A Daily Reid: What if the Q-anoners were (sort of) right?
It does feel like there's a broad conspiracy of sorts, to protect sexually predatory men; it's just not coming from where the conspiracists want it to.
Back in the day, and by “the day” I mean the late 1980s and early ‘90s, American social media, such as it was, was overrun by conspiracy theories revolving around rumors of sexual predation. Some of the most common whispering campaigns surrounded the Bilderberg Group and Boheman Grove — two secret annual meetings of the super rich elite, where conspiracists would speculate, and try to prove amongst themselves, that everything from orgies to Satanic rituals were taking place.
There have long been popular conspiracy theories surrounding everything from the moon landing (it happened) … and whether the Earth is actually flat (it’s not) … to who *really* assassinated JFK, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and Dr. King; as well as who might have known in advance about or really planned the 9/11 terror attacks (which is how Alex Jones got popular) and of course, the Trump-fueled conspiracy theories since President Obama’s election about his place of birth, and whether Republican candidates ever actually lose elections, culminating in the “Stop The Steal” belief set that spawned the January 6 insurrection. And there are the disinformation campaigns sparking conspiratorial magas to hate Ukraine and side with Putin.
America has been a long been a hotbed of conspiracists, especially since President Kennedy’s assassination and Watergate broke (white) America’s collective faith in the system. The move towards conspiratorial thinking has also been pushed along by this country’s intense religiosity. Studies have shown that religious people are more conspiracy minded. And when the Internet entered the game, it just accelerated the popularity of the genre.
Sometimes, mere questions are treated as conspiracy theories, which dissuades people who view themselves as rational, and even journalists, from asking questions that they normally would. It actually isn’t crazy to question whether U.S. elections yield valid results; given the haphazard, antiquated system we use in this country, the blatant politicization of the judiciary since the 2000 election and the privatization of the means of voting, which makes altered results at least possible. And there have been stories in recent years that raise serious questions which could easily be written off as conspiracy theories — including when a presidential candidate is nearly assassinated but has time to stand up for an iconic photo and then releases no medical records, then brags that he doesn’t need more votes and then wins every swing state, well … it’s not completely crazy for folks to ask WTF. (Storming the Capitol though? Literally WTF…)
Frankly, a relatively rich and bored country finds it easier to systematically focus on conspiracy hunting; even more than on actual fascism overrunning the government, people getting disappeared off the streets by secret police, and a potential economic collapse due to tariffs, the wiping out of the safety net to hand massive, permanent tax cuts to billioniares, and other dumb policies 80 million people ostensively voted for. And if the stated conspiracy is sexual in nature? It’s a wrap. People will focus on little else.
Donald Trump is learning that the hard way. And it couldn’t be more ironic.
Perhaps the most powerful recent conspiracy theory has been Q-anon — the broad, white Christian-based belief that there is a giant, international cabal of pedophiles running the world — all of whom are supposedly Democrats and liberals, of course — and Donald Trump has been working behind the scenes to get back into power so he can to overthrow the bad guys and lock them up in prison.
Qanon helped propel Trump back into the White House, and releasing the files surrounding the most notorious convicted pedo in recent history, Jeffrey Epstein, was supposed to be Daddy Don’s ultimate checkmate — one, broad sweep of truth, that would also include releasing the government files on the JFK and King assassinations, too.
Once back in office, Trump filled his new cabinet with some of the very people who have been feeding this belief with the most ferocity, literally since Trump ran against Hillary Clinton (who the Qers believe is part of the pedo dark army. So much so, that one true believer stormed in and shot up a DC pizza restaurant where he had been told by Qanon podcaster/grifters that children were being held as sex slaves in the basement. Turns out there were no children … and no basement.) Undeterred by tradition or rationality, Trump put podcast bro Kash Patel in charge of the FBI, made fellow podcaster Dan Bongino his deputy, and installed former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, an ultimate loyalist who one would think would have no problem disgorging the crimes of her former state-mate, Epstein.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the TRUTH … Trump TACO’d on releasing the Epstein Files…
…and started going off on his own supporters for still caring about them…
Trump’s resistance to releasing the files has ticked off his biggest investor, Elon, as well as some of his fiercest supporters. When he was pissed off about the budget bill, Elon even dropped the ultimate dime:
… which prompted Trump to threaten to deport him.
