Independent journalist and Jeffrey Epstein expert Tara Palmeri told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace that Trump supporters let Epstein’s partner-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell off too easily.
“Any sort of idea that Ghislaine was some sort of victim as they are saying on NewsMax and other places is absurd,” Palmeri said on MSNBC’s Deadline White House. “She was a pedophile. She did the exact same thing.”
Maxwell is currently serving currently a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse minors. She was convicted in 2021 and sentenced in June 2022.
Palmeri said that she was responsible for luring young girls to Epstein. She referenced several examples from victims she has spoken to on her podcast “BROKEN: Jeffrey Epstein.” The podcaster said Maxwell called one victim Annie Farmer’s mother to convince her it was okay for her daughter to join the couple at Zorro ranch because they would pay for her tuition.
“They preyed on children,” she said.
She added that the houseman Juan Alessi, who worked for Epstein since the 1990s, told her that the couple’s “ritual” was to drive around south Florida to look for three girls per day to “satisfy his needs.”
Maxwell did not just groom the young girls and send them to Epstein to be sexually abused. Palmeri said that she participated in sexual acts with them, and that Trump supporters are ignoring that fact.
“Once she got them in the door, she was involved in the sexual acts,” she added. “I don’t think they want to hear this. They want to create the impression that she is somehow absolved from all of this.”
Watch the exchange here:
Virgina Giuffre, who was pursued by Maxwell and Epstein at Mar-a-Lago, told the podcaster that she met Trump through Epstein. Giuffre was a “sex slave” to Epstein and his friends from the age of 16 to 18. The woman was only with Epstein from 2000 to 2002, Palmeri said, but Trump and Epstein remained friends at that time. The pair have several pictures together from after the president claims they had a friendship falling out.
Tuesday the president said he and Epstein ended their friendship because Epstein “stole people that worked for me” – including after he had warned Epstein not to do it again. He also acknowledged that one of those employees may have been Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most outspoken accusers, who died by suicide earlier this year, but Trump did not specify that the employees were young women. However last week the White House said Trump barred Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club “for being a creep.”
“This whole idea that President Trump was upset about it at the time is absurd,” Palmeri said.
Those slightly different stories of the pair’s falling out also differ from a 2019 Washington Post report that claimed the two men’s friendship ended over a 2004 property dispute over a bankrupted oceanfront property called Maison de l’Amitié. Palmeri agreed with that timeline.
The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles alleging Trump appeared in the Epstein files “multiple times,” and that his Attorney General Pam Bondi warned him of this. The president sued the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion for defamation for publishing a suggestive birthday note that Trump wrote for Epstein’s 50th.
