Is this the Real Reason Trump Doesn't Want to Release the Epstein Files?
There may be more to it than child sex trafficking
Julie Roginsky
With Donald Trump, it all comes back to real estate or in this case, the ironically named Maison de lAmitié, the Palm Beach oceanfront estate that became the catalyst for the collapse of the Trump-Epstein friendship. In 2004, Jeffrey Epstein and Trump both competed to buy the mansion, which was in foreclosure, with Trump outbidding Epstein at a bankruptcy auction and acquiring the property for about $41 million. Four years later, Trump flipped it to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for nearly $100 million an almost 144% profit.
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Journalist Michael Wolff, who wrote a trilogy of books about Trumps first term in office (and who claims that Epstein was his secret source for some of them), alleges that Epstein told him Trump was only able to afford Maison de lAmitié because he was acting as a cutout for someone much richer. Heres Newsweek:
"Epstein knew that Trump didn't have the money, therefore Epstein's conclusion was that he must be fronting for someone," Wolff said.
"And in fact, in that classic money laundering setup, Trump bought the house for $40 million, bought it through borrowed money, and then the house was put on the market not long afterward and immediately sold for $96 million to one of the oligarchs in the close [Russian President Vladimir] Putin circle."
https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/is-this-the-real-reason-trump-doesnt

Ocelot II
(127,044 posts)Money matters more to Trump than anything else. If the tangled web of Epstein's financial dealings can be unraveled I'm sure Trump's involvement will be discovered. Real estate transactions are a usual vehicle for money laundering, and we know Russians purchased properties from Trump (and probably from Epstein). Large sums of money financed Epstein's sex trafficking business, and he also made a lot of money from it, but how could he hide that money? His work at Bear Stearns and other finance operations had to do with finding tax havens and tax-avoidance methods for clients, and he would have used that knowledge to hide and channel the money had made from sex-trafficking. He and Trump were BFFs for 10-15 years, so don't tell me Trump, another real estate wheeler-dealer, wasn't involved in Epstein's financial ventures.
dlilafae
(312 posts)Racketeering, wire/bank fraud. ~ Yes, this and that, and that many billionaires names/that could result from firing or removal from the Board...