But that hasn’t stemmed the tide of maga rage. And Trump is desperately trying every spin imaginable, including claiming that it was Biden and the Democrats who failed to release the files, which of course begs the question … so what’s stopping you from doing it, Mr. President?
And then Pam Bondi fired the prosecutor, who happens to be James Comey’s daughter, who prosecuted both Diddy, and Jeffrey Epstein’s gal pal and facilitator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
But that hasn’t stopped the furor, either.
It’s gotten so bad, even the most loyal doggies in Trump’s podcast bro collective are starting to smell the stink of coverup…
JD looked mad uncomfortable there … perhaps because it seems that everywhere you turn, there’s a Trump-related cover-up in the God-awful Epstein saga. And releasing some irrelevant grand jury testimony isn’t stanching the bleeding. By the way, at what point does Gislane Maxwell start talking…?
Something stinks in Magaville
So what’s been going on? Cause it’s starting to look and feel like a … conspiracy.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported on Epstein’s 50th birthday book, in which Trump allegedly penned a poem about a “secret” the two men supposedly shared, complete with a doodle of a naked woman, and signed it with his squiggly marker signature, strategically placed where the pubic hair would be.
Trump filed suit against Rupert Murdoch and the Journal, and parent company Dow jones for $10 billion, which makes him seem scared.
We then learned that days before the story dropped, JD Vance rushed to Montana to have a secret meetup with the Murdochs and senior Fox executives, perhaps to deliver orders to stand down or to plead for mercy? It was his second meeting in two months, having also made the trek in June.
Then, news broke that ordered the FBI to flag any Trump mentions in the Epstein files…
And it turns out Steve Bannon, Trump’s on-again, off-again strategists, who when he’s not ripping off maga suckers over that dumb wall, advises Donald from the field, recorded more than 15 hours of footage with Epstein back in 2019, before Epstein supposedly killed himself; for a supposed “documentary” that never happened. And no one seems to know where the footage is, or what’s in it. Also, none of the mainstream media organizations that have posted near-hagiographies of the man who bragged that he made Breitbart.com “the home of the alt right,” has mentioned his relationship with Epstein. From Business Insider:
Three years later, no documentary has been released. And Bannon's close relationship with Epstein has been curiously memory-holed.
Bannon grew closer to Epstein in the summer of 2018, advising him on how to handle his myriad legal and media investigations. They continued to spend time with each other through the following summer, when Epstein was arrested in Manhattan on sex-trafficking charges.
The footage remains under wraps.
It has not surfaced anywhere — not in the criminal trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of assisting Epstein's sex trafficking, nor in numerous civil lawsuits from his victims.
Bannon's explanation that he was producing a documentary about Epstein was nonsense, according to people who spent time with both men around the time they were in each other's lives.
In reality, the two acted like friends around each other. And Bannon, these people said, was trying to help Epstein — a notorious sex offender — with his public-relations problems.
Bannon met Epstein in December 2017, shortly after he stopped working in Donald Trump's White House. Epstein had his own history with Trump; participants in the Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida, social scenes, they befriended each other in the 1980s but had a falling-out in the 2000s.
After Epstein died in jail while awaiting trial, a compensation program funded by his $630 million estate identified about 150 of his victims. Later litigation put the number closer to 200.
And then there’s this, which really needs more attention from the podcast bros who are demanding the regime “release the files” …
According to Michael Wolff, Epstein told him that the pictures he had in that safe, depicting Trump with very young looking women and a “stain on his trousers,” could cause the 2016 election to have to be “canceled.”
A 15 year bond
It makes you wonder: what was the basis of Trump and Epstein’s 15-year bond? It certainly wasn’t real estate, which is what they ultimately fell out over in 2004 — two years before Epstein’s first arrest.
Trump himself has claimed that the two men bonded over their mutual love of beautiful women… a point made in a lengthy New York Times piece on the men’s decade-plus-long friendship:
Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein appear to have met around 1990, when Mr. Epstein bought a property two miles north of Mar-a-Lago and set about staking a claim in Palm Beach’s moneyed, salt-air social scene. Mr. Trump, who had purchased Mar-a-Lago five years earlier, had already established his own brash presence in the seaside enclave as a playboy with a taste for gold-leaf finery.
