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For weeks, speculation has been building about which famous and powerful figures would be tarnished by the Jeffrey Epstein scandal when court documents from a years-old case related to the disgraced financier were made public. And while Epsteins black book contained a staggering number of A-listers and high-society pals, perhaps the biggest question surrounding the court documents unsealing is what they reveal about Donald Trump.

They hype escalated on the afternoon of January 3, when Mark Epstein said that three years before his brother died in jail while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, he told him he knew secrets that could blow up the presidential election between Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Heres a direct quote: If I said what I know about both candidates, theyd have to cancel the election. Thats what Jeffrey told me in 2016, Mark Epstein told the New York Post.

Wild stuff! But of course, Mark Epstein said he doesnt know what information his brother was referring to. And while Trump and Bill Clinton (who have both denied any Epstein-related wrongdoing) are both mentioned in the court documents that were made public hours later, there was nothing that could have upended a previous presidential race or Trumps current reelection bid.

But questions about Trumps ties to Epstein persist, as the convicted sex offender is now a conspiracy theory fixture, and more court records are set to be released in the coming days and weeks. Heres a running list of revelations from the newly unsealed documents, and what weve already learned about Trumps friendship with Epstein.

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The newly unsealed documents are from Virginia Roberts Giuffres settled 2015 defamation lawsuit against Epsteins former girlfriend Ghislane Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison termfor trafficking women and girls for Epstein to sexually abuse. Giuffre is one of dozens of women, some as young as 14, whom Epstein allegedly abused.

Some documents were blacked out or sealed when the suit was settled in 2017 over privacy concerns. But in December 2023, federal Judge Loretta Preska ruled that most of the records would be made public, as most of the names were already public. The first 40 exhibits, totaling 943 pages, were released on January 3, 2024. (Read about the other figures listed in the new Epstein documents here.)

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In short: not much. His name is mentioned only four times, in a May 2016 deposition of Johanna Sjoberg, one of Epsteins alleged victims, who said she was around him from 2001 to 2006.

Sjoberg said that while flying on one of Epsteins planes, they made an unplanned stop in Atlantic City and went to one of Trumps casinos. She recalled that when she relayed the pilots message that theyd need to land in New Jersey, Jeffrey said, Great, well call up Trump and well go to I dont recall the name of the casino, but well go to the casino.

Later, Sjoberg said she never gave Trump a massage.

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Trump began palling around with Epstein in the late 80s but the depth of their friendship is a subject of debate.

Footage unearthed by NBC News in 2019 shows the two men joking around and ogling women during a party at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in 1992.

Trump and Epstein were also photographed together in 1992 and 1997. The now famous image below shows Trump and then-girlfriend Melania Knauss partying with Epstein and Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago on February 12, 2000.

Photo: Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images

In 2002, the mogul told New York, Ive known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. Hes 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.

On January 3, Trumps spokesperson Steven Cheung offered a terse statement on the new document release, telling Newsweek that any claims about Trumps relationship with Epstein were thoroughly debunked.

In 2016 a woman who went by the pseudonyms Katie Johnson and Jane Doe in legal filings accused Trump of raping her in 1994, when she was 13, during an orgy held at Epsteins home in Manhattan. She accused Epstein of raping her as well.

Three suits were filed over the same allegations; the first was dismissed for failure to properly state a claim the other two were voluntarily dismissed. The third case was withdrawn just days before the 2016 election, and the accuser canceled a press conference at the last minute. Her attorney, Lisa Bloom, said the woman had received death threats and She has decided she is too afraid to show her face She is in terrible fear.

The circumstances around the case were bizarre, as Vox summarized at the time:

It was the end of an incredibly strange case that featured an anonymous plaintiff who had refused almost all requests for interviews, two anonymous corroborating witnesses whom no one in the press had spoken to, and a couple of seriously shady characters with an anti-Trump agenda and a penchant for drama who had aggressively shopped the story around to media outlets for over a year.

Those shady characters a former reality TV producer who calls himself Al Taylor and a Never Trump conservative activist named Steve Baer had been mostly unsuccessful in getting the media to bite. There are a few very good reasons for that, which the Huffington Posts Ryan Grim succinctlysummed up: Taylor and Baer have beenreally sketchyabout the whole thing, and since the accuser is anonymous, journalists cant do anything to verify her claims. The only journalist who has actually interviewed Johnson,Emily Shugermanat Revelist, came away confused and even doubting whether Johnson really exists.

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 other women over the years; those women were not underage and their allegations did not involve Epstein. In May 2023 a federal jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s, and for defaming her when he denied her rape allegation in 2022. He was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in damages, and is currently appealing the verdict.

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Trump has claimed that he and Epstein had a falling out years before the financier was first arrested in Palm Beach in 2005, after he was accused of paying a 14-year-old girl for sex. (Though dozens of other underage girls accused Epstein of sexual abuse at the time, through a 2008 plea deal he served only 13 months in jail in a work-release program).

