#kfile

Trump's lickspittles and paid apologists claim that his decades long friendship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is "innocuous" or "innocent". But it's not like they were just waving at each other from opposite sides of the street.

CNN has uncovered photos of Epstein at Trump's wedding to his second wife Marla Maples. But more interestingly, CNN discovered footage of Trump and Epstein together at a Victoria's Secret fashion show in 1999.

Those who knew Trump and Epstein separately referred to them as "best friends" or "good friends". That includes Mark Epstein – Jeffrey's brother.

Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck at CNN:

CNN — Newly uncovered archived video footage and photos reveal fresh details about Donald Trump’s past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Photos from 1993 confirm for the first time that Epstein attended Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples. Epstein’s attendance at the ceremony at the Plaza Hotel was not widely known until now. In addition, footage from a 1999 Victoria’s Secret fashion event in New York shows Trump and Epstein laughing and chatting together ahead of the runway event. CNN’s KFile uncovered the raw footage during a review of archival video of Trump at events in the 1990s and 2000s. Trump and Epstein appeared together in at least one video among the limited archival footage reviewed. The new footage and photos, which have not been widely reported and pre-date any of Epstein’s known legal issues, come amid renewed scrutiny of Trump’s past relationship with Epstein. The Justice Department’s recent decision not to release long-promised files related to Epstein has spurred outrage in some corners of Trump’s MAGA movement, where people developed an expectation for bombshell revelations into Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators. In a brief call with CNN on Tuesday, President Trump, asked about the wedding photos, responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” before repeatedly calling CNN “fake news” and hanging up. In a statement to CNN, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said, “These are nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious.

“The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep. This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.” Allegations that Epstein sexually abused underage girls first surfaced in 2005, leading to his arrest a year later. He was arrested again in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and later died in jail, fueling numerous conspiracy theories. The medical examiner ruled his death a suicide by hanging.

A past relationship

Trump’s relationship with Epstein dates back to the 1980s and included regular appearances at social events in Palm Beach and New York. No law enforcement authorities have ever accused Trump of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. The two had a falling-out in the mid-2000s, according to the Washington Post, stemming from a dispute over a high-profile real estate deal in Palm Beach. Before then, photos and video repeatedly showed the two were friendly. In 2019, NBC posted footage of a party showing Trump socializing with Epstein in 1992.

[...]

Together at a fashion show

The 1999 fashion show wasn’t the first Victoria’s Secret event the pair attended together. Two photos from Getty Images show Trump and Epstein appearing at a 1997 Angels party in New York, two years before the footage uncovered by CNN. Epstein’s presence at the 1999 fashion show also reflects his longstanding ties to Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company. Epstein managed Wexner’s finances from 1987 to around 2007. The two later severed ties, and Wexner has said he was unaware of Epstein’s alleged crimes during their association. In 2002, Trump was quoted in a New York Magazine profile of Epstein — “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery” — describing him as “a terrific guy,” saying he’s known Epstein for 15 years. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said.

[...] Images published in the Palm Beach Post in 2000 also show Trump, Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell — who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking — and Prince Andrew in attendance at a charity fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on a birthday message sent bearing Trump’s name for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. According to the Journal, it contained an outline of a naked woman and a typed note that ended with the line: “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Following the report, the Trump administration pledged to release grand jury materials related to Epstein. The federal judge overseeing Maxwell’s case set a deadline for the Justice Department to provide information so he can determine whether to unseal the transcripts. The Department of Justice also said Tuesday it has reached out to Maxwell for a meeting amid backlash over the administration’s handling of files related to Epstein.

Alyssa Tirrell at MMFA:

A CNN report that sensationalized Vice President Kamala Harris' 2019 position on access to care for incarcerated trans people has continued to drive the election cycle — prompting an extensive ad campaign — even though gender-affirming surgery was available to incarcerated trans people under Donald Trump's presidency. 

CNN's reporting instigated coverage from right-wing media figures and debate commentary from the former president. Even though the Supreme Court has held for half a century that denying incarcerated people medically necessary care is a violation of constitutional rights, right-wing media figures have continued to promote the issue as a supposed indication of Harris' radicalism.  According to The New Republic and AdImpact, Trump's campaign has invested nearly half of its advertising spending — over $30 million — on ads that emphasize Harris' former position on care for incarcerated trans people. At least one of these ads explicitly references CNN's report.  However, CNN failed to note — as reported by The New York Times — that “Trump appointees at the Bureau of Prisons, a division of the Justice Department, provided an array of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, for a small group of inmates who requested it during Mr. Trump’s four years in office.”

According to the Times, the amount the Bureau of Prisons spent on hormone therapy ranged “from $60,000 to $95,000 a year during Mr. Trump’s term” — just .8% of the $12 million the campaign spent in the last few weeks on the ad referencing CNN's report.  While it is true that no incarcerated trans people in federal prisons received gender-affirming surgeries under Trump's term, such cases would not have violated the bureau's policy while he was in office. Both the first and second — and to date the only, according to an agency spokesperson — trans people to receive gender-affirming surgeries while incarcerated under the Federal Bureau of Prisons first filed suits demanding such care under Trump.  Additionally, the first two incarcerated people to successfully sue a prison for access to gender-affirming surgery won cases against state facilities while Trump was in office.