The two had much in common. Both were outer-borough New Yorkers who had succeeded in Manhattan. Both were energetic self-promoters. And both had reputations as showy men-about-town.
In 1992, an NBC News camera captured the pair at a Mar-a-Lago party that featured cheerleaders from the Buffalo Bills, who were in town that weekend for a game against the Miami Dolphins. At one point in the footage, Mr. Trump can be seen dancing amid a crowd of young women. Later, he appears to be pointing at other women while whispering something in Mr. Epstein’s ear, causing him to double over with laughter.
Months later, when Mr. Trump hosted a party at Mar-a-Lago for young women in a so-called calendar girl competition, Mr. Epstein was the only other guest, according to George Houraney, a Florida-based businessman who arranged the event. Mr. Houraney recalled being surprised that Mr. Epstein was the only other person on the guest list.
“I said, ‘Donald, this is supposed to be a party with V.I.P.s,” Mr. Houraney told The New York Times in 2019. “You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?’”
Mr. Houraney’s then-girlfriend and business partner, Jill Harth, later accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct on the night of the party. In a lawsuit, Ms. Harth said that Mr. Trump took her into a bedroom and forcibly kissed and fondled her, and restrained her from leaving. She also said that a 22-year-old contestant told her that Mr. Trump later that night crawled into her bed uninvited.
Ms. Harth dropped her suit in 1997 after a related case filed by Mr. Houraney was settled by Mr. Trump, who has denied her allegations.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein were spotted again at a 1997 Victoria’s Secret “Angels” party in Manhattan. The lingerie company was run by Leslie H. Wexner, a billionaire businessman who handed Mr. Epstein sweeping power over his finances, philanthropy and private life within years of meeting him.
Court records show that Mr. Trump was among those who got rides on Mr. Epstein’s private jet. Over four years in the 1990s, he flew on Mr. Epstein’s Boeing 727 at least seven times, largely making jaunts between Palm Beach and a private airport in Teterboro, N.J., just outside New York.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Mr. Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “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.”
And then there was Virginia Giufre…
In 2000, court records show, Ms. Maxwell, a British socialite who had long been tied to Mr. Epstein, struck up a conversation with a 17-year-old girl outside a locker room at Mar-a-Lago.
Her name was Virginia Giuffre, and she was a spa attendant at the club, having gotten the job through her father, who worked there as a maintenance man. According to Ms. Giuffre, Ms. Maxwell offered her a job on the spot as a masseuse for Mr. Epstein after seeing that she was reading a book about massage, telling her that she did not need to have any experience.
She said that when she was brought to Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach home, she found him lying naked on a table. Ms. Maxwell, she claimed, instructed her on how to massage him.
“They seemed like nice people,” she later testified, “so I trusted them.”
But over the next two years or so, Ms. Giuffre claimed that she was forced by Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell to have sex with a series of famous men, including Prince Andrew, a member of the British royal family. Prince Andrew has denied the accusations and declined to help federal prosecutors in their investigation of Mr. Epstein.
Ms. Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, always maintained that she was trafficked to the prince and other men, once telling the BBC that she had been “passed around like a platter of fruit” to Mr. Epstein’s powerful associates.
Some women who were in Mr. Epstein’s orbit have said they encountered Mr. Trump during this period.
One woman, Maria Farmer, who has said she was victimized by Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, described an encounter with Mr. Trump in 1995 at an office that Mr. Epstein once kept in New York City.
An art student who had moved to New York City to pursue a career as a painter, Ms. Farmer recalled in a 2019 interview that when she was introduced to Mr. Trump, he eyed her, prompting Mr. Epstein to warn him, “She’s not for you.”
Ms. Farmer’s mother, Janice Swain, said her daughter had described the interaction with Mr. Trump around the time it occurred.
Stacey Williams, a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, has said she was groped by Mr. Trump when she was introduced to him by Mr. Epstein, whom she was dating at the time.
Ms. Williams went on CNN last week and told that story, adding that her repulsive ex and Donald Trump were besties who were up to no good, together.