There are reports that a battle over a choice Palm Beach property ended the friendship, but its unclear what exactly came between the two men. Days after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019, Trump downplayed their relationship while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. He said he merely knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him, adding, I had a falling out with him. I havent spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.

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During an August 2023 interview Tucker Carlson asked Trump if he believes that Epstein killed himself in jail. I dont know, said Trump, who seemed more interested in bashing his former attorney general Bill Barr. After more prodding from Carlson, Trump said he thinks its possible that Epstein was killed, but I think he probably committed suicide.

Life with beautiful homes, beautiful everything, and all of a sudden hes incarcerated and not doing well, Trump said. A lot of people think he was killed. He knew a lot on a lot of people. Carlson confirmed hes among those who believe Epstein was killed, and Trump replied that a case could be made either way.

This post has been updated.

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What the Jeffrey Epstein Documents Reveal About Donald Trump - New York Magazine

While many famous faces have made a name for themselves on their own, some have surprising familial connections to one another.

Beanie Feldstein, who rose to fame after starring in 2019s Booksmart, is the younger sister of Jonah Hill and has frequently gushed over their sibling bond. She couldnt help but rave about her older brother, who even got a tattoo of her name amid her Great White Way debut in Hello, Dolly.

Oh, my God, I mean, hes my best friend in the world, so Im always excited for him, Feldstein told Us Weekly and other reporters in January 2020.

The acting siblings are hardly the only celebrities with surprising connections. Legendary Today meteorologist Al Roker shares common ancestors with Lenny Kravitz, which they discussed during a September 2011 appearance on the morning show.

Scroll down to see how some of the biggest Hollywood stars from Madonna to Hillary Clinton are related:

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Stars You Didn't Know Were Related: Jonah Hill and Beanie Feldstein, Madonna and Hillary Clinton, More - Yahoo Entertainment

Claim:

A video shared online in January 2024 accurately showed former U.S. President Bill Clinton greeting medical workers outside of a hospital in an attempt to distract the news media from his connections to the late Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

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On Jan. 2, 2024, a video was posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, showing former U.S. President Bill Clinton shaking hands with hospital workers. The account simply captioned the video, "Bill?"

(X user @malachimaxeyusa)

While the video itself appeared rather innocent, the replies to the tweet and other reposts of the same video revealed that viewers thought it was theoretically showing Clinton engaging in some sort of public relations campaign to distract the news media and general population from his ties to the late, disgraced financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. As one repost put it, Clinton was engaging in a "Harvey Weinstein fake hurt scam." Epstein was back in the news after a judge ordered documents unsealed in a lawsuit filed against his associate/partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell.

The video was real, but the insinuations about it were false.

Snopes found the same moment shown in the X clip in a video on CNN Politics. In that video, which was posted on Oct. 17, 2021, Clinton walked out of a California hospital after being treated for an infection. We cross-checked that CNN clip with an Al Jazeera article documenting the same event. Because the video is real, but the context around it is verifiably false, we have rated this claim as "Miscaptioned."

Clinton has been the frequent subject of claims spread online connecting him to Epstein and Maxwell.

Among the claims was a video of Hillary Clinton supposedly threatening to assassinate anyone who connected her husband with Epstein (false) or photos of Epstein with the former president (true). A 2019 article from The New York Times uncovered more details about the connections between the two men.

Bill Clinton Released from Hospital after Urological Infection. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/17/bill-clinton-released-from-southern-california-hospital. Accessed 3 Jan. 2024.

Evon, Dan. Is This Bill Clinton with Jeffrey Epstein? Snopes, 22 July 2019, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-clinton-with-jeffrey-epstein/.

Gold, Michael. Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein: How Are They Connected? The New York Times, 9 July 2019. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/nyregion/bill-clinton-jeffrey-epstein.html.

https://Twitter.Com/Malachimaxeyusa/Status/1742339146922836443. X (Formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/malachimaxeyusa/status/1742339146922836443. Accessed 3 Jan. 2024.

https://Twitter.Com/Rob1865_/Status/1742360847672860716. X (Formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/Rob1865_/status/1742360847672860716. Accessed 3 Jan. 2024.

Liles, Jordan. Did Hillary Clinton Threaten Epstein Accusers with a Hit Man? Snopes, 12 Dec. 2023, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-epstein-climate-change/.

Video: Bill Clinton Walks out of Hospital after Treatment for Infection - CNN Video. edition.cnn.com, https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/10/17/bill-clinton-leaves-hospital-sot-rs-vpx.cnn. Accessed 3 Jan. 2024.

