I check out the ICE twitter site regularly and receive updates from Homeland Security’s Office of Public Affairs. Child sex traffickers are at the core of the “Worst of the Worst,” just the types of immigrants whose arrests are ballyhooed, sometimes with Kristi Noem on horseback, to take attention off the wholesale roundups of immigrants, lawful permanent residents and visa overstayers.
Last week, for instance, the headline for one of Homeland Security’s updates read: “Pedophiles, Abusers, Rapists, and Other Violent Thugs Arrested in Operation Midway Blitz.” I paid particular attention because Operation Midway Blitz is the code name for the infiltration of the sanctuary city of Chicago, my hometown.
Among the worst of the worst who were arrested are Carlos a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, arrested for aggravated sexual assault of a child family member; Hector, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, arrested for domestic battery; Bernardino, a criminal illegal alien and registered sex offender from Mexico, convicted of aggravated sexual assault victim 13-17, and a sex offender registration violation; Bolotbek, a criminal illegal alien from Kyrgyzstan, previously charged with domestic battery/bodily harm; Juan, a 41-year-old sexual predator from Mexico, convicted of criminal sexual abuse of a child; and Jose, a 39-year-old criminal alien from Guatemala, who has pending charges for domestic violence. Again sensible.
Still, I’m confused. In a speech last week at the Religious Liberty Commission’s meeting at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., President Trump downplayed the severity of domestic violence crimes, saying that were it not for “things that take place in the home they call crime,” the deployment of National Guard troop in DC would have resulted in a bigger statistical reduction in crime.
“They said, ‘Crime’s down 87 percent.’ I said, no, no, no — it’s more than 87 percent, virtually nothing. And much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime. You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. See? So now I can’t claim 100 percent, but we are. We are a safe city,” Trump said.
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I can’t tell if I should take child sex trafficking, sex with minors, and domestic violence seriously or not.
Most of us recall the Access Hollywood video, with transcript, of Trump bragging to TV host Billy Bush about trying to have sex with a woman, whom he moved on “like a bitch.” It was leaked right before the 2016 election.
“I couldn't get there and she was married. Then all-of-a-sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look.
“When you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
That was different. The woman wasn’t an underage girl and he apologized for what he and others, including his wife Melania, called “locker room talk" or boy talk.
“No one has more respect for women than I do,” said Trump.
Jeffrey Epstein is a sex-trafficker of a different color.
In July 2019, he was arrested in New York and charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. That was more than 10 years after he pleaded guilty and was convicted in Florida for procuring a child for prostitution. His plea deal allowed him to be released after 13 months in custody, with extensive work release. He never went to trial in NY. He died in his jail cell a month after his arrest. Medical examiner’s conclusion: suicide by hanging. Almost three minutes of cell block footage of the time of death is missing.
On the other hand, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, his long-time associate, who recruited young girls for him, did go to trial. She was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping him procure girls, for child sexual abuse and prostitution. She’s served about three years of a 20-year federal prison sentence and is counting on Trump to do something about it.
In 2003, before Epstein served any time, when he was living the high life, with a net worth at about $300 million, he turned 50. He celebrated. Many luminaries celebrated with him and conveyed their wishes. The wishes were compiled by Maxwell in a 238-page birthday book that is now in the possession of Epstein’s estate. The book is replete with photos, poems and doodles. Much has been redacted, in particular, but not only, to protect the identities of underage girls.
Epstein's birthday book, pages 94, 96, 112, 208, 216 & 217
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Page 165 is Trump’s page. It is not redacted. It comes right after some guy named Stuey’s page of limericks:
“Jeffrey at half a century, with credentials plenipotentiary,
Though up to no good
whenever he could
has avoided the penitentiary.”
Locker room humor.
Trump’s page, signed at the bottom of a creative doodle of a woman’s body, frames a pretend transcribed exchange between Epstein and Trump. It is more locker room humor, with a wink:
They agree there’s more to life than having everything. Trump offers that “enigmas never age,” that a pal is a wonderful thing, and “may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Epstein’s dead, so your secret’s safe with him.
Trump has protested that it’s not his signature. Handwriting experts beg to differ. So too does a recent Fox News panel.
Trump’s also said he doesn’t doodle. That’s odd. In one of his books, he’s quoted as saying: “It takes me a few minutes to draw something. In my case, it’s usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers, and then I sign my name.”
Old pal, you sell yourself short. Before you spent your loose time on social media post ranting, you doodled.
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In the face of the many photos of Epstein and Trump together, Trump has conceded they once were friends but that Trump broke off the relationship. The reasons for and timing of the fallout are somewhat fluid, according to Poynter’s Politifact in July 2025:
- He barred Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club for poaching spa staffers.
- In 2020, Miami Herald and The Wall Street Journal reporters reported that the rift dated to late 2007, when Trump told reporters he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after Epstein behaved inappropriately toward a club member’s teenage daughter.
- A 2019 Washington Post article cites a 2004 bidding war between Trump and Epstein over a Palm Beach oceanfront mansion as driving a wedge in their relationship.
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| Trump's July 16 post on Social Truth |
Stalwarts in the MAGA base and Democrats have zeroed in on Epstein and the release of the Epstein files as the holy grail, presumably to access the scourge of child sex trafficking in high places. The almost singular obsession with the documents, though, has allowed Trump and Senate Republicans to thwart disclosure and buy time. With time, Trump can claim through his Attorney General that almost everything’s been released, Ghislaine Maxwell can cleanse her testimony and erase her memory in exchange for lenient treatment and a pardon (which she’s already done), the sex trafficking victims can be intimidated, Trump can come up with endless distractions, like blowing up one or two Venezuelan ships, to divert attention from the annoyances of the women and girls he respects so much, and the documents can be converted into redactive art pieces.
