WorldNetDaily continued to be bothered by the resurgent Jeffrey Epstein scandal, though it has engaged in less defense and deflection on President Trump’s behalf than other ConWeb outlets. An anonymously written Aug. 6 article stated:
A dinner at the vice president’s residence scheduled for Wednesday evening is being described as a strategy session to discuss how the Trump administration should handle the ongoing controversy surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files.
According to Fox News, attendees will include Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. The latter recently spent two days interviewing convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is also expected to be in attendance, according to sources familiar with the confab.
News of the dinner was first reported by CNN. It comes after weeks of unsuccessful attempts by senior Trump officials to quell mounting public pressure, from both Republicans and Democrats, to release more information related to the Epstein investigation.
The controversy grew exponentially after the release of a Justice Department memo July 7 noting that no new information about Epstein would be released. Soon afterward, news broke that Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino was considering resigning over how the issue was handled.
[…]News of the vice president’s dinner prompted fresh concerns from family members of Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who committed suicide earlier this year.
Despite taking this story from Fox News, WND didn’t note that Fox News has been working to downplay the Epstein scandal to protect Trump.
An Aug. 10 article by Joe Kovacs noted threats against Ghislaine Maxwell:
Citing threats to the life of Jeffrey Epstein’s incarcerated paramour Ghislaine Maxwell, federal officials with the Bureau of Prisons have deployed special operations and counterterrorism forces to the Texas jail housing her.
“There have been death threats received,” a source close to the investigation toldthe New York Sun.
“They are focused on the outside looking in, as opposed to the happenings inside the camp.”
[…]The BOP houses a large number of infamous inmates at some of America’s most secure facilities, including the ignominious supermax prison in Colorado.
“But it is highly unusual for the bureau to need to protect an inmate at a minimum-security prison camp whose most prominent current inmates, prior to Maxwell’s arrival, are a ‘Real Housewife,’ Jen Shah, and the Theranos fraudster, Elizabeth Holmes,” the Sun reports.
Kovacs made sure to sneak a little deflction into the mix:
Meanwhile, appearing on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News Channel, Vice President JD Vance said of the Epstein case: “I laugh at the Democrats who are now all of a sudden so interested in the Epstein files. For four years Joe Biden and the Democrats did absolutely nothing about this story.”
“We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with left-wing politicians and billionaires, and now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this, and yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration which did nothing for four years.”
Leo Zacky used an Aug. 23 column to take the Trump administration to task for trying to bury the scandal:
When voters make their choices, they are putting their sacred trust in their chosen leaders in the hopes they will act in everyone’s best interests. Once a big lie is told, and eventually exposed, it is impossible to deny the fib and act as if it never happened. When the trust is broken, it is nearly impossible for an elected leader to earn it back, and is sometimes the endpoint of a career.
Although he may not realize it, President Trump is at such a moment. He made a campaign promise to make public all of the Jeffrey Epstein files including the infamous client list. Members of the mainstream media had gossiped and theorized for years whose names could be in the “little black book.” In that time, names such as Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton were leaked out to feed the ever-growing frenzy of this story.
Now the Trump administration had done a complete 180-degree flip, saying there never was a client list, nothing to see here.
The Epstein case is not akin to Heidi Fleiss or the Mayflower Madam. This is much more serious than the uber rich-and-famous looking for a “good time” on a weekend. These were underaged girls that were recruited, coerced and entrapped by a man with almost no past. There is a reason pedophilia is one of most reviled crimes in American society. Even prison inmates serving time have zero tolerance for “pedos” on the inside.
Zacky also happens to be running for California governor, so he slipped in a little stump speech:
Voters of all political parties have lost faith because they feel they cannot trust the person they are voting for. And I don’t blame them for feeling this way. It is why I decided to step up to run for governor of California. I am not a career politician, and my word has been my bond my entire life.
I will defend our cities and communities from the most vile among us – those that would harm and sexualize our children. With a stroke of a pen, those monsters will stay behind bars where they belong. I will support law enforcement on our borders in their battle against human trafficking and child exploitation. I will fight to prevent the next Jeffrey Epstein and his ilk from ever rising up again within our society.
And that, you can quote me as a promise!
A Sept. 3 article by Kovacs noted:
Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse announced on Wednesday they’re preparing their own list of high-profile names who allegedly sexually abused them, and one of the victims indicated Donald Trump was the pedophile’s “biggest brag forever” when it came to friendship, though she did not suggest the president was among the perpetrators.
“Let me announce now,” said Lisa Phillips, a model brought to Epstein’s Caribbean island in 2000, “several of us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list of names. We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world. And it will be done by survivors and for survivors, no one else is involved. Stay tuned for more details on that.”
In an effort to drag non-Trump folks into it, Kovacs also reported that one survivor claimed that “I was even taken on a trip to Africa with former president Bill Clinton and other notable figures.”