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Fact Check: Why This Video Doesn't Convey Bill Clinton's Nefarious Ties to Jeffrey Epstein - Yahoo News

Peter Daou, a former aide to Hillary Clinton, recently announced that he had become the campaign manager for Cornel West, the radical socialist professor and public intellectual, who is seeking the Presidential nomination from the Green Party. It was the culmination of a fascinating arc for Daou, who was a legendary figure in the early liberal blogosphere, where he became known for his criticisms of the Bush Administration before joining John Kerrys 2004 Presidential campaign. Four years later, he ran Clintons digital operation, and became known as one of her most high-profile and vocal online supporters. Then, in 2016, for Clintons second Presidential run, Daou ran the platform Shareblue, a partisan news site that attacked mainstream coverage of the race and fanatically defended Clinton. By 2020, he had endorsed Bernie Sanders; he subsequently left the Democratic Party. (Before joining Wests campaign, he briefly ran Marianne Williamsons.) Daou now says his career as a fanatical Democratic partisan was misguided, and that the entire political system needs to be uprooted; he believes Wests campaign is the best vehicle for such a change.

I recently spoke by phone with Daou. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how his political outlook shifted, his feelings about Donald Trump, and why he believes the Democratic Party also engages in election interference.

Who has changed: You or the Democratic Party?

I think I have changed more than the Democratic Party has changed. Ive evolved and grown and thought through my role in the Party.

Most people would say that Joe Biden is to the left of where Hillary Clinton was in 2008, or indeed where Joe Biden was in 2008. Do you think thats an accurate diagnosis?

I dont think so. Having done more research and digging, thinking about leftism, liberalism, progressivism, neoliberalism, getting a little bit deeper into how this terminology is used, I just think back to the support from the Democratic Party for George W. Bushs war in Iraq and war on terror, which are based on lies. I dont really see it in terms of movement to the left or to the right. Honestly, Isaac, I look at it systemically. I always looked at it as red and blue, and finally when I quit the Party, in 2020, I started looking at it as the system, and the Democratic Party comprises half of that system. Or maybe more, you know what Im saying?

This is what made me quit the Party. I thought, O.K., Peter, its twenty-two years of your life, and the same problems, the same pain, the same misery, the same suffering is out there. Theres got to be something deeper than the binary, the binary box.

Would the Iraq War and the war on terror be a good example of what I meant? You have a President now whos pulled us out of the war in Afghanistan, whos drastically reduced drone strikes, whos tried to tamp down the war on terror, whereas, in the Bush era, even if the majority of congressional Democrats voted against the Iraq War, many voted for it, and both parties supported the war on terror.

I dont see it that way, but I know a lot of Democrats do. I see Joe Biden and the people around him, some of the neocons hes getting advice from, as sabre-rattling warmongers who are actually making the world a more dangerous place. Now, Ive always said that I dont support, as a leftist myself, any imperialist invasion, and that includes the invasion of Ukraine. I believe the war is a criminal imperial invasion of another country. However, having said that, this Administration has rattled and provoked and escalated the rhetoric from Day One. From my standpoint, I look at this Administration as bigger warmongers than what youre talking about in the period prior to 2008.

I see. So even compared with Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who supported the Iraq War and a huge range of American military interventions, you think that the Biden Administration is more warmongering?

Well, I just gave you an example. More or less, its difficult to assess. This is why I keep coming back to Dr. Wests position of dismantling the empire.

As recently as 2020, you were opposed to a third-party candidate because of the urgent need to beat Donald Trump. What changed between early 2020 and now?

Yeah, its a very fundamental change in perspective. Its almost like I took a different set of glasses or lenses and I put them on, and that lens is the systemic lens. During the years I worked as a Democrat, I bought into the general thinking that Democrats are better and therefore we need Democrats to stop the fascist domination of Republicans. If you go back ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, its the same argument: Oh, my God, if you let them get elected, the worlds going to end. This is a very standard duopoly technique.

Now when I finally took off that lens, the binary red-blue, blue-is-better-than-red lens, and I took responsibility for wearing that lens or looking through that lens, then my lens became, O.K., look at the entire system. Lets say this cycle we also say the same thing, which is, Oh, my God, we have to stop Donald Trump or we have to stop whoever the Republican might be. And this happens the next cycle and the next cycle and the next cycle. Where is the so-called democracy that were supposedly protecting or saving? What were doing is were crushing third parties.

We are stifling democracy itself, Isaac. This is the problem. From my standpoint, there are things that Biden has done that made the world more dangerous than Trump, and there are things Trump did that made the world more dangerous than Biden, and both of them go back and forth. You see what Im saying?

I maybe need a different pair of lenses to totally see it.

You have to look at it through a systemic lensthe entire system, the structure of the system itself versus a binary view of which party is better and which one is going to be more dangerous. Its a completely different way of looking at the picture.

Its almost like The Matrix, where youre either in it or youre not, you know?

