“She say anything about me?”
That’s reportedly the question Donald Trump urgently wanted an answer to when he learned that his old pal Ghislaine Maxwell had been arrested in the summer of 2020. Maxwell, a British socialite and the so-called “main girlfriend” of sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, has since been convicted of five counts of sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. But, as The Guardian reports, all Trump wanted to know on that summer day was whether Maxwell had dished any dirt on him.
The information, like most of the juiciest pieces of recent Trump intel (including the fact that he once toilet-shamed Rudy Giuliani) comes courtesy of Maggie Haberman’s new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. In it, Haberman writes that, immediately following Maxwell’s arrest, Trump became nervous. During an Oval Office meeting in early July, he questioned campaign advisers as to whether Maxwell had given up any intel about him.
“You see that article in the Post today that mentioned me?,” he reportedly asked — a question that was met with silence. “She say anything about me?,” he inquired.
The article Trump was referring to was a piece that ran on Page Six on July 4, 2020 and was titled, “Ghislaine Maxwell prepared to snitch on ‘big names’ to save herself.” In it, Steven Hoffenberg — a one-time associate of Epstein and Maxwell’s — claimed that Ghislaine was prepared to name names, “not only in terms of those who abused underage girls at Epstein’s parties — but also those who made financial agreements with Epstein or benefited from his generosity, including flying on his plane and staying at his homes.”
“Ghislaine thought she was untouchable,” Hoffenberg said. “That she’d be protected by the intelligence communities she and Jeffrey helped with information: the Israeli intelligence services, and Les Wexner, who has given millions to Israel; by Prince Andrew, President Clinton and even by President Trump, who was well-known to be an acquaintance of her and Epstein’s.”
While there is indisputable evidence that Trump did indeed know and spend time with both Epstein and Maxwell, the former president told aides that he had never been to Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, which Trump had dubbed “whore island.”
Another tidbit from the book: When Eric Trump was just an awkward teen, as opposed to an awkward adult, he took a private plane ride with his father and Maxwell, during which they watched Bloodsport, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. It was Eric’s job to fast-forward through the dialogue and skip right to the fight scenes.
(Via The Guardian)