Journalist Prem Thakker on Sunday flagged a "notable" pattern in President Donald Trump's behavior in the days following Jeffrey Epstein's mysterious 2019 death, part of an analysis raising eight "unanswered" questions about the disgraced financier's demise.
Jeffrey Epstein died Aug. 10, 2019, in his Manhattan jail cell awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging – though guards had falsified watch logs, his cellmate was removed days earlier, and surveillance footage went missing.
Immediately following his death, then-Attorney General Bill Barr appeared to endorse Epstein’s supposed cause of death, expressing his shock that Epstein had died “from an apparent suicide.” However, Trump instead took to social media to suggest that former President Bill Clinton was somehow involved.
Trump was later asked about his social media post in an interview, and said he had “no idea” whether Clinton was involved in Epstein’s death, but did not walk back the suggestion.
“So you have to ask: Did Bill Clinton go to the island?” Trump said. “That's the question. If you find that out, you're going to know a lot.”
Trump would go on to repeat this suggestion, something Thakker flagged as potentially telling.
“While the New York City medical examiner affirmed Barr’s initial claim that the death was a suicide less than a week later, Trump flouted that. Over the course of years, he would continue to suggest Epstein may have been killed, or that something ‘weird’ had gone on,” Thakker wrote.
“The oscillation is notable on its own, given Trump’s ties to Epstein – but no less given he was, again, president at the time. If there were any answers to be had, he perhaps had the highest possibility to find them.”
Trump and Epstein were friends for years, with Trump once calling him "a terrific guy" who liked beautiful women "on the younger side.”
Files and testimony released as part of the broader Epstein investigation have since surfaced additional details about their relationship, including flight logs placing Trump on Epstein's private plane, a 2003 birthday letter bearing Trump's name that referenced a shared "secret," and accounts from Epstein's alleged victims describing encounters with Trump at Epstein's properties, though Trump has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime related to Epstein.
