What did they know, guess, or suspect, and what did they say about it?
If I had one question each I could ask Bill and Hillary Clinton it would be: Mr. Clinton, how could you be friends with someone like Jeffrey Epstein? And Mrs. Clinton, what did you have to say to your husband about it, if anything?
My interest is, as always, the female collaborators for male bad behavior, because we forget the perpetrators’ enablers. Not just the Ghislaine Maxwells. These guys couldn’t get away with what they do without a lot of female support.
It’s collaboration when we say nothing, do nothing, know nothing.
I’ve written about a woman who collaborated with a likely illegal pornophile by not reporting him. She was brave enough to tell her story on Quora, under her real name, and she allegedly used his real name and warned women in the San Francisco area to beware of him. She told horrific stories of the kind of porn he consumed and how suspiciously illegal it looked.
But she never reported him to the authorities.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s role in Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita empire is well known, and now she cools her aristocratic heels in a jail cell.
She’s the most obvious female collaborator, but what about others? The wives of the rich and powerful men whose husbands rode Epstein’s planes, and may have ridden them themselves, when this high-flying financier could give their hubbies access to underage girls? What did they know, and did they tolerate it?
Da Gatesez
Melinda Gates was not happy with hubby Bill’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and she made her opinion well-understood.
She divorced Gates in 2021, citing among other reasons his friendship with Epstein, something Bill Gates says he ‘now regrets’. She said she met Epstein once, out of sheer curiosity, and regretted it immediately, finding him ‘pure evil’.
Bill Gates has no excuse for ignorance. He met Epstein in 2011, five years after his first prostitution solicitation conviction. He and Epstein formed a partnership based on Epstein’s claims he could bring trillions of dollars to Gates’s humanitarian projects. His foundation board members were disturbed to discover they were working with a registered sex offender and pushed back on Gates’s personal alliance.
Gates never flew the Lolita Express as numerous Internet memes have alleged, nor did he visit the island. But he was good friends with Epstein
knowledgeably post-conviction, meeting with him many times, sometimes closed-door, and once spent an overnight with him.
Melinda Gates, an advocate for women and young girls, was not amused.
She began talking to divorce lawyers in 2019, shortly before Epstein’s suicide and around the time the media began exposing her husband’s friendship and business dealings with him.
She’d expressed strong reservations about Epstein to Bill since 2013, but he listened neither to her nor his board members.
Melinda Gates was not a ‘good little wifey’.
Those horndog Democrats!
It’s curious how many politicians associated with the Democratic Party were friends with Epstein and Maxwell, and I include Donald Trump because back in the ‘90s and early 2000s, before he and Epstein had a falling out, the future Republican president identified as a Democrat.
Epstein donated money to several Democratic politicians including Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, John Glenn, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Chuck Schumer. And oh yeah, Hillary Clinton!
He’s also donated to some Republicans, including George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole and Robert Packwood.
But I can’t find any Republicans personally or closely linked to him, the Lolita Express or his multiple molest-a-thon residences.
To be fair, not all Epstein’s donation recipients - perhaps most - likely knew Epstein was a sex trafficker and pervert. Some, like Senator John Kerry, had never met him and perhaps wouldn’t have even known Epstein’s name, who wasn’t a household name yet. Several gave his donations to charity once the truth about him came out, as many did after Harvey Weinstein’s fall.
While politicians might be excused for not knowing the names and repuations of every donor they have - and they must have some real doozies whose sins are never known because they’re not celebrities - more prominent politicians, like Trump and the Clintons, might have known or at least suspected that Epstein wasn’t squeaky-clean years before the feds came down on him. Even before Epstein became a registered sex offender, having done time for soliciting sex with a minor back in the mid-2000s and gotten off easy by cutting a ‘sweetheart deal’, it’s hard to believe any of them believed Epstein’s private life, of which they were all a part, was on the up and up. Authorities ignored the evidence Epstein had abused dozens of women by that time, and so too, I suspect, did many of Epstein’s associates.
What Clinton and Trump, and their wives, knew about Epstein is much foggier. All ended their connections with him before his first arrest.
Da Clintonz
Bill’s plane trips occurred before Epstein’s 2006 arrest.
