HEATHER COX RICHARDSON Sept. 7
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes that journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed Epstein at length during Trump’s first presidency, says that Epstein suspected it was Trump who told the authorities about his systemic sexual assault of girls. But if so, Marshall explains, such evidence is damning rather than exonerating.
It’s widely known that Trump and Epstein fell out in 2004 when Trump secretly purchased an estate in South Florida that Epstein desired. But at the time, Trump was headed toward bankruptcy, and it was not clear where he was getting the money to buy the estate.
Marshall calls attention to a recent interview in which Wolff said that Epstein suspected Trump was laundering money for a Russian oligarch—and indeed, Trump did flip the property to a Russian oligarch for a profit of more than $50 million a few years after buying it—and threatened to sue Trump, bringing the money laundering to light. At that point, the Epstein investigation began.