And that’s not the first time Ms. Williams has told that story. She also did so in a jarring campaign ad run by a group called the Anti-Psychopath PAC, which summarized the stories of some of the 27 women in total who have accused him of sexual predation:
Donald Trump has shown over and over again for decades that his sexual tastes are … to put it kindly … outre.
2006 was two years before Jeffrey Epstein’s first prosecution in Palm Beach County, for which he received an unbelievably light, combined 18 month sentence despite being deemed a sex offender who pleaded guilty to one count apiece of felony solicitation of prostitution and procuring a person under age 18 for prostitution (screenshot from the full file below):
… after which he was freed to continue abusing children and fraternizing with the rich and famous:
The Jeffrey Epstein saga began — and could have ended — in Palm Beach County in 2006. The Palm Beach Post sued in 2019 to find out why it didn't. Now, secret documents detailing what happened 17 years ago when Epstein was indicted on only a single prostitution charge could become public under a new state law.
The Jeffrey Epstein case began in Palm Beach County in 2005, though it was later revealed in Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal case that his sexual abuse of children here began a decade earlier. In the 1990s, Maxwell enlisted Epstein's chauffeur and traveled all over the county to find girls for Epstein. She picked up one of the most spotlighted ones, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, at Mar-a-Lago where the 15-year-old and her father worked.
By the mid-2000s, Maxwell apparently participated less in that mission for Epstein. The early case focused on Epstein's network of middle and high school-age girls.
Yahoo has a helpful (and sobering) timeline of the whole, hideous saga.
2005 - The police investigation of Jeffrey Epstein begins
March 14 - Molestation of 14-year-old reported to police
The stepmother of a 14-year-old girl who attends Royal Palm Beach High School reports to police on the island of Palm Beach that her stepdaughter has been molested by a wealthy man. The stepmother tells a detective that "supposedly the man has a lot of money and often has young girls come to his house." The girl, in tears, tells the detective that she was taken upstairs to give Epstein a massage. When Epstein came into the room wearing only a towel, he sternly told the girl to take her clothes off. She stripped down to her bra and a thong. As she massaged him, he masturbated. Afterward, he paid her $300. The next day she got into a fight at school after another girl called her a prostitute. She never went back to Epstein's mansion.
Police begin interviewing more girls, who led them to others who say Jeffrey Epstein had molested or raped them.
Oct. 20 - Police search Epstein's home
Missing in the search at 358 El Brillo Way are several computers, which police believe possibly contain names and photos of victims. Palm Beach Detective Joseph Recarey says he believes Epstein was tipped off about the search and that the computers were in the vault of an Epstein attorney.
It just goes downhill from there. Which brings us to Pamela Jo Bondi…
Where was Pam?
Pam Bondi became Florida’s attorney general in 2011, after winning in the 2010 tea party sweep. As the first woman to hold the post in Florida, she’s a high profile pol — and a frequent (and favorite) on Fox “News.” But couldn’t she have done something about the predator in her midst? From the Palm Beach Post:
Legally, yes, she could have, legal experts say. The bigger question, however, is whether she should have felt compelled to do so. …
… Epstein was charged in 2006 by a Palm Beach County grand jury with a single count of solicitation of prostitution despite having heard from only two underage victims.
Then-State Attorney Barry Krischer's prosecutors had tanked their own case during the secret proceeding, telling the girls during questioning that they themselves were the criminals, the transcripts show. The Palm Beach Post fought in court for nearly five years to make the transcripts public. They were released in July 2024.
Palm Beach police had found dozens of girls and young women who told similar stories of sexual abuse at Epstein's island mansion. When then-Police Chief Michael Reiter saw that Krischer's prosecution was not in line with the case his department had built, he sent his evidence to the feds. Had the charges reflected that evidence, Epstein would have faced decades in prison.
In the end, Epstein pleaded guilty to only two prostitution-related felonies in 2008 in a "deal of the century" arranged by both Krischer and federal prosecutors. He was sentenced to 18 months in the county jail, of which he served 13. He was out in July 2009.
Should Bondi have looked into Epstein's crimes between the time of his jail release in 2009 and the filing of the criminal charges in 2019, when many have alleged that he sexually assaulted hundreds more?
Not necessarily, says Robert Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeasten University.
Unless someone brought it to Bondi, "there was no reason to start a new investigation,” he said, after one had already been concluded by both federal and state prosecutors.
