OP ED
On March 6, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, read into the Congressional Record a report that focused on alleged ties between President Donald Trump, convicted sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, and Russia.
Whitehouse stated he has learned that not all cases are made with a “smoking gun.”
“As a lawyer, I know that you can prove cases with circumstantial evidence,” Whitehouse said. “Here, we have links with Russia, girls from Russia, money from Russia, people from Russia, deals and transactions with Russia, contacts with people with Russian intelligence, news reports exploring contacts with Russia, and an official investigation from the government of Poland into an Epstein-Russia connection. Sometimes, with a little imagination, you have the chance to see what’s right in front of your face.”
Whitehouse added, “He could have been working with an intelligence agency or several intelligence agencies. He could have just been what the Russians call a useful idiot. We may never know. What we do know is that a significant number of powerful men, our current president, some of his cabinet secretaries, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others were very mixed up with Epstein at different times, and Epstein seems to have been very mixed up with Russia.”
Whitehouse began his report stating it was the spring of 2019, and public and media interest in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russia’s election interference operation reached a fever pitch.
Ahead of the Mueller report’s release, Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, issued a letter to Congress purporting to summarize the report’s findings. The letter declared that Russia and the Trump campaign did not collude to steal the election. Whitehouse said by the time the Mueller report was issued the month after Barr’s letter, his message had been obscured.
Much about Epstein remains unknown, but the survivors who have come forward and the millions of emails released through the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act have shed some light on the operation of the late financier’s global pedophile ring.
Whitehouse said Epstein was, of course, known for his parties, which he insisted on hosting in his various mansions where he could completely control the environment. Many of Epstein’s victims have said they believe they were recorded.
He said Virginia Giuffre wrote in her posthumous memoir that Epstein had a huge library of videotapes and a room in his New York home where monitors displayed real-time surveillance footage from his properties. Quote, “He explicitly talked about using me and what I’d been forced to do with certain men as a form of blackmail so these men would owe him favors,” she wrote.
Whitehouse said another survivor said Epstein once walked her through his mansion, pointing out pinhole sized cameras. He boasted that they were in every room.
According to Epstein’s emails, in 2014, he directed a staffer to procure hidden cameras, which were installed in tissue boxes.
The New York Times obtained photos of the interior of Epstein’s New York mansion, which show a camera installed near the ceiling of the master bedroom and another along the molding of an adjoining room. The Times also spotted cameras near a suite of bathrooms on the same floor as Epstein’s bedroom.
At some point in the 1980s, Epstein struck up a friendship with Trump. Whitehouse said there are many photos of the two men together on the New York and Palm Beach party circuits throughout the 1990s. He added, Trump now famously said in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with.”
Whitehouse said Maxwell recruited 16-year-old Giuffre from the spa at Mar-a-Lago. Giuffre was abused by Epstein and trafficked to other men in Epstein’s orbit.
In 1997, the UK tabloid, The Daily Mirror, claimed that Trump was dating a 20-year-old British model and that Ghislaine Maxwell had introduced them at a party. The tabloid noted, Trump met the model at a party in Manhattan.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight, the model stated, “Ghislaine Maxwell did introduce me to him,” that is Trump. “And she introduced me to him with a clear message of my being with him in the same way that she had trafficked me and brought me to Jeffrey Epstein.”
Whitehouse said according to the Daily Beast, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta, is once said to have claimed Epstein quote “belonged to intelligence and that the decision to let him off easy in 2008 was made above his pay grade.”
The Prime Minister of Poland, a country that has extensive experience with Russian intelligence operations, has opened an investigation into potential links between Epstein and Russian intelligence.
According to alleged anonymous intelligence sources published in the British tabloid, The Daily Mail, last month, some believe, and I’m (Whitehouse) quoting here, "Jeffrey Epstein was running the world’s largest honey trap operation on behalf of the KGB when he procured women for his network of associates.”
Whitehouse added Epstein struck up a relationship with Sergey Belyakov, Russia’s former deputy minister of economic development and a graduate of the FSB, Russia’s Intelligence Academy.
“Epstein introduced him to contacts like Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, who would go on to give $10 million to the super PAC that helped elect now Vice President JD Vance to the Senate in 2022,” Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse said one of the great forces that Washington runs on is normalcy bias.
“What I’ve done here today is lay out the facts as documented by the many brave survivors who have come forward at great personal risk, as well as by the many journalists who have tried, and continue to try, to get to the truth,” he said.