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| Redactive art-Epstein's birthday book-p. 96 |
In dismissing Britain's ambassador to the U.S. the other day, The Brits seem to have enough information to turn their indignation into action.
In a blockbuster series last week, the New York Times documented how JPMorgan enabled Epstein’s crimes by “supporting — and profiting from — the notorious sex offender, ignoring red flags, suspicious activity and concerned executives.”
At Epstein’s behest, JPMorgan set up accounts — into which he routinely transferred huge sums — for young women who turned out to be victims of his sex-trafficking operations. In his 50th birthday year, “Epstein withdrew more than $175,000 in cash from his JPMorgan accounts — a huge haul, even for someone with millions at the bank. Outside investigators later found that Epstein paid almost that exact amount to women that year,” the story reported. Epstein’s huge cash withdrawals continued — a total of more than $1.7 million in 2004 and 2005, much of which, according to the NYT, were used to procure girls and young women.
A spokesman for JPMorgan told the NYT in a statement that the bank’s relationship with Epstein “was a mistake and in hindsight we regret it, but we did not help him commit his heinous crimes.” He added: “We would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was engaged in an ongoing sex trafficking operation.” Of course not. Who would?
To my knowledge, no one at JPMorgan has suffered a similar indignity to Britain’s US ambassador.
Also the other day, an appeals court decision affirmed an $83 million award to writer E. Jean Carroll that reinforced court findings that Trump in fact sexually abused her during a brief encounter with him in a department store dressing room in the 1990s and that he lied by saying he’d never met her, according to Fox News. To date, Carroll has not received any payment. No doubt, Trump is appealing to his Supreme Court.
So, in some ways, the specter of sexual abuse and sex trafficking in high places is very much alive. In other ways, the consequences of sex trafficking are dormant except for the sustained commitment against immigrants by ICE, the Hestafo, and now Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace who’s introducing legislation - “No More Missing Children Act,” which she says is designed to protect underage minors from trafficking, kidnapping and exploitation.
She blames the Biden Administration for reckless negligence that left minors “to roam a lawless system, preyed upon by traffickers, predators, and cartels,” Mace said in a statement. She adds that the bill builds on Trump’s mission to rescue missing children and “takes the fight to the criminals exploiting our immigration system,” according to the Daily Caller, the right-wing news and opinion site founded by Tucker Carlson.
For her part, Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an unflinching Trump defender and open supporter of QAnon, is having none of it (make that some of it). As reported in The Hill, she recently complained to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the GOP’s old boys club. “They want women just to go along with whatever they’re doing and basically to stand there, smile and clap with approval, whereas they just have their good old boys.
Along with others in the MAGA base, she’s found herself in Trump’s crosshairs for supporting a discharge petition to release more of the Epstein files. Hedging her bets, she said she doesn’t think Trump is personally involved in the pushback. She’s suggested she's willing to take advantage of the constitutional speech or debate clause to reveal on the House floor sex offenders from Epstein's trafficking ring.
For Trump’s part, he was deep into the underage girl racket long before Epstein’s 50th birthday. By Trump’s accounts, he got to know Epstein in the late 1980s. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
In 2020, the British daily, The Guardian, published a revealing story with plenty of unredacted photos: Teen models, powerful men and private dinners: when Trump hosted Look of the Year. It recalled Trump’s life in the 1990s when he judged the world’s biggest modelling competition.
The story includes an account by a young reporter for a magazine in Tel Aviv, who covered Elite’s Look of the Year competition and its after-parties in 1991 and 1992. He remembered seeing girls drinking alcohol, and at one particularly debauched party: “I saw girls sitting on guys’ laps, and I remember one guy putting his hand down a girl’s top. I remember thinking they were younger than me, and I was 17 going on 18.”
In 1991, as detailed in The Guardian, Trump was a headline sponsor for Look of the Year, throwing open the Plaza, his lavish, chateau-style hotel overlooking Central Park, transforming it into the main venue and accommodating the young models. In 1992, Trump hosted the competition again.
One of the girls on one of the chartered boats was Shawna Lee, then a 14-year-old from a small town outside Toronto. She recalled how the contestants were encouraged to parade downstairs, one by one, and dance for Trump and others. Lee, an introverted teenager who loved to draw but hated school, was in New York for the first time. “A woman at the agency was pushing me,” she recalled. “I said to her, ‘I don’t see why me going down the stairs and dancing” in front of the men has anything to do with me becoming a model. The agency woman said, ‘No, you look great, take off your blazer and go and do it.’ So I walked down the stairs. I didn’t dance – I blew a kiss at them, spun around and walked away.”
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| Donald Trump with contestants in 1991’s Elite Look of the Year |
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| A still photo from previously unseen footage of the 1991 Look of the Year finale |
To take ICE’s p-r campaign at its words, as I’ve written before, instead of using government resources to round up immigrants, lawful permanent residents and visa overstayers, and paying outsized bonuses to attract Hestafo forces, why not zero in on THE WORST OF THE WORST?
Not hard to find or round up. The evidence of child sex trafficking is in plain sight. Don’t even need more Epstein files.
Or they can return to reeling in the big fish like Lucino, a 44-year-old sexual predator from Mexico, who’s been convicted of assault with intent to sexually abuse a child in Franklin County, Iowa.
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