“I wish her well” says Donald Trump to Ghislaine Maxwell in 2020

Earlier this week a journalist asked President Donald Trump about his thoughts on Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest and whether or not he thought she would expose powerful men. Considering Trump has been tied to Maxwell and her partner Jeffrey Epstein in multiple ways this could have been a tricky question to answer.

However, the president still managed to answer in an unexpected way saying, “I wish her well,” which, while annoyingly not answering the question, also isn’t what you should be saying about a suspected sex trafficker of minors.

The president started his response by saying he knew nothing about the situation, but that he knew “they lived in Palm Beach” and he lived there too. He also claimed to have no idea about the “situation with Prince Andrew”.

There’s a number of reasons to be skeptical of Trump’s response, so let’s take a look at them. Keep in mind, while most of these connections are to Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell has been extremely close with Epstein both personally and professionally since the early 1990s and very frequently traveled with him.

Photo proof

Donald Trump has been attempting to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein for a while now, as have pretty much all of Epstein’s old connections. It’s just the smart thing to try and do.

However, Donald Trump has rather publicly been tied to both Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Numerous photos of Trump with the alleged sexual offenders exist all over the internet at various kinds of gatherings. A number of these images also include Melania.

Trump did ban Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after an incident involving a member’s underage daughter. When asked about the incident Donald Trump responded: “Something along those lines happened.” Could this mean they weren’t as close as everyone thought?

Trump on Epstein in 2002

In 2002 New York Magazine wrote a profile on Jeffrey Epstein where Trump was interviewed, and Trump had a very glowing assessment of Epstein, which even seems to hold an implication Donald Trump knew about at least some of Epstein’s illegal proclivities. However, the statement is vague enough it’s by no means damning.

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen 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. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” said Trump to the magazine.

A party of two

George Houraney, a prominent businessman in Florida, reports that in 1992 Donald Trump asked Houraney to put together a “calendar girl competition”. One assumes this was supposedly something like a beauty pageant, though we have no way of knowing.

Houraney says he flew 28 girls into Trump’s exclusive Palm Beach club. Shortly before the first party he asked Donald Trump who was invited – Trump said it was just himself and Jeffrey Epstein. Houraney was shocked.

The businessman says his response was, “Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?” He did not want his name attached to something he believed could become a scandal.

Mark Epstein

Mark Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, has also confirmed in interviews that Trump has flown on Jeffrey Epstein’s private planes “numerous times”. Mark appears to have only been on one of these flights, but the released flight logs of Epstein’s private plane corroborate this claim.

The logs report Trump was on Epstein’s plane in 1997. It’s also believed Epstein has flown on one of Trump’s planes at least once, though there is no public documentation of this.

Mark has also been quoted saying, “They were good friends. I know [Trump] is trying to distance himself, but they were.”

Trump’s response

All of these bits of information are easily found with a few simple Google searches, which means it’s highly likely there are far more public pieces of proof indicating just how close Donald Trump really was to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Of course, none of this is proof Trump knew about any crimes the two were committing, but it certainly doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to believe he did.

Knowing these things makes Donald Trump’s claims about not being familiar with the circumstances of Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest ring hollow. Though, it certainly explains why he “wishes her well” – they’ve been friends for years.