Jamie Raskin

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With less than a week to go until the midterm elections, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have made it clear that in the event of a small, medium, or tsunami-size blue wave, they will be using their newfound power to go after Donald Trump for crimes he allegedly committed “alongside, and in coordination with, the most infamous sex trafficker in history,” a.k.a. Jeffrey Epstein.

On Monday, Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on the committee, called for a special counsel to be appointed to “investigate Epstein’s co-conspirators” and the administration’s “cover-up” of Trump’s involvement. He also released a 52-page report written by Democratic staffers that accuses the president of being “an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s” and alleges that “the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it.”

While much of the report’s allegations were previously made public, they nevertheless paint an even more damning picture of the president of the United States than the one people had in their heads after he was heard bragging about groping women (generally), was accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women (specifically), and was found liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll. (Trump has long denied sexual-misconduct claims.)

A spokesperson for the White House told MS Now that “none” of the allegations in the report are true, and that it is “nothing more than a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans from the surging Republican momentum driven by President Trump’s historic achievements.”

Here are some of the most shocking allegations in the report:

The report alleges that there are 11 women who “tie Donald Trump to Epstein’s sex trafficking operations,” five of whom “have directly accused Trump of raping or sexually assaulting them in Epstein’s company or direct physical presence.”

The five women are Beatrice Keul, who alleges, per the report, that “Trump violently raped her at a November 1993 pageant, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City”; Stacey Williams, who “offered a detailed and corroborated account of Trump sexually assaulting her in the early 1990s while she was alone with him and Epstein in an office at Trump Tower”; Jill Harth, who has accused Trump of “violently sexually assaulting her and another woman in 1994 at a Mar-a-Lago party where Epstein and Trump were the only men present”; Katie Johnson, who “gave FBI a detailed account of her repeated rape at the hands of Trump and Epstein in 1994 in New York City when she was a minor”; and a Jane Doe, who gave the FBI a “graphic account of Trump assaulting her when she was a minor in the mid-1980s in New York.”

In conversations with committee staffers, Keul alleged that the assault caused bleeding and bruising, and that afterward, “Trump sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated his promises to arrange for a visa and NYU admission, and made her promise she would keep quiet, saying, ‘[T]he show must go on.’” Keul also said that Epstein told her he was “Don’s best friend.”

The report recounts that in April 2016, a lawsuit was filed by a woman using the pseudonym “Katie Johnson,” who alleged that she was raped by both Trump and Epstein when she was 13 years old. According to an excerpt of an FBI complaint included in the report, Johnson was ordered by both men not to reveal what happened. They allegedly told her that if she didn’t comply, “we’ll make you disappear like [redacted].”

Per the report, a victim going by Jane Doe alleged that Epstein introduced her to Trump when she was 14 years old, saying, “This is a good one, huh,” to which Trump allegedly responded “yes.” Doe testified against Ghislane Maxwell during her criminal trial, describing to jurors the “abuse and sex acts that occurred at Epstein’s properties in Florida, New Mexico, and New York, sometimes involving Maxwell and groups of people.”

But according to the report, when he visited Maxwell in prison, then–Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche very pointedly did not want to discuss Doe’s claim, at one point saying, “Yeah, yeah, I don’t want to get into … he said, she said,” to which Maxwell responded, “Absolutely, not. I’m not — I don’t want to go there either” and, even more explicitly, “I’m not going to do that.”

“The whole point of the conversation,” according to the report, “was not to uncover information but to create a conspiracy of silence and strategically deter Ghislaine Maxwell from sharing information that was not public at the time regarding the relationship between Trump and Epstein.” The report continued:

Attorney General Blanche’s actions, while perhaps not surprising given his former role as Donald Trump’s defense attorney, potentially constituted witness tampering and obstruction of an official proceeding — serious felonies. At the time of this interview, the House Oversight Committee had scheduled an interview with Maxwell for August 11 — less than two weeks later. Blanche’s apparent instructions not to discuss a specific Epstein victim, and how that victim could implicate Donald Trump, could easily run afoul of 18 U.S.C. § 1512, which forbids hindering or delaying the communication of information relating to the potential commission of a federal offense to a law enforcement officer, as well as corruptly influencing the testimony of any person in an official proceeding — such as a congressional interview and investigation.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said the report is “nothing more than a last-ditch effort by House Judiciary Democrats to mislead the public.”

According to the report, a former longtime assistant to Epstein “credibly contradicted” the claim by Paolo Zampolli — who once owned a modeling agency and until recently served as an official in the Trump administration — that he introduced Melania to Trump. Instead, the former assistant has alleged, “Epstein introduced Melania Trump to Donald Trump.” (The report also notes that “Zampolli’s former partner of 19 years, the Brazilian model Amanda Ungaro … has asserted Zampolli was never “the one introducing [sic] Melania to Trump. It was Jeffrey Epstein … That’s how she met Donald Trump.”)

Last April, the First Lady put out a statement saying, “I’ve never been friends with Epstein. I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, [Ghislaine] Maxwell … Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.” It was not clear at the time what prompted her to make the statement; her husband said he hadn’t known she was going to do so, and “many” White House staffers were reportedly “caught off guard.”

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