[...] Contrary to the implication that incarcerated trans people have unfettered access to gender-affirming care, trans people often have to sue state and federal prisons in order to access necessary care. Only about 1% of those in federal prisons are transgender, and denial of care is often only a part of the conditions they face — including disproportionate rates of violence —  while incarcerated. 

Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck at CNN:

One of the leaders of the Republican National Convention’s platform committee, which shapes the party’s official stance on key issues, has a history of pushing extreme anti-abortion positions, including advocating for a national ban without exceptions for rape or incest. He also entertained the possibility of jailing women who get abortions and the doctors who perform them.

Ed Martin, the deputy policy director for the convention’s platform committee, is one of three people the Republican National Committee selected in May to help craft the party’s platform, which serves as a blueprint for the Republican Party’s agenda by detailing policy positions and how Republicans and former President Donald Trump would govern if elected. The platform is expected to be pared down this year, slashing the length of the document to focus on Trump’s agenda for a second term. Martin has consistently espoused a hardline position on abortion, criticizing Republicans with a more moderate stance on the issue, and has even questioned the safety of birth control. “The true bane of the pro-life movement is the faction of fake pro-lifers who claim to believe in the sanctity of human life but are only willing to vote that way with a list of exceptions,” Martin said on his radio show in June 2022 – several days after Roe v. Wade was struck down.

Martin, an attorney and former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, was a staunch advocate for Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and conspiracy theories the election was rigged against him. He is also the president of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagles – a socially conservative advocacy group named for the late activist best known for her opposition to feminism. Schlafly and Martin also co-authored the 2016 book, “The Conservative Case for Trump.” [...] Those views contrast with recent efforts by Trump to move away from calls for a national ban and his suggestions that the issue of abortion should be left to the states—drawing the ire of anti-abortion groups. Trump has repeatedly advocated for exceptions in the case of rape, incest and health of the mother, including at Thursday’s debate. “You have to follow your heart, but you have to get elected also,” Trump said during the debate. Trump also said that he “will not block” abortion medication if elected president.

[...]

Opposition to abortion pills

Martin has also said he opposes language in abortion bans that allows for abortion to save the life of a mother, falsely saying on his radio show in June 2022, “It’s an absolute scientific fact that no abortion is ever performed to save the life of the mother. None, zero, zilch.” The Supreme Court ruled last week that emergency abortions could be performed in Idaho in cases where the life of a pregnant woman is at stake, though the decision provides little clarity on the threshold for life-saving exceptions. Martin also falsely claimed multiple times that medically-induced abortion, which he referred to as a chemical abortion, and birth control pills were dangerous and “damaging,” repeatedly  criticizing the “loosey goosey regulation around pill abortion” and that it could be ordered via mail.

[...]

RNC platform

Martin is one of three leaders now shaping the GOP platform – along with Russ Vought, the influential former White House Office of Management and Budget director in the Trump administration, and Randy Evans, a former US ambassador to Luxembourg during the Trump administration.

CNN’s KFile exposes RNC Platform Committee member Ed Martin’s support for extreme and draconian anti-abortion policies, such as imprisoning both the doctors who performs abortions and the pregnant person who obtain abortions, support for a nationwide abortion ban without exceptions, and opposes birth control and medication abortions.

Martin serves as the President of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles. He is also a radio host, a former Missouri Republican Party chair, and a former CNN contributor.

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Chris Geidner at Law Dork:

On Monday afternoon, CNN published an anti-transgender hit piece on Vice President Kamala Harris based off a 2019 ACLU questionnaire that she filled out during her presidential run. In the 10-page response to the group’s 18 questions, Harris made clear — in answering a specific question — that she supported providing appropriate medical care to those transgender people who “rely on the state for care,” including those in prison and immigration detention, and that medically necessary transition-related care can and does at times include surgical care.

And yet, this is how CNN headlined their pre-2024 debate coverage of this 2019 questionnaire response:

Before we get to Monday’s hit piece, which was authored by my former BuzzFeed News colleague Andrew Kaczynski, let’s make a few things clear. This had not been not some out-of-nowhere question at the time, and it was not some on-the-fly answer. This was an issue that had been coming up more frequently and, specifically, it had been an issue that Harris had dealt with in 2015 in a transgender inmate’s case while attorney general in California. Harris later faced questions about her handling of Michelle-Lael Norsworthy’s case, who only got the necessary surgery after being paroled.

