President Donald Trump just can’t escape the heat from the broiling controversy surrounding his Justice Department’s decision to close the Jeffrey Epstein case. Trump even tried fleeing to his golf courses in Scotland Friday, but the scandal followed him right across the Atlantic.
He is desperate to make the story go away. Trump has threatened to prosecute former President Barack Obama. He has threatened to fire Fed chair Jerome Powell. He sent prosecutors down to Florida to interview fellow Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
He is suing Rupert Murdoch, two Wall Street Journal reporters and the newspaper’s publisher, Dow Jones, for libel and slander over reporting on a racy book of letters written by some of the most famous people in the world, including Trump and former President Bill Clinton.
In fact, as he was leaving for Scotland on Friday morning he stopped to talk with reporters who kept questioning him about the Epstein files.
When Trump tried to change the subject, the reporters kept returning to how his administration has handled the Epstein case. That’s when Trump said the press really should look into Clinton and Harvard’s president, that he “had nothing to do” with Epstein.
“You ought to be speaking to Larry Summers,” Trump said.
“You ought to be speaking about some of his friends that are hedge fund guys. They’re all over the place. You want to be speaking about Bill Clinton, who went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island. They’re a bunch of sick people,” Trump insisted.
“He didn’t go? According to who? Him! He did host several beauty pageants with Epstein did he not. Epstein pleaded the fifth when asked. Pleaded the fifth when one of his closest friends sent him under age girls for his birthday. Yeah, okay!” an X user said.
As Trump was heading to his Marine 1 helicopter with the reporters still yelling questions about Epstein, the President seemed to say he would release the list but still told reporters to look into Clinton’s relationship with the disgraced financier and convicted sex-trafficker.
“You should focus on Clinton. You should focus on the former President of Harvard. You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys,” Trump said before seeming to say he would release the files, but he may have been referring to the names of the “hedge fund guys.”
“I will give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I sure as hell didn’t,” Trump said.
Bloomberg News reported Friday that Clinton responded to Trump trying to throw him under the bus by saying Trump should release the files.
CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere quoted a person close to former President Clinton as saying, “It’s been 20 years since President Clinton last had contact with Epstein, well before any of his crimes came to light. President Clinton has never been accused of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, when asked about the release of documents last year by the court, we did not and do not object to the unsealing.”
Dovere reports that statement was in response to a question about The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Epstein’s leather-bound birthday book from 2003. Letters from both Clinton and Trump are in the book. Trump has repeatedly denied he wrote the typed letter, which includes a drawing of a naked woman, but the Journal reports his signature is on it.
X user RL Peters questioned the reference to “20 years.” “This was 2010,” she wrote above a photo of Clinton escorting his daughter Chelsea Clinton down the aisle at her wedding. Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislane Maxwell is among the guests.
This X user was a little more direct: “So wait, the Trump administration, the DOJ, FBI, House and Senate Republicans are making all this fuss and creating distractions over the Epstein files to protect Bill Clinton?”
Jennagirl had a response: “You realize he isn’t the only one on the list? They are protecting themselves also. 2 things can be true at once. Trump didn’t go. Many Republicans and Democrats did.”
Trump meantime just could not dodge the controversy which is following him around like a bad stench.
When he arrived in Scotland on Friday, reporters were again waiting for him. He was asked whether he was ever briefed on the Epstein files.
“No, I was never briefed, no,” he insisted, although reports indicate he was briefed by the Justice Department twice in May.
He tried again to divert attention from the scandal.
“I’m focused on making deals and not conspiracy theories that you are. I watch you people, it is so sad. Talk about the success of our country instead of this nonsense you talk about over and over,” he demanded.
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