While it’s indisputable Clinton rode Epstein’s plane, what’s less certain is whether he ever visited Lolita Island. Some say he did, but the location is missing on the plane’s manifests for 26 documented Clinton trips (Clinton initially claimed only four). Not everyone who rode it ever visited the island or Epstein’s other underage brothels. And Clinton could have gotten there on his own.
If Clinton never visited any of Epstein’s personal brothels, and if nothing happened on the plane (the pilot testified he never saw anything sexual on the plane, ever), it’s possible Bill Clinton is clean. But those rumors he was on Lolita Island persist. And with disinformation, conspiracy theories, and ‘deep fakes’ so common, and Bill’s own penchant for lying, who really knows?
The unexplained part is how ignorant anyone could be if they lived in the same neighborhood or region as Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein’s proclivities weren’t a secret to his neighbors. Bestselling author James Patterson, who lived near Epstein in Palm Beach, wrote a book about him and noted that the neighbors knew something wasn’t right. Patterson had heard ‘hair-raising’ stories about him for years, and many had seen young women coming and going from Epstein’s property. And this was all before Epstein’s first arrest.
The locals on St. James Island called his island seraglio ‘Pedophile Island’. And if Donald Trump knew about Epstein’s fondness for very young women, it’s a sure bet many others did too. The wives had to have heard about all of this, and who knows what they may have seen or experienced they haven’t spoken about. New York is the biggest small town in America where everyone knows everything about everyone else, if they care to know. The Clintons moved there in 2000, so Hillary could campaign for the Senate. Bill Clinton says he briefly visited Epstein’s Manhattan apartment once, but in the company of staff and Secret Service agents.
Maybe it’s on the videos Epstein made. He installed pinhole cameras all over his properties for video surveillance and recording of sexual imbroglios for later potential blackmail. But we don’t know if he had the goods on Clinton. So did Bill or didn’t Bill? And how did even pre-arrest Epstein escape Hillary Clinton’s notice, a highly intelligent, experienced political activist and budding politician who, like Melinda Gates, had been an advocate for women and children, who would have had a finer-tuned sexual predation detector? Especially Hillary Clinton, the target of so much misogyny?
When powerful men victimize others, it’s often an open secret, like with Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. Didn’t they hear the rumors? Wonder about stories of young women coming and going from Epstein’s Manhattan address? Word gets around with rich and powerful men who avail themselves of the pleasures denied the less monied and well-connected. The Clintons and Trumps were friends before Hillary decided to run for the presidency (Trump had donated to her Senate runs). Did Hillary Clinton detect nothing about Epstein? And if she did notice anything weird or ‘off’ about him, did she investigate further? Or was she blinded by the Benjamins?
Or did she just not want to think about what else her husband might have gotten up to?
Hillary Clinton, as we all know, has a loooooong history of ignoring her husband’s sexual peccadilloes, and there’s at least one credible-sounding rape allegation against him as governor of Arkansas, although Clinton was never reported or charged. There’s also the very ugly fact of her successfully defending a rapist early in her legal career out of obligation, and it’s clear she believed he was guilty.
She can compartmentalize her brain when necessary.
If Hillary Clinton has any strong opinions about Jeffrey Epstein, and her husband’s friendship with him, I can’t find them from the famously private former senator and presidential candidate. There are allegations from an IT director that both Clintons were guests at Epstein’s New Mexico address (where he wasn’t required to register as a sex offender) but no other witnesses or documentable evidence.
Da Trumpsez
I can’t find indication any of Donald Trump’s wives had a problem with Epstein, and they all hobnobbed with their Palm Beach neighbor and his buddygirl.
Ivana used to go shopping with Ghislaine Maxwell. Marla Maples and her daughter Tiffany rode the plane in 1994, and Epstein was a guest at Trump’s and Maples’s wedding in 1993. (Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.)
I’m not sure if any of Trump’s wives visited any of Epstein’s home brothels, and I wouldn’t be surprised if wives overall weren’t welcome.
Donald Trump pretty certainly knew or at least suspected what Epstein was about. He commented favorably on how Epstein ‘leaned toward younger women’. Trump and Epstein have been accused, not in a court of law, of allegedly raping a 13-year-old at Epstein’s Manhattan residence. The case was dismissed because it didn’t raise valid claims under federal law. The Jane Doe filed a federal lawsuit but never pursued it, and alleged she and her family had been subjected to death threats by Trump (none of which has ever been proven in court).
