New photos released from Epstein’s estate show Trump, Bannon, Bill Clinton and others
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Friday released a second batch of images from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate.
The images include pictures of Epstein with a number of high-profile figures, including President Donald Trump, longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, former President Bill Clinton, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, movie director Woody Allen, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson and prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz. They do not appear to show illegal activity by these individuals.
They appeared among 19 photos out of a production that contains more than 95,000 photos.
“It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends,” the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said in a statement on the release. “These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”
Several of the faces in the images are blocked out; the redactions were done by House Democrats before they shared the pictures with the media.
The images of Trump include one featuring a younger Trump posing for a photo with two women on one side and three women on his other side wearing what look to be artificial Hawaiian leis. The faces of the women are redacted. Another photo shows a young Trump standing next to Epstein at an event while speaking to a blond woman, and another shows Trump with a blond woman whose face is redacted.
Clinton appears in another photo posing with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and co-conspirator, who stand to his left. It appears to be signed by Clinton.
Other photos feature Bannon, including one in which Epstein is sitting behind a desk with Bannon sitting on the opposite side and another of the two of them standing together taking a selfie through a mirror. Emails released by the Oversight Committee in November showed frequent correspondence between Bannon and Epstein.
Another image shows Allen sitting on a director’s chair speaking to Epstein, who’s standing next to him. One also shows Allen and Bannon speaking to each other. Allen faced child sexual abuse allegations initially dating to the 1990s, which he has repeatedly denied. On his relationship with Epstein, Allen said in an interview with The Sunday Times published in September, “We never, ever, saw Jeffrey with underage girls. He always had a girlfriend but never an underage girlfriend.”
Two photos released Friday also feature Gates, including one showing him standing with the former Prince Andrew, who was recently stripped of his title because of his relationship with Epstein, and another showing Gates posing outside a small plane with a member of the flight crew.
Still another photo shows Epstein speaking with Dershowitz, while another shows billionaire Branson holding up a notebook while sitting on a beach, with Epstein smiling in the background.
Trump, for his part, has distanced himself in recent months from the friendship he had with Epstein. In July, the president denied writing a letter to Epstein for a birthday album more than two decades ago that included an outline of a naked woman and a “Donald” signature.
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported its existence. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
Clinton’s spokesman Angel Ureña said in a statement in 2019, “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”
In January, Gates told The Wall Street Journal in an interview, “Jeffrey, in retrospect, I was foolish to spend any time with him. And he sort of got time with various people by spending time with other people. So, yes, I think I was quite stupid. I thought it would help me with global health philanthropy. In fact, it failed to do that. It was just a huge mistake.”
Dershowitz was initially named as one of the men who had sex with prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre in her defamation lawsuit against the attorney in 2019. He denied the allegation and later filed a defamation suit against her, but ultimately dropped the litigation after she withdrew her lawsuit and acknowledged she might have made a mistake in identifying him as one of her abusers.
“As I have said from the beginning, I never had sex with Ms. Giuffre,” Dershowitz said in a statement after she dropped her suit. “I have nevertheless come to believe that at the time she accused me she believed what she said. Ms. Giuffre is to be commended for her courage in now stating publicly that she may have been mistaken about me.”
Democrats on the panel had released more than 150 photos and videos of Epstein’s island earlier this month that also were received from his estate. The initial collection showed the outdoor pool area, several bedrooms, bathrooms, a room with a dental chair, and a library with a large desk and a blackboard with the words “power,” “truth,” “music,” “deception,” “intellectual” and “political” written on it, along with some redacted words.
Epstein owned two private islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands — Little Saint James and Great Saint James — where he was accused of sexually abusing girls and young women. He bought Little Saint James in 1998 for $7.95 million and purchased Great Saint James in 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment