Closing summary
Last night Donald Trump addressed the latest release of Epstein files for the first time, telling reporters he’d been told it cleared him of allegations about his links with Jeffrey Epstein. “I didn’t see it myself but I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me,” he said on Air Force One, “it’s the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left.”
Trump also threatened to sue Michael Wolff, the author of an unauthorized biography of the president, for “conspiring” with Epstein to damage him politically. “So we’ll probably sue Wolff on it. And maybe the Epstein estate I guess, I don’t know, but we’re certainly gonna sue him” Trump told reporters, “because he [Epstein] was conspiring with Wolff to do harm to me politically. That’s not a friend.”
Representative Jamie Raskin slammed the DOJ’s release of the Epstein files as “a full-blown cover-up” and said Democrats were demanding access to the unredacted material.
A second woman has alleged that Epstein sent her to the UK to have a sexual encounter with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, according to her lawyer, as UK government pressure on the former prince to testify before the US Congress mounted. The woman has claimed she spent the night at the former prince’s residence Royal Lodge in 2010, her US lawyer, Brad Edwards, told the BBC. The woman, who is not British, was in her 20s at the time, it was reported. Edwards said that after spending the night with Mountbatten-Windsor, the woman claims she was given a tour of Buckingham Palace and tea.
Peter Mandelson should testify before the US Congress about his links to Epstein, a UK government minister said, as documents appeared to show the late child sex offender sent the former US ambassador $75,000. Bank statements appear to show three separate payments of $25,000 referencing the former UK business secretary and MP being sent from Epstein’s JP Morgan bank accounts.
Also in the newly released files, British billionaire Richard Branson told Epstein that he would love to see him again “as long as your bring your harem”. More on that here.
The director of Melania Trump’s new Amazon film, Brett Ratner, appears in multiple pictures with Epstein in the newly released images. One photo shows Ratner sitting on a couch with his arms wrapped around a woman whose face is redacted. Next to that woman is Epstein, and another woman, whose face is also obscured (you can see the picture – DSCO1 41 6.JPG – in this collection of images).
And Casey Wasserman, the head of the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, said last night that he “deeply regrets” emails from 2003 between him and Ghislaine Maxwell that appeared in the latest collection of Epstein files released on Friday.
Updated
LA Olympics chief says he ‘deeply regrets’ emails with Maxwell
Casey Wasserman, the head of the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, said last night that he “deeply regrets” emails from 2003 between him and Ghislaine Maxwell that appeared in the latest collection of Epstein files released on Friday.
Among the exchanges included one from Wasserman telling Maxwell “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”
In an April 2003 email to Wasserman – who was married at the time – Maxwell offers to give him a massage that can “drive a man wild”.
There is also an email exchange about massages and one in which Maxwell asks whether it will be foggy enough during an upcoming visit “so that you can float naked down the beach and no one can see you unless they are close up?”
Wasserman responds: “or something like that.”
In a statement released Saturday, Wasserman said: “I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell,” which he said occurred “long before her horrific crimes came to light”.
“I never had a personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. As is well documented, I went on a humanitarian trip as part of a delegation with the Clinton Foundation in 2002 on the Epstein plane. I am terribly sorry for having any association with either of them,” he said.
