Donald Trump blurted out a question about himself when Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
The former president asked aides during a July 2020 meeting in the Oval Office whether Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend had named him among her powerful contacts who she might be hoping would protect her from prosecution, according to excerpts from the new book "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America" published by The Guardian.
Trump asked "campaign advisers … 'You see that article in the [New York] Post today that mentioned me?'" Trump asked, according to New York Times reporter and author Maggie Haberman. "He kept going, to silence. 'She say anything about me?'"
Epstein had been convicted in 2008 on Florida prostitution charges and arrested again 2019 on sex-trafficking charges, but he killed himself in prison a month later.
Maxwell was convicted in New York in December 2021on five of six charges related to sex trafficking of minors, and she was sentenced in July to 20 years in prison, but another Epstein associate told the New York Post in a July 4, 2020 report that she believed she was "untouchable."
She thought "that she'd be protected by the intelligence communities she and Jeffrey helped with information: the Israeli intelligence services, and Les Wexner, who has given millions to Israel; by Prince Andrew, President Clinton and even by President Trump, who was well-known to be an acquaintance of her and Epstein's," said Epstein associate Steve Hoffenberg.
