The Actual Conspiracy Theory Surrounding Trump and Epstein

It’s not what you think it is.

Content warning: rape, child rape

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Nearly 70% of Americans now believe that the Trump administration is concealing information about the notorious sex trafficker and child rapist, Jeffrey Epstein. But still, among my progressive circles, a fair proportion of people are still dismissing this possibility—and, with it, the idea that Trump actually abused teen girls at Epstein’s “parties”—as a baseless conspiracy theory. To be sure, much of MAGA’s conviction that Trump is hiding something personal have dubious origins in the wild and pernicious lies perpetuated in QAnon, the cult that spread the belief that a cabal of elite child cannibals and molesters have been trafficking toddlers. But you can, of course, believe the right thing for the wrong reasons. And, given the solid evidence to hand about Trump’s misconduct—some of it new, much of it old—the real conspiracy theory at this point has a radically different basis. Nobody in the mainstream media has yet named it, and it desperately needs acknowledgement.

The real conspiracy theory around Trump and Epstein is that multiple apparently unconnected women lied, and continue to lie, about Trump’s behavior. This with nothing to gain, and much to lose, by speaking out about his misdeeds.

Let’s start with Katie Johnson, the pseudonym adopted by the woman who I wrote about here last time. Her story, if we take her word for it, goes like this: for decades, she was silent, after Trump allegedly raped her at the age of thirteen, at the home of Jeffrey Epstein, in 1994. She also alleges that Trump sexually abused her there on three prior occasions. Katie never planned to speak about this publicly until 2016, when Trump was running for president. Katie met a TV producer at a party who offered to tell her story: Norm Lubow, who adopted the pseudonym Al Taylor. He shopped around her video testimony to multiple media outlets, who found—upon vetting him—that he had once been a producer on the Jerry Springer show and that he had an anti-Trump agenda, among other red flags. The story fizzled out and Katie was assumed to be a liar who Lubow had coached or scripted. At the same time, her lawsuit in California was filed incompetently, and her lawsuit in New York (filed by a respectable attorney, who met and video conferenced with Katie) was dropped, after she received threats, including death threats. For the same reason, she cancelled her planned press conference in LA a few days before the presidential election, where she had planned to warn America about the kind of man they were on the verge of electing.

Again, that’s all if we take Katie’s word for it. Another possibility, of course, is that Lubow did coach or script Katie’s lengthy video testimony. A few points, however: that testimony is compelling, at least in my view. It was widely dismissed when it surfaced in 2016 partly because what Katie was saying was judged just too incredible when it came to Epstein’s sex trafficking of teen girls. Remember, the full story about his crimes didn’t emerge until late in 2018, thanks to Julie K. Brown’s trenchant and prize-winning reporting in The Miami Herald. We now know that what Katie said about Epstein was not only plausible but completely true. Moreover, Katie wouldn’t be the first woman to mistakenly rely on an unscrupulous huckster in order to tell her story: the same is true, notoriously, of the former sex worker Stormy Daniels. People initially dismissed Daniels’s account because she was represented by the huckster lawyer, Michael Avenatti. But Daniels was clearly telling the truth about Trump’s hiring her in 2006 and then, a decade later, paying her hush money. To cite the fact that her lawyer was shonky was, intentionally or not, dismissing Daniels via guilt by association. Many people may have made the same mistake vis-à-vis Katie Johnson. After all, as we’ll consider shortly, numerous women have testified in ways that corroborate her story.

Katie’s lawsuits and video testimony have long stuck in my mind. Back in 2016, and even 2024—when they briefly resurfaced on Twitter—I didn’t know quite what to make of them. But now, I suggest, we should at least listen to Katie. Here is one especially relevant part of the video transcript, which I did myself (it simply isn’t out there). I am making it available to you now in full (at the end of this post) partly because the video has—interestingly enough—disappeared from one common source, on X, and also because no journalist has seemingly ever bothered to write down her words. This despite the video providing the clearest and fullest account of what Americans are now clamoring for: a sense of Trump’s alleged entanglement with Epstein. When women speak, and tell us of rich and powerful white men’s misdeeds, we not only don’t believe them; we often don’t even bother to listen in the first place. One hopes that now, in the wake of 2017’s #MeToo moment, we are at least slightly savvier about the importance of hearing even imperfect victims (or, rather, those who had deeply imperfect initial representation). Here’s Katie, on her final encounter with Trump at Epstein’s mansion, where she alleges she was tied to the bed for an orchestrated rape “fantasy.” (“It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing,” as she put it.)