Some of the 2019 cases were also based in Florida. At least two Palm Beach County victims testified in the Ghislaine Maxwell case.
"The federal government and the state government, of course, are two different political entities, and both have the power to try the same person for the same crime, using their respective laws," Jarvis said. "Thus, Pam Bondi could have tried Epstein."
But would she?
"I would not criticize her for not doing anything for what seem to be a case that had already been adjudicated and dealt with and punishment handed out," Jarvis said.
Judge for yourself, but I would guess the further decade of his victims wish Pam had tried.
And now, MeidasTouch has unearthed new, creepy video of Trump’s time in the go-go ‘90s, when parts his life revolved around being in the company of beautiful, sometimes scantily clad, young women.
More on Elite’s Look of the Year from The Guardian:
Elite’s Look of the Year competition, an annual event that had been running since 1983 and was already credited with launching the careers of Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen and Stephanie Seymour. At stake was a life-changing prize: a $150,000 contract with the world’s then leading modelling agency, Elite Model Management, run by John Casablancas.
Trump was closely involved in Casablancas’s competition. In 1991, he was a headline sponsor, throwing open the Plaza, his lavish, chateau-style hotel overlooking Central Park, transforming it into the main venue and accommodating the young models. He was also one of its 10 judges.
In 1992, Trump hosted the competition again. On a similarly golden evening in early September that year, another group of contestants boarded the Spirit of New York, chartered for another Elite cruise. One of the girls on the boat was Shawna Lee, then a 14-year-old from a small town outside Toronto. She recalls how the contestants were encouraged to parade downstairs, one by one, and dance for Trump, Casablancas 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 recalls. “I said to her, ‘I don’t see why me going down the stairs and dancing in front of those two has anything to do with me becoming a model. And she 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.”
John Casablancas, who died in 2013 as 70 years old, was the man who created and ran Elite Model Management, which so many young women in New York dreamed of signing up with; including Ivanka Trump, who began modeling under the Elite umbrella at age 14. Sharing that dream was model-turned actress Carré Otis, who folks might know from the movie Wild Orchid. Otis says she was just a kid when she was victimized by Casablancas and the “house mother” he hired to procure him young models:
Carré Sutton was a 16-year-old runaway in 1985 when a modeling scout discovered her in Northern California.
It wouldn’t be much longer before Sutton, who then went by Carré Otis, arrived in New York City after catching the eye of Elite Model Management co-founder John Casablancas. The girl who had been homeless months earlier was about to embark on a career under the care of the prestigious modeling agency.
She was a child when powerful adults she depended on at Elite preyed upon her sexually or turned a blind eye to the abuse, according to a lawsuit Sutton filed Thursday in federal court in the Southern District of New York.
New York’s Child Victim’s Act passed in 2019 gives Sutton, now 52 and a resident of Boulder, Colorado, an avenue to pursue legal recourse against defendants Gérald Marie, the head of Elite’s European division, and Trudi Tapscott, a company executive who oversaw models in New York. The law allows civil complaints to be filed in cases of alleged sexual abuse of children, up until the age of 55 for accusers.
… The Guardian reported that Marie’s attorneys previously responded to allegations, saying he was “extremely affected by the accusations made against him, which he contests with the utmost firmness … He intends to actively participate in the manifestation of the truth within the scope of the opened criminal investigation.”
Sutton’s lawsuit claims fraud, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
She alleges in the lawsuit that Tapscott, who was “in effect a house mother” to young models, approved a plan to send 17-year-old Sutton to live at the Paris home of Marie, a known sexual predator of underage models.
Sutton had spent a few unsuccessful months in New York City when she was sent to Paris to live with Marie with the understanding that it would be beneficial to her career, the lawsuit said.
Instead of her career blossoming, the document stated, Marie repeatedly raped Sutton, trafficked her for sex with other powerful men and supplied her with vials of cocaine.
“Plaintiff moved into Marie’s apartment under the false pretense that he was interested enough in her career success that she could live in his personal residence. … In Marie’s apartment, she was raped repeatedly by Marie and later trafficked by Marie to other wealthy men around Europe. Plaintiff was never paid for her modeling work,” the lawsuit said.
