoted and outright banned on Reddit.

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In 2004 Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were buddies.

Epstein was planning to purchase the former Wrightsman Palm Beach estate located at 515 N. Country Road. He called on Trump for advice on the intricacies of moving the swimming pool. The now dilapidated house had languished as an empty bank foreclosed property since 2001, and had been on the auction block for two years.

There were phone messages removed from Epstein’s trash by the Palm Beach police with showing Trump called him two times in November of 2004 which would substantiate they were still communicating.

A curious fact about the Wrightsman mansion is that it had belonged to Leslie Wexner. Wexner purchased it in May 1, 1985 and sold it three years later, on May 27, 1988, to nursing home magnate Abe Gossman. Wexner claims Palm Beach did not allow him to open a store and this prompted him to abandoned the demolition and renovation of the house.

Gossman lost the house when he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 2, 2001. Federal auditors had begun probing into his nursing homes as part of their anti-fraud campaign known as “Operation Restore Trust”. This dried up the Medicare and Medicaid money that had been generously flowing into Gossman’s pockets. Everyone in Palm Beach knew about the curious looking overweight man who owned a yacht he’d named “Octopussy” who went bust.

The history of the house on 515 N Country Road really does tell the tale of its occupants and assorted owners. I personally believe Wexner purchased the property for Epstein. This would pre-date their meeting by one or two years. Epstein stated they met in 1986, and Wexner claimed it was 1987. However, the Wrightsman estate is known as the largest beach front property in all of Palm Beach. And, Wexner purchased the largest mansion in all of New York City for Epstein.

Trump, having been in the real estate industry for his entire life took a look at the property and decided it was a better deal than his friendship with Epstein. On the day of the auction, while Epstein was in the room, Trump was on the phone. Three people bid on the property.

Mark Pulte of Mark Timothy Prestige Homes opened the bidding at $36.25 million.

Jeffrey Epstein bid $36 million.

Donald Trump was on the phone and was represented by his attorney Raymond Royce bid $37 million.

The bidding had a couple of rounds and Trump won the Gossman mansion for $41 million.

Epstein knew that Trump was cash-poor when Trump purchased the house through Trump Properties LLC financed by Deutsche Bank. Epstein had seen straw buyers before and suspected Trump was a straw buyer for someone else. Epstein fuming over what he perceived as a betrayal threatened to expose the scheme. The newspapers were still writing glowing stories about Trump’s mega purchase.

These were no longer two friends. These were now rivals. Each of them knowing deep and dark secrets about the other. As their bickering became even more bitter Epstein found himself being investigated by the Palm Beach police department for sex crimes against minors.

By 2008 when Epstein was busy negotiating his Non-Prosecution Agreement, and in the middle of a nationwide recession, Trump sold the house to Dmitry Rybolovlev for a staggering $96 million. Rybolovlev, a close friend of Vladimir Putin and an oligarch in Russia, never moved into the house.

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In 2008 Donald Trump wasn’t thinking about running for president. By the summer of 2015 this changed. In New York City from the basement of Trump Tower on stage with eight American flags behind him he told a crowd “Sadly the American dream is dead, but if I get elected president, I will bring it back. Bigger, better and stronger than ever before.” It was in this way he announced his run for the Presidency of the United States.

In 2015 Jeffrey Epstein was once again under the scrutiny of the media as the press reported about “sex slave” Virginia Giuffre’s allegations against powerful men including Prince Andrew.

This letter from Giuffre’s attorney to ‘His Royal Highness Duke of York’ was re-printed in one of the tabloids.

And the stories picked up steam when Virginia Giuffre filed a defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell. During an interview on Bloomberg Trump said of Jeffrey Epstein “That island was really a cesspool, no doubt about it. Just ask Prince Andrew.” He then added: “right now he’s [Epstein] is Teflon, but he could be a political problem.”

This is a relatively unseen video of Donald Trump saying the above which I found on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uab2U54wr9g

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On April 16, 2016 a woman named Katie Johnson filed a lawsuit against Trump. She claimed she was an aspiring model and met a girl at the Port Authority bus terminal who told her she could make money and modeling connections by attending parties. She was 13 years old in 1994 and claims that it was at these parties with other underage girls and wealthy men that she was forced to have sex with Trump on four separate occasions.

Before the end of the year Katie Johnson dropped her lawsuit. It is alleged she said she was receiving threats and was afraid for her life.

Early in 2019 Jeffrey Epstein was once again became the subject of a police investigation. This time in New York City. The man who had given Epstein the lenient plea deal in 2008, Alexander Acosta, had been selected by Trump to be his Secretary of Labor.

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on a return flight from Paris on July 6, 2019. A little over one month later he was found dead in his cell. Wikipedia lists his death as “disputed; ruled a suicide by hanging”.

A tale of two powerful men, bruised egos and secrets kept.

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