[Trump] ripped off all my clothes and he started to basically have sex with me and I was screaming. I’d never had sex before, it was my first time and [Epstein’s handler] Tiffany was yelling at him too. She was saying I was a virgin and he told us to just shut the fuck up and just basically took my virginity while I was crying and telling him to stop and basically begging for him to just stop...

[Afterward] I was crying and Tiffany was consoling me and she was apologizing. She told me that she would never put me in that situation again. But he comes over mad because I was crying and he said that I should be thankful that someone like Donald Trump took my virginity. Well, he didn’t say took my virginity. He said, I should be glad that someone like Donald Trump popped my cherry and not some pimply little 14 year old. And I just was like, “What if I get pregnant?” Not even talking to him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I was talking to Tiffany and he said, “Well you’ll get an abortion then, bitch.”

I find Katie’s story believable, not only because it is obviously truthful with respect to Epstein, as we know now: it is also plausible regarding Trump’s own behavior. Some telling details, which emerge below, include Trump’s germophobia (he would only allow his penis to be touched with a glove or a condom); his well-documented sexual proclivity for his own daughter, Ivanka (he allegedly enjoyed her likeness to Katie when she donned a blonde wig); Trump’s racism and Islamophobia and anti-immigrant vitriol (including in one abusive “fantasy” Katie details involving a Hispanic “maid” who Trump threatened to call immigration on); his domineering speech; the sheer tone of it, even. And, just as importantly, Katie’s testimony squares with that of several apparently independent witnesses and victims. Namely:

• Tiffany Doe, the handler referred to above in the transcript, in the 2016 court cases, who corroborated each key element of Katie’s account in a sworn affidavit. (Joan Doe, a friend of Katie’s, also provided corroboration that Katie had told her about the incident with Trump and Epstein during the 1994-1995 school year.)

• Maria Farmer, who recently testified that, when she was working for Epstein in 1995, he brought her to Trump’s office late one night. After Trump leered at her legs, Epstein corrected him: “No, no, she’s not here for you.” The seeming implication being, other girls were or would be. Farmer overheard Trump remarking that he thought she looked about sixteen, though she was actually in her twenties. (Farmer originally accused Epstein of sexual assault in 1996, when she brought the matter to the FBI. Farmer said then that Trump was also worthy of their attention. She repeated both claims a decade later when she was re-interviewed.)

• Stacey Williams, who testified last October that, in the 1990s, when she was a model in her twenties dating Epstein, he took her to Trump’s office at Trump tower. Williams alleges that Trump groped her, she froze, and then Epstein got mad at Williams. (Yes, Williams.) “They were not mere acquaintances,” Williams told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller in an interview this morning. (She also testified that Epstein took a non-consensual video of Williams undressing at his residence.)

None of the women testifying to Trump’s misdeeds apparently had or have much, if anything, to gain by coming forward. On the contrary, they had or have a lot to lose, and risk being discredited as well as shamed and blamed for their victimhood or act of witnessing. This can ruin women’s lives—or even end them. Virginia Giuffre, an important advocate for justice for sex trafficking victims, died tragically by suicide in April. She, notably, was working as a spa attendant at Trump’s resort, Mar-a-Lago, in 2000, when Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her to be part of Epstein’s entourage at the age of 17. (Guiffre was instrumental in the court case against Epstein in 2008 that ended with him getting a sweetheart non-prosecution agreement, as well as the second criminal case against Epstein in 2019. Guiffre also obtained a $16 million settlement from Prince Andrew, an alleged Epstein client.)