The court document also said that when Sutton first met Marie, he told her she would see success if she obeyed him. But Sutton began rejecting Marie's sexual advances when she turned 18, the lawsuit said. Marie told her no one tells him, "No."
"She was kicked out of his apartment shortly after,” the filing said.
The lawsuit said Marie, now 71, has “been accused of raping at least 15 models under his supervision” and is under criminal investigation in Paris. It also alleges Tapscott failed to disclose to Sutton she “was sending her to live at the home of a sex offender.”
Casablancas greenlit the plan to send Sutton to Paris, the lawsuit said. Casablancas died in 2013.
Casablancas and Marie were known to compete over having sex with young models, the lawsuit said, and the culture of sexually assaulting models who were underage was pervasive in the agency.
Epstein’s other pal, Jean-Luc Brunel ran his own high profile modeling agency: Karin Models, as well as a later firm called MC2. Epstein was a financial backer. Here’s what the Guardian wrote about Brunel:
In the autumn of 1985, 22-year-old Marianne Shine was invited to Paris to try her hand at modelling. A confident and academic young woman, she had graduated in classical art and archaeology from her college in Pennsylvania, having spent several summers in Greece on archaeological digs, and was excited to visit Europe again. Her Danish mother, a travel agent, and Hungarian father, a gynaecologist, encouraged her to go, convinced that the modelling agents there would take good care of her.
But after six months of modelling in Paris, Shine returned home a different person. “Before Paris I was this playful, creative girl, but that part of me vanished,” she tells me now. Her mother found her a job at a travel agency in their suburb of New York, but Shine wasn’t interested. She says: “It was like this deadening. I couldn’t fall asleep at night, and then I couldn’t wake up in the morning. I could barely trudge through the day.”
What Shine knows now but didn’t have the words for at the time is that she was experiencing a “deep, deep depression”. In Paris she had been sexually assaulted multiple times by men in the fashion industry. This culminated in being raped by her agent, Jean-Luc Brunel, then one of the most powerful men in the business, and the person entrusted with her care.
“I didn’t understand how deeply it affected me and I blamed myself,” says Shine, now 58, from her home in Mill Valley, California. “I felt like this dirty, vile, horrible thing.” She didn’t tell anyone, not even the therapist her mother arranged for her to see. “I just kept burying it,” she says. “I was so alone in that darkness.”
Three decades later, as #MeToo reverberated around the world, Shine opened up to close friends and relatives, but rarely went into details. In October 2020, though, she read the Guardian’s investigations into abuse in the fashion industry, drawing on accounts from former models who had had similar experiences in Paris in the 80s and 90s, including some with allegations against her alleged rapist, Brunel. “I thought: how many other women out there, like me, had buried it?”
Two months later, Brunel was arrested on suspicion of trafficking and raping underage girls. The investigation was being led by police investigating the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. It emerged that the pair had been close associates, and that Brunel was accused of supplying more than 1,000 girls and young women for Epstein to have sex with. “That blew my mind,” Shine says. “I had no idea what I had been a part of.”
Also this from Vanity Fair:
As Epstein’s operation continued into the 2000s, he began importing girls from the former Soviet Union. After the 1998 Miss Universe pageant, Anna Malova signed up with Karin Models, which had been founded by Epstein friend Jean-Luc Brunel. Known as “le fantôme” (the ghost), Brunel, who also owned MC2 Modeling Agency, was the subject of a 1988 piece that aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes in which several young models accused him of groping them sexually, drugging their drinks, and rape.
“I really despise Jean-Luc. … This is a guy who should be behind bars,” John Casablancas, the late modeling agent, told journalist Michael Gross, whose book Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women alleges that Brunel repeatedly drugged and raped models. According to Casablancas, Brunel and his pals “were very well known in Paris for roaming the clubs. They would invite girls and put drugs in their drinks.”
And Casablancas, who married a 17-year-old when he was 50, would have known, having used his stature in the modeling business to indulge in similar activities with young girls at a Look of the Year modeling competition at the New York Plaza Hotel, with his friend Donald Trump, then the hotel’s owner. Trump was closely involved with the contest, in which the average age was 15, and, according to The Guardian, several of the models said that they were required by their agency to have dinner with Trump and Casablancas.
