According to one of Donald Trump’s biographers, the president likely has more worries about the Jeffrey Epstein files that extend well beyond evidence that he engaged in sex acts with teens.
Appearing on MSNBC with host Anna Cabrera, Tim O’Brien, executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, suggested that the files, which are at the center of a battle between the White House and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, could show that Trump has previously undisclosed financial entanglements with the convicted pedophile he doesn’t want the public to see.
O’Brien started off by pointing out the press is more focused on uncovering salacious tales of Trump and Epstein engaging in sexually assaulting teens, while there are hints of Trump and Epstein having mutual financial dealings during the time when they were close.
Regarding Trump’s current travails, he explained, “It's worth reminding your audience that all of this began out of the MAGAsphere. The Epstein conspiracy was promoted by Trump and other members on the far right, and the outrage that began when the DOJ dropped their investigation in July came from the right, initially, not from Democrats. So this has been propelled forward by Trump's own supporters and his own base. And so the question here is, yes, we're getting more details about the nature of his proximity to Epstein, but I don't think that that's the issue that is holding Donald Trump's attention in such a dramatic way, and why he's ordering everyone around him to stonewall.”
“There's two sort of baskets of problems for him here,” he elaborated. “It's either it's going to come out that he was trafficked, that women were trafficked to him by Epstein — there's no evidence of that so far.”
“Trump hasn't been accused of any crimes, but that is out there,” he conceded. “The other piece of it is whether or not he used Epstein for financial services. Epstein moved money all over the world. He helped billionaires like [investor] Leon Black lower their taxes. And I think that's an under-explored avenue in all of this. That is possibly another thing that Trump is worried about.”