Then there are the following puzzle pieces regarding Trump’s history of sexual misconduct in general, and involvement with Epstein in particular:

• Five Miss Teen USA contestants, aged as young as 15, testify that Trump walked in on them while changing in 1997—something Trump actually boasted about to Howard Stern in 2005. Trump also hosted a “calendar girls” competition at Mar-a-Lago in 1993. The only other guest? Jeffrey Epstein.

• The “bawdy” letter Trump wrote to Epstein for his 50th birthday, in 2003, as reported by The Wall Street Journal last week. The letter said: “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey” and “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” Then: “Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret,” and a doodle of a naked woman with the signature “Donald” rendered as a squiggle over her pubic area.

• Trump also told New York Magazine in 2002 that he’d known Epstein for fifteen years, and called him a “terrific guy.” “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,” he told the reporter. He flew on Epstein’s private jet four times in 1993, as well as once in 1994, 1995 and 1997. Epstein later described Trump as his closest friend in an interview.

• Ivana Trump testified, to the Trump biographer Harry Hurt III, that her then husband raped her in 1989. (She subsequently recanted, under pressure from Trump’s lawyers, as I detail in Down Girl in the introduction, “Eating her Words.”)

• Trump is a legally adjudicated rapist in the case of E. Jean Carroll, who brought a civil suit against him in 2023 for raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Carroll was initially awarded $5 million in damages. She was then awarded over $80 million in a second lawsuit—as she details in her recent New York Times bestselling book, Not My Type. (The book’s title is a reference to Trump’s chief defense against these allegations in the media: Carroll was “not his type;” ergo, he didn’t rape her.)

• Obviously, and notoriously, Trump boasted about non-consensually kissing and grabbing women “by the pussy” to Billy Bush in 2005—hot mic footage of which emerged in the run-up to the 2016 election, producing a brief public outcry.

• Trump has also been accused by dozens of other women of sexually assaulting them—predominantly by alleged non-consensual kissing and/or groping—as meticulously documented in the book, All the President’s Women.

• This past Wednesday, the news broke that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump during the Spring that he is named, in some capacity, in the Epstein files.

So when it comes to the idea that Katie was a TV producer’s plant, and that the women testifying in congruent ways—many of which jibe with established facts about Trump’s behavior—all happen to be lying, I have to say: sounds like a conspiracy theory. And simply implausible.

Consider all of the above points, and then consider Katie’s testimony—which I reproduce in full below (save for brief edits for length and clarity). Does it constitute an open and shut case that Trump did what she said he did and raped her at the age of thirteen? Of course not. But “beyond reasonable doubt”—and, for that matter, “innocent until proven guilty”—are legal standards, not moral or epistemic ones. The question that concerns me now, and that I pose to you here, in light of the foregoing, is whether Katie’s story is credible and plausible. Should we, as concerned citizens, deign to believe her?

I say yes. Her story is all too believable. And we have buried and ignored it to our national peril.

I came to this interview of my free will. No, there was nothing promised to me for doing this interview. Yes, everything that I say in this interview will be the truth.

I met Donald Trump at some parties that I was working for Mr. Jeffrey Epstein. There were about three or four times that I had encounters with Donald Trump. I was 13. The first time that I met Donald Trump was at a party at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. There was an orgy going on and he was kind of watching off in the distance.

He basically asked if I could come over and give him a hand job. At first I wasn’t very comfortable with it. This was my first party and I didn’t think that that was my responsibility. But my recruiter told me that I needed to do it. So I agreed to it and then he, you know, I began to—sorry this is a little difficult. But before I gave him a hand job he kind of slapped my hand away and said, “You need to use a glove.” The recruiter ran over and handed me a glove and said, “No one touches Mr. Trump’s penis without a glove.” So I needed to use a glove. I gave him a hand job and then immediately after he had an orgasm he left and I didn’t see him again at that party…

I originally came to New York trying to be a model and in my travels I met a girl named Tiffany there who was very interested in me and said that that’s what she did is that she helped girls, you know, get what they wanted. She could help me get into modeling, that she knew a lot of people that were higher-ups and that it would be no problem. And so that’s why, you know, I would just basically have to come model at a couple of events and meet some people, there would be no sweat. So of course I went, you know, that sounded like no big deal. And she was recruiting the girls to come to these parties and they all looked, I mean most of them were my age. There were maybe a couple girls that were maybe 14 or 15 but it seemed to me like we were all very young.