Trump’s behavior at such events is unclear, but, according to The Guardian, “The stories we have heard suggest that Casablancas, and some of the men in his orbit, used the contest to engage in sexual relationships with vulnerable young models. Some of these allegations amount to sexual harassment, abuse, or exploitation of teenage girls; others are more accurately described as rape.”
In addition to whatever legitimate careers Brunel may have fostered, as a “model scout” he also allegedly hired “scouters” to identify, procure, and transport underage girls, many 15 years of age and under, hire them to give “massages,”and train them to give sexual pleasure. Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre claimed she was forced to have sex with Brunel as well, and was forced to watch him engage in “sexual acts with dozens of underage girls.” (Brunel, who couldn't be reached for comment, has denied taking advantage of underage girls, and MC2 president Jeffrey Fuller has denied that Epstein had any ownership or involvement in the company.) …
MC2 wasn’t the first company to do something like this, and when it came to determining how to structure such a company—what kind of contractual relationships MC2 would have with employees, and so forth—its management looked to someone who already had experience in the business. Though Brunel was its titular leader, Epstein was really funding the agency and took the initiative when it came to dealing with such issues. According to a sworn deposition in 2010 by MC2 bookkeeper Maritza Vasquez, Epstein wanted MC2 to use the same system of incentives that drove “model scouts” and models at Trump Model Management, the modeling agency Trump had founded as T Models in 1999. (Trump Model Management discontinued operations in 2017.)
As the Epstein operation chugged along, Trump, who had married three models—Ivana, Marla, and Melania—was very much part of Epstein’s picture. According to court records, message pads confiscated from Epstein’s home showed that Trump called Epstein’s West Palm Beach mansion a number of times.
Asked under oath in a September 2016 deposition whether he ever socialized with Trump in the presence of girls under the age of 18, Epstein punted. Rather than answer the questions, he took the Fifth.
Brunel died in 2022, in an eerily similar manner to the way his friend Epstein died three years earlier:
ASSOCIATED PRESS — Jean-Luc Brunel was found hanged in his cell in La Santé prison at 01:00 on Saturday, prosecutors told the BBC.
The 76-year-old had been held for over a year as he was investigated on suspicion of the rape of minors and trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation.
Brunel had denied any wrongdoing.
Brunel's lawyers said he had been "crushed" by the allegations, and blamed a "media-judicial system".
Brunel co-founded French modelling agency Karin Models in 1977, and MC2 Model Management in the US with funding from Epstein.
Trump gets into the game
In 1999, Donald Trump went from partying with modeling managers to being one, founding Trump Model Management (which shut down in 2017, not long after Trump was inaugurated president the first time.) According to news reports, the company was problematic in familiar ways. From Vanity Fair:
Trump Model Management allegedly indulged in many of the dubious practices that MC2 did, such as violating immigration laws and illegally employing young foreign girls. Three former Trump models, all noncitizens of the U.S., told Mother Jones in 2016 that Trump Model Management profited by using foreign models who came to the United States on tourist visas that did not allow them to work here. And two of the former models said that Trump’s agency suggested they lie on customs forms about where they planned to live. All of which meant they were perpetually scared of getting caught and pretty much at the mercy of the agency.
All of which was ironic indeed, given Trump’s hard-line immigration policies as president and his assertions that undocumented immigrants are taking American jobs.
Trump became known for hosting parties in suites at the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time, where older rich men were introduced to young women and girls who assumed “they’d get somewhere” by joining the party, as one partygoer, a fashion photographer, told Michael Gross, writing in the Daily Beast. “Of course, it never happens.”
According to the photographer, the girls were as young as 15. “[They were] over their heads, they had no idea, and they ended up in situations,” the photographer added. “There were always dramas because the men threw money and drugs at them to keep them enticed. It’s based on power and dominating girls who can’t push back and can be discarded.”
Trump would “go from room to room,” said the photographer. “It was guys with younger girls, sex, a lot of sex, a lot of cocaine, top-shelf liquor.”
In February 2000, Trump staged a pro-am tennis tournament at Mar-a-Lago and appeared with Epstein, Maxwell, and his latest girlfriend, Melania Knauss, whom Epstein claimed to have introduced to Trump. Epstein’s claim was reported in The New York Times, which noted that “while Mr. Trump has dismissed the relationship, Mr. Epstein, since the election, has played it up, claiming to people that he was the one who introduced Mr. Trump to his third wife, Melania Trump, though neither of the Trumps has ever mentioned Mr. Epstein playing a role in their meeting.”
