As yet another survivor of Jeffrey Epstein comes forward, the spotlight on his friendship with fellow sexual predator Donald Trump is getting brighter. Jennifer Araoz told NBC News about how she was recruited at 14 by an Epstein associate, groomed, and ultimately raped by Epstein at 15.
Araoz's story has been confirmed by several friends and her mother to whom she eventually confessed. Her mother attests to the drastic change in her daughter following the rape. She told NBC that she "noticed a change in her daughter's behavior and appearance around 2002," the time of the attack, when she withdrew, lost weight, and became angry. "I was really scared," the mother said. "She was so anxious but I couldn't figure out why. The anxiety got so bad that she couldn't function and I urged her to go to a doctor."
That's the same year, 2002, Trump told New York Magazine "I've known Jeff [Epstein] for 15 years. Terrific guy. […] He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Epstein's proclivities were a joke to Trump, even Roger Stone writing in his Clinton attack book The Clinton's War on Women. He recalled Trump joking with a Mar-a-Lago member about a visit to Epstein's Palm Beach home, and how "The swimming pool was filled with beautiful young girls. […] 'How nice,' I thought, 'he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.'"
That anecdote is related in a story from The New York Times, which includes another damning interaction between the two in 1992, related by George Houraney, a Florida-based businessman who ran American Dream Enterprise. Trump recruited him to provide the "entertainment" for an exclusive party at Mar-a-Lago, a "calendar girl" competition. "I arranged to have some contestants fly in," Houraney told the Times in an interview on Monday. "At the very first party, I said, 'Who's coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.' It was him and Epstein. […] I said, 'Donald, this is supposed to be a party with V.I.P.s. You're telling me it's you and Epstein?'"
Houraney said he warned Trump about Epstein, and was blown off. "I said, 'Look, Donald, I know Jeff really well, I can't have him going after younger girls.'" He said Trump dismissed his concerns, saying to Houraney "Look I'm putting my name on this. I wouldn't put my name on it and have a scandal." And the fact that Houraney "pretty much had to ban Jeff from my events—Trump didn't care about that."
Trump did eventually break with Epstein, as he said in a press availability Tuesday. He said he "knew [Epstein] like everybody in Palm Beach knew him," but that "I had a falling out with him. I haven't spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you." Trump didn't just know Epstein like everyone in town knew him. He was clearly a friend. Epstein even claims that he was the one that introduced Trump to current wife Melania. But the photographs and contemporary reporting show that Trump and Epstein were very tight throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, as the party for the two with 28 "calendar girls" at Mar-a-Lago attests.
The nature of the "falling out" Trump had with Epstein isn't publicly known, but rumors are that was the result of "a failed business arrangement between them." Trump wouldn't break off a friendship over a little thing like the criminal sexual perversity of his friend, after all. The Times reports that "the relationship with Mr. Trump turned so toxic that Mr. Epstein at one point told friends that he blamed Mr. Trump for his legal problems with the Palm Beach County police." So it had to have been about money. But it's also about Trump's political ambition. Because once he started thinking about entering the presidential primary he "appeared fully aware of what a liability his onetime Palm Beach pal had become," and became intent on how he could exploit it because of Epstein's connection to the Clintons.
We're talking about Trump here, who right now, as pr*sident, is hosting a stripper golf tournament at one of his properties. The strippers aren't golfing, to be clear. They're going to be sold in an "auction" the night before the tournament and will serve as caddies.
The man occupying the Oval Office is a sexual predator and the entire world has known it for years. The Russians may or may not be blackmailing him over it. Jeffrey Epstein knows it and the nearly two dozen women who've survived his assaults know it. Maybe the trove of materials prosecutors are retrieving from Epstein will finally force the traditional media and political establishment to deal with that fact.