Correct. No, thats a great way of looking at it. Exactly. When youre inside the matrix, you go along with whatever structure is built around you, and you just see things that way. You remember the scene where its all the bodies being fed through their neck to their brain, and you suddenly are like, Wait a minute.Thats what this election is about. This election is about how were just not going to buy this framing anymore.

When it came to the idea of John McCain or Mitt Romney being elected President, in 2008 and 2012, I certainly remember Democrats saying, Oh, this would be bad. And maybe the extreme partisans would say, If Mitt Romney gets elected, the worlds going to end. But I dont think that was the overwhelming idea. With Trump, its a little different, in part because he actually tried to steal a democratic election.

I have been one of the most vocal opponents of Donald Trump. In 2020, I was creating so many anti-Trump viral hashtags and videos. I was out there fighting this guy from Day One.

You recently wrote that Trumps two impeachments and four indictments are largely smokescreens, correct?

Yeah. Well, the reason I say that is because he wasnt impeached or indicted on the worst things hes done, because the worst things hes done, Democrats do, too.

January 6th? That seems high up there.

January 6th, that, too. But take a look at what Democrats are currently doing. See, this is when you start comparing good and bad.

You said he was indicted and impeached for things that Democrats did. He was impeached for two things: soliciting a foreign power to harm the candidacy of his opponent in the 2020 Presidential election and incitement of insurrection against the United States on January 6th. I dont think Democrats have really done those things, no?

Let me just clarify. What I said is that he was impeached. I pushed very hard when Nancy Pelosi said hes not worth impeaching. I was out there vocally with a lot of leftist activists saying, you have to impeach him, and she refused.

But then she did impeach him, twice, and now you seem grumpy that she did so. No?

No. What I complained about is that she impeached him for maybe five per cent of his most egregious offenses.

Link:
Peter Daou's Theory of Election Interferenceby Democrats - The New Yorker

In poll after poll, the majority of Democratic voters say they do not want Joe Biden to run for reelection next year. And his age, the data shows, is by far the biggest snag. At 80, Biden is already the oldest president in US history and would be 86 by the end of a second term.

And yet, despite such polling, those close to Biden have contrived an entirely different explanation for why his candidacy might fail. Whether its left-wing academic Cornel West, a presidential candidate running for the Green Party nomination, or a pending moderate candidate, third-party challengers have become the main source of worry in Bidenworld, according to an NBC News report Monday. Its pretty fucking concerning, a person familiar with White House discussions about the matter told the outlet.

According to two sources, the president even discussed the matter during a recent White House visit from Hillary Clinton. As NBC notes, many of Clintons allies have spent the past six years blaming the Green Partys Jill Stein for her loss to Donald Trump in 2016. Of course, Clintons defeat was likely caused by numerous factors, including her high disapproval marks among voters and a wildly dysfunctional campaign that failed to contend with the changing political wind in Rust Belt states that had previously voted for Barack Obama.

No matter. Clinton, per NBC, spent her conference with Biden this month urging him to prioritize third-party threats and combat them. She shared the same warning ahead of the 2020 race, accusing Republicans of grooming an unnamed candidate favored by the Kremlinlikely an allusion to former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbardto run as a third-party choice, thereby hurting Democratic odds in the general election.

A recent poll from NBC News does suggest that third-party options could hamper Bidens reelection efforts. When the outlet asked respondents to choose between Biden and Trump, the result was a 46-46 tie. And when presented with additional options for three notable alternative partiesthe Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the moderate No Labels groupa plurality of respondents, 39%, backed Trump, giving him a three-point lead over the president.

Other recent head-to-head polls have put Trump and Biden at a deadlock; a CBS News poll last week even had Trump leading Biden by one point. If that data is borne out in a handful of key states, the minuscule percentage of voters who back third-party candidates could be enough to tilt the election. With a tight election, every vote counts, a Biden ally told NBC News. Is it in the back of many peoples brains? Absolutely. Do we have to be careful as we move out? Yes, we do.

Compounding these pressures is the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently running for the Democratic nomination but has not ruled out a third-party bid. Over the summer, Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer and all-around crackpot conspiracist, even began courting the Libertarian Party, according to The New York Times. He emphasized that he was committed to running as a Democrat but said that he considered himself very libertarian, Angela McArdle, Libertarian Party chair, told the Times when asked about her July meeting with Kennedy.

Biden, meanwhile, could also face a primary challenger from within his own party. For example: Congressman Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, revealed recently that he is weighing a presidential bid. Im concerned that there is no alternative, Phillips told political strategist and pundit Steve Schmidt. Possibly alluding to Bidens unprecedented age, the lawmaker added that something could happen between now and next November that would make the Democratic Convention in Chicago an unmitigated disaster.

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Hillary Clinton Urges Joe Biden Not to Sleep on Third-Party Spoilers ... - Vanity Fair