This is also not a particularly complicated issue. The government has obligations to provide necessary medical care for those who it forces under its control — whether due to imprisonment or immigration detention — and often faces challenges related to the failure to provide needed care. When deemed medically necessary treatment for a person’s gender dysphoria (the medical diagnosis that reflects a person’s longstanding mismatch between their gender identity and their gender assigned at birth), gender-affirming medical care is, at the end of the day, medical care. As such, one only reaches the conclusion that gender-affirming medical care should not be provided when called for if one starts from an anti-transgender perspective. Or, posed as a question: Unless you want to exclude transgender people from care, why would you exclude transgender people’s care? Now, it is true that politicians have regularly pushed back against providing such coverage, even where recommended, but I suspect that has been done in not insignificant part due to fear of the very sort of reporting like that Kaczynski produced for CNN and its global audience on Monday.

[...]

In 2019, despite the Trump administration, the country was, in many ways, still progressing on LGBTQ issues — including transgender issues. There were, though, certainly challenges from Donald Trump on down — and the beginning signs of the coming wave of anti-trans hate that would be promoted in culture and in politics. And yet, in 2019, there were no bans on any medical treatments recommended for transgender people. Five years later, about half of the states in the country have bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors, multiple federal appeals courts have held that those bans are likely constitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up the issue. One federal appeals court last month even allowed Florida to enforce a ban includes restrictions on adult care during the state’s appeal of a loss below. The fact that CNN decided to eagerly — and repeatedly — encourage the sort of hateful attitudes that it encouraged on Monday is appalling.

What kind of disgraceful reporting was this from CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski (whose reporting has usually been solid)?

From the 09.09.2024 edition of CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront:

Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck at CNN:

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said two-and-a-half years ago he was open to a national abortion ban, a stark contrast to comments he made this week where the Ohio senator said he adhered to Trump’s view that abortion should be a state issue. Vance argued in 2022 that people seeking abortions would travel from states where abortion is banned to states with liberal abortion laws, necessitating federal action. “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” Vance said in January 2022 on a podcast when running for Senate.

[...]

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturned the constitutional right to abortion, voters have consistently supported abortion rights in state measures, and the 2022 midterm elections saw numerous anti-abortion Republicans defeated.

[...]

Vance once supported a “national minimum standard” for abortion restrictions and signaled support for a 15-week federal abortion ban to CNN before determining there was no appetite for it in the current climate.

Yet in January 2022, Vance argued that while lawmakers couldn’t ban abortion in the current climate, he was sympathetic to the view that a national ban was necessary. Vance proposed a hypothetical scenario where if Roe vs. Wade was overturned and Ohio banned abortion by 2024, liberal mega donor and philanthropist George Soros — a popular bogeyman in conservative circles might then facilitate abortions for “disproportionately black women” by flying them to California. “I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation — let’s say Roe vs. Wade is overruled. Ohio bans abortion, in 2022 or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity — uh, that’s kind of creepy.” “And, and it’s like, if that happens, do you need some federal response to prevent it from happening?” Vance said, “I’m pretty sympathetic to that actually. So, you know, how hopefully we get to a point where Ohio bans abortion in California and the Soroses of the world respect it.”

CNN’s KFile exposes Trump VP pick and Senator J.D. Vance’s January 2022 call to ban abortion nationwide during an appearance on the Very Fine People podcast on the hypothetical basis that George Soros would fly abortion patients to California or other abortion-permissive states.

The podcast was released several months before the Dobbs decision was handed down that overturned Roe and Casey at SCOTUS.

See Also:

HuffPost: JD Vance Previously Advocated For 'Abortion To Be Illegal Nationally'

Andrew Kaczynski and Abby Turner at CNN:

Former President Donald Trump said in 2016 that a president under indictment would “cripple the operations of our government” and create an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” – years before he himself was indicted on federal charges while running for a second term as president. Trump made the comments nearly seven years ago about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. “We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial,” Trump said during a November 5, 2016, campaign rally in Reno, Nevada, reviewed by CNN’s KFile. “It would grind government to a halt.”

Just days earlier, on October 28, then-FBI director James Comey publicly announced they had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information related to her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Now, Trump finds himself under the exact situation he repeatedly described after he was charged in early June with 37 federal counts related to retention of classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice. A tentative trial date had been set for mid-August by the case’s judge, but it is likely to be pushed back. The special counsel’s office asked for a December trial. The flexibility of when the trial will begin leaves uncertainty if the case will conclude before the 2024 election. But Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, will not be disqualified from the presidency even if convicted, and he told Politico in June that he won’t leave the presidential race if he is convicted of the charges. At another rally on November 3, 2016, in Concord, North Carolina, Trump made similar comments. “If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government,” he said. “She is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up – in my opinion – in a criminal trial. I mean, you take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way.” “She has no right to be running, you know that,” Trump said. “No right.” [...] The comments aren’t the only ones from Trump’s past campaigns that could have aged poorly with his legal troubles. In another comment, made when running for reelection, Trump acknowledged only the sitting president could reveal classified information.

Turns out Donald Trump's own words about how a President under indictment "would create an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government" came back to bite him in the butt.

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