And this from the BBC:
The modelling agency that President Trump founded in 1999 is shutting down for good, according to reports.
In a leaked email supposedly seen by the New York Post, external and Mother Jones, external, Trump Models' president Corinne Nicolas allegedly reveals the closure to staff.
Last week, employees said the agency was operating as normal, but this new email claims the organisation wants to focus on their other businesses.
Donald Trump owns 85% of the company, which was originally called T Models.
It has represented big names including Mia Kang, Paris Hilton and British model Jodie Kidd.
But in the alleged email reportedly seen by Mother Jones, Corinne Nicolas apparently says the Trump organisation is now "choosing to exit the modelling industry".
"We are immensely proud of the opportunities that we have provided to so many talented individuals."
The announcement comes after claims by former employees that Trump Models forced them into terrible living conditions.
Two models from the agency told Business Insider, external that their experiences with Trump Models are "not that different" from what they've seen at other agencies.
They say the company made them pay "sky-high" rent to live in crammed living quarters, while having to pay a "dizzying number" of fees and expenses.
The claims also suggest the agency had a history of employing foreign models, without work visas.
Since Donald Trump's election, models and staff members have been leaving his agency.
Industry sources say that's as a result of President Trump's controversial political career, which has made his brand "toxic in the modeling world".
A treacherous world for women and girls
Who knows where all of this will lead. And so far, there’s no hard evidence that Trump knew what Epstein was into or indulged in the criminal behavior himself — though his comments over the years, about women, young girls and even his own eldest daughter are gross in and of themselves.
What is clear is that he and Epstein traveled in a lavish, indulgent world where women had little value beyond their looks and sexual availability; and where age was often just a number to the older men hunting for youngblood. And we’ve seen in the cases against the Diddler, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Russell Simmons and so many others, just how harrowing that world was for women and girls who simply aspired to be stars; like the women they see on TV and in the movies (who let’s face it, long faced the horrors of the casting couch. There’s nothing new under the sun for women and girls.) It’s a world that one would think his overwhelmingly evangelical support base would be horrified by. Of course, they’re not.
Also clear is that for whatever reason, Donald Trump seems determined to not allow the Epstein files to be released. Even at the cost of his loyalest fans’ support.
A conspiracy of lascivious men
Even beyond the music and movie industries, sadly, we’ve seen cabals of predatory men operating inside the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Church, and in politics — remember Dennis Hastert, the former House speaker felled by a scandal over the sexual abuse of wrestlers he coached, also using the old “massage” guise? Jim Jordan, who leads the Judiciary Committee allegedly knows a little something about that, given that a team doctor at Ohio State University, where he too used to coach, was accused of being a molester, too, while the very screamy Mr. Jordan, allegedly kept quiet.
It’s a jungle out there. Literally.
So maybe the Qanoners aren’t so far off in believing there’s a vast conspiracy to protect powerful molesters and minimize their exposure to consequences for their crimes. They'd just hoped the perpetrators would be only be the Democrats they hate, and not some of those who align with their politics. Instead, the truth may be a lot closer to home.
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I’m currently listening to the podcast New Orleans Unsolved and it deals with a massive pedophile ring in Louisiana in the 70s. These folks are so bold! Because we let it happen. Sex without consent continues to be a plague upon women and children of all genders. The president’s political career should have been over with “grab em by the p-word” and the fact that it wasn’t highlights the vast problem of sexual exploitation our children experience in this country, and throughout the world. How anyone could overlook that and still vote for him back then tells me the levels to which people will go to excuse predatory behavior. As a 27 year teacher and school counselor, I heard dozens of heartbreaking tales throughout my career, and that was just the ones who talked. We as a society do. Not. Protect. Our. Children. At all. I don’t know what it’s going to take to make them a priority.
Thank you so much Joy-Ann for in depth and substantial reporting. As disgusting as the material is
you "report" not "dramatize" - for that I am personally grateful. Your ethics are impeccable - You indeed understand Moral Clarity.