After Epstein was arrested in 2019, Trump offered no opinions, and certainly no criticism, of the charges against Epstein sexually abusing young girls. He claimed he was ‘never a fan’ of Epstein (not true, their friendship has been clearly documented), but he wished well arrested madam Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump’s wives may not have witnessed anything sexual themselves, and may not have seen the young girls, but trophy wives pretty much understand their husbands won’t be faithful to them. All of them knew he was a tomcat. And all of them lived near Epstein and were part of the community and culture that saw a lot but spoke very little, at least publicly.
Good little wifeys
It’s important to remember that the Clintons and all the Trumps were friendly with Jeffrey Epstein before his arrest. But if the police ignored evidence Epstein was molesting young girls at that time, it wasn’t much of a secret.
People see things, but they don’t say anything. They don’t talk about it with anyone who can investigate. They don’t want trouble with their neighbors, especially powerful ones. They might pretend they’re not seeing what they don’t want to see. Epstein’s butler handled making sure the girls got paid when they came came over, and claims he didn’t think anything of having to hand over money to them for massages, didn’t think anything was illegal and was ‘shocked’ when police showed up. When asked by an attorney whether he’d wondered if any of this constituted unusual behavior, the man replied, “It’s not my job.”
Human denial is powerful, especially when the perpetrator is the hand that feeds you. It’s why HR is useless when the CEO is the accused horndog and he signs her paycheck. Even if you hear the rumors, even if you see attractive young women coming and going and hear stories about ‘massages’, <snicker snicker> and especially if your husband is a close friend or at least an associate of Epstein, maybe you tell yourself stories about what’s really going on so you can sleep at night. And with your husband.
But it’s what makes many indirectly complicit, when they refuse to see what they see, after they’ve heard the ‘hair-raising’ stories.
Melinda Gates wasn’t a good little wifey, but she had the evidence of Epstein’s sex offender registration to wave under her husband’s nose. Trump’s three wives were social with Epstein and Maxwell, and Melania was married to him when Epstein was first arrested. So if she didn’t know about his pedo associations before, she certainly did when he was splashed across the news.
Neither Trump nor Clinton have been personally implicated in the worst of Epstein’s sordid affair. The stories swirl, including the rape allegations by Epstein and Trump from one alleged then-underage girl, but since she didn’t pursue it in court we may never know the truth.
Maybe she’ll spill after Trump dies. Or not.
Hillary Clinton has nothing, seemingly, to say about Jeffrey Epstein, and Melania Trump has never been much interested in anything, as far as I can tell, besides staying as far away from her husband as she can. In one photo at Mar-A-Lago when she was engaged to Trump, even then she looked like she didn’t want to be near him. As a global politician, Hillary Clinton is the most suspect for knowing or suspecting something wasn’t right with Epstein, and given her propensity for sticking with her tomcat husband no matter what, she’s the good little wifey I wonder the most about. (No word on whether she donated her Epstein money to charities).
Trump’s good little wifeys, on the other hand, were less empowered to do anything or say anything. He wouldn’t have listened anyway, and might have retaliated against them for even daring to do so. Such is the life of a trophy wife, who gives up her power to live a life she can’t afford on her own, especially a failed runway model like Melania Knauss.
It makes them every bit as complicit, because they chose the life they married. In the end, they’re unimportant. If Donald and Melania ever divorce, she’ll sink into obscurity like her predecessors. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, will always remain under suspicion. What did she know? What did she suspect? Did she say anything to her husband? And why does she say nothing about Epstein? Because it will draw attention once again to just how deeply involved with Epstein and Maxwell both of them were?
Women will decide, not men, when sick crimes like sex trafficking, pedophilia, a viciously misogynist pornography industry, and sexual assault overall will end. The only powerful man in Epstein’s toxic orbit who suffered consequences was Bill Gates, although his own wayward dick with Microsoft staffers contributed as well. It’s unconscionable that the Clintons and the Trumps - all of them - knew fuck all about Epstein before his first arrest. Bill and Donald may be lying about never having visited the infamous island but we’ll never know, until people start swearing under oath or the mysterious videos are released.
If ever.
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