'That was a confession': Ex-insider claims 'crime happened' with Trump and Epstein

Donald Trump's former "trusted operative" on Sunday made the case that the president is indeed hiding something potentially criminal with his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump has categorically denied all allegations of inappropriate behavior as it relates to underage girls, but that isn't stopping Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump who worked with the White House team on behind-the-scenes matters, and has recently been speaking out about Trump's actions on Substack.

Recently, Parnas accused Trump of suffering mental decline.

Now, Parnas is going a step further in his allegations.

"As I sit here this morning writing this letter, I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time. Not rage. Not even shock. Just a deep, nauseating disgust," Parnas wrote. "Disgust—not only at what Donald Trump has done, but at the people now lining up to excuse it, minimize it, or pretend it never happened."

Noting the refusal of the media to make a determination that Trump himself committed a crime, Parnas wrote, "Over the past week, I’ve watched pundits, influencers, and media figures trip over themselves to 'fact check' the Wall Street Journal bombshell that Donald Trump personally sent Jeffrey Epstein a birthday letter—handwritten, no less—while trying to distance him from one of the most notorious pedophiles in modern history."

"They say: 'Well, we have no direct evidence Trump did anything wrong with Epstein'," he added. "Let me say this as clearly as I can—as a father of seven, including three daughters: You don’t need to watch someone commit the act to know the crime happened."

Parnas goes on to cite the E. Jean Carroll case, saying, "If the sky is rumbling with thunder, and you hear the rain pounding—and you walk outside to find everything soaking wet—you don’t need to see the storm to know it rained."

"You need common sense. And common sense, combined with mountains of circumstantial, legal, and spoken-word evidence, tells us what we’ve known all along: Donald J. Trump is a sexual predator," Parnas wrote. "This is not opinion. This is not theory. It’s fact. In 2023, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse by a New York jury in the case brought by E. Jean Carroll. He appealed. He lost."

Parnas also reminded readers about Trump's infamous "Access Hollywood" comments, which saw Trump talking about "grabbing" women without their consent. Of those comments, Parnas wrote, "That wasn’t locker room talk. That was a confession."

Parnas went on to say, "Let’s talk about Katie Johnson, a girl who alleged that Trump and Epstein sexually assaulted her when she was 13 years old."

"She filed a lawsuit. She was threatened," the ex-insider wrote. "And then her case quietly disappeared. But ask yourself—Trump sues everyone. He sued the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion. But he’s never sued Katie Johnson. Because the one thing Trump can’t afford is discovery."

Parnas lays out the evidence as he sees it, adding, "Let’s not forget: Jeffrey Epstein died under Donald Trump’s DOJ."

"Under Attorney General Bill Barr. And I say this as someone who’s been prosecuted by Bill Barr’s DOJ: That department wasn’t interested in uncovering the truth. It was interested in burying it," he wrote. "What if Epstein’s arrest was never meant to bring him to justice—but to silence him permanently? And who else, besides Donald Trump, had something to lose? Is this why we’re seeing people like Pam Bondi and Kash Patel work overtime to shut down any real investigation into the Trump–Epstein nexus?"

He then asked, "What else are they protecting?"

While the White House hasn't responded to Parnas' claims, Trump and his administration have flatly rejected all criminal allegations against the Republican president and his advisers.

Read the full Substack post here.