Welcome back to The Red Letter.
What’s always disturbed me about the Jeffrey Epstein story—what’s honestly made it feel hopeless at times—is how many people knew he was a pervert and looked the other way. They weren’t duped. They weren’t naive. They just didn’t care.
But there were others: the society women. The Ivy League academics. The philanthropists and professionals who kept showing up at his dinners after he served time in 2008 for soliciting a minor for prostitution, as if a minor could be a prostitute. They helped launder his reputation. They enabled him. And so did the staff who stayed on—cooking, cleaning, scheduling—while girls were trafficked upstairs.
And it’s hard to argue that President Trump wasn’t one of them.
He was close friends with Epstein at the height of the sex trafficking operation. In Palm Beach—one of the smallest, nosiest towns in America—where everyone knows everyone’s business. They literally make TV shows about it. (See: Palm Royale with Kristen Wiig.)
Trump and Epstein swam in the same circles in Palm Beach and the Upper East Side. There are photos. There are party lists. There are gifts. The are flights logs. And more than 10 entries for Trump in the little black book.
When Trump denied a Wall Street Journal report that he’d given Epstein a birthday letter shaped like a naked woman—signed “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret”—I wasn’t surprised. The letter was creepy and coded, likely a wink at the same underage “secrets” Epstein shared with his guests. It read exactly like the kind of thing Ghislaine Maxwell would’ve encouraged.
[The rest is for paying subscribers…]
Inside the disturbing song Maxwell commissioned 10 years earlier for Epstein’s 40th birthday—and how she groomed the elites as much as the victims.
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Red Letter to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
