Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade says the latest tranche of Jeffrey Epstein files raises more questions for Donald Trump and suggests that the scandal is not done yet.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Monday published a series of new documents secured from the estate of the disgraced financier by subpoena, the centerpiece of which was a 238-page tribute book presented to Epstein on his 50th birthday by his then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell containing notes from friends and well-wishers.
Included among its pages was a bawdy drawing allegedly bearing Trump’s signature, consisting of an imagined dialogue between the two men framed by the silhouette of a naked woman, the existence of which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal in July.
The president has denied sketching the doodle and is suing the WSJ for defamation, seeking $10bn in damages. Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein but has been dogged by questions about their past friendship all summer.
Another revelation from the book seen for the first time on Monday was a photograph of the hedge fund billionaire posing with a large novelty check with the caption: “Epstein and a longtime Mar-a-Lago member joking about selling a ‘fully depreciated’ woman to Donald Trump for $22,500.” The signature on the check does not resemble Trump’s own.
Interviewed by Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday, McQuade described the check photo as “more troubling than the drawing because of what it suggests.”
She continued: “Now, of course, it appears that it was created by some member [of Mar-a-Lago]. It may be a completely fabricated joke, but, you know, people make jokes based on some grain of truth because that’s what makes it funny.
“So I think it raises a lot of questions. I also think the drawing suggests, you know, the drawing itself is sort of bawdy, but it suggests a close relationship with Trump – if it’s authentic…. So I think it raises a lot of questions as to where it’s going.”
Recognizing the need for caution about entertaining unfounded speculation, McQuade told Brzezinski: “I am very cognizant of protecting the identities and the privacy of the survivors here, that’s very important. I’m even cognizant of protecting the identities of subjects of investigation for whom there was insufficient evidence to charge.
“But one thing President Trump could do immediately is to say, in an effort to clear my name once and for all, I hereby direct the Justice Department to disclose every piece of material, whether it’s a document, an image, or a video that includes me. Let’s put that out there and let’s put this scandal to rest.
“He could do that, but he’s not, and why is he not doing it? I think it is for fear that there are things like this, or other things that would cause him embarrassment, if not shame, within his base.”
The Epstein scandal reignited in early July when Trump’s FBI and Justice Department put out a memo advising that the late pedophile left behind no “client list” of influential people to whom he might have trafficked underage girls and that he had died by suicide in his New York City jail cell in August 2019, rejecting conspiracy theories about his possible murder.
But rather than putting the issue to bed, the statement only sparked renewed outrage among the president’s supporters, who had been led to expect more explosive revelations and responded by demanding the government release all of its files on Epstein in full.
Trump has so far resisted doing so and has not succeeded in killing off the story, a source of obvious frustration to him that has seen him label the affair a “hoax” and even rebuke his own voters for obsessing over it.
“It’s really a Democrat hoax, because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” he complained at the White House last week.
“I understand that we were subpoenaed to give files, and I understand we’ve given thousands of pages of files, and I know that no matter what you do, it’s going to keep going.”
In response to the latest developments, he insisted on Tuesday that Epstein was “a dead issue.”