Jeffrey Epstein knew that I was 13 years old. When he interviewed me, he asked me to get down to my bra and just my panties and I thought that was weird but, I mean, modeling. Maybe it was something about my figure. He asked me to give him a massage. He asked me my age, I told him that I was thirteen, I told him why I was there, and he basically said, “Well, you’ll do, you know, I’m sure that you’ll fit pretty nicely here.” And then he tried to basically slip himself inside of me. And I pushed him away and I said, you know, I’m—because at that point in time I still believed that there were models and then there was the girls that did that. Like I thought there was a separation. So I told him that I wasn’t interested in that but he said that I would do.

And as far as Donald Trump, he knew that I was 13, and I believe that Tiffany told him. He seemed to take a liking to me because I was so young and I was also a virgin. So, I don’t know, he seemed like he wasn’t really into having girls that were liked by the other guys. The whole glove thing—he kind of liked things to be his first, you know, for lack of a better term. He was the one who wanted to get to a girl before everyone else did.

Donald Trump knew that I was 13 because the first night that I was there, Tiffany actually suggested that and she had a whole bunch of different wigs and I expressed interest in them and I always told her that I would love to walk around with blue hair. And so I tried some on and there was a blonde wig that she said that looked great on me. So, I wore that wig and Donald Trump had specifically asked about me because I remind him of his daughter and she said, “Well, she’s 13 as well.” So, he knew the first time that he saw me. He took a liking to me because I looked like his daughter.

The reason I’m coming out now is—when it happened originally, I just wanted to forget about the whole incident. And when I saw that he was running for president, I felt that it was my responsibility to come out and tell our country what kind of man this person is. I don’t think that he should even be the dog catcher, let alone running the greatest country in the world…

The first time that I met Jeffrey Epstein, he did try to force himself inside of me without getting the go-ahead or anything. And then it was probably about the third or fourth party is when he basically forced—it was another massage and it was basically like, it wasn’t sex, but it was, there was penetration. And I told him that I didn’t want that, but he kind of got a little irritated. So, I don’t know, there was something about him that, I guess I kind of held a lot of resentment towards him. By the time that that happened, I already started catching on that maybe I wasn’t there for modeling and maybe I was just getting used for things and I kind of held him responsible.

I did receive money to go to these parties. After every party, I was paid by Mr. Epstein. There wasn’t, out of all the girls that were there with me, most of them were 13, 14. I think the oldest one might have been 16, but just turned 16 and she’d been there for a while…

Second time that I saw Mr. Trump was, same scenario, he was an onlooker at an orgy and Tiffany came over to me and said that Donald Trump had requested that I perform oral sex on him. And never, I’d never done something like that with anybody, so I was a little nervous. So, I walked up to him and he was sitting there very proud-like and I just kind of moved in that direction and he kind of slapped me away and said, “What are you doing? You need to put a condom on.” Like I was some dirty filth or something. Tiffany ran over and handed me a condom and apologized profusely and said that would never happen again. And she looked at me and scolded me basically like a child and said that, “That’s not how: Donald Trump always, anytime anyone touches his penis it needs to have a condom on or a glove. Especially when it comes to performing oral sex.”

So, I apologized and then I performed oral sex on him. And once again, once he was done, he hopped up and that’s the last I saw of him at that party. It’s like once he’s done, he’s out. Some of the things that I noticed that were weird with him: sometimes before the parties he would come over and Jeffrey Epstein and himself would kind of banter back and forth and he was very, Donald Trump was very racist. He said a lot of racist things. There was a lot of comments towards Mr. Epstein about being Jewish and he called him a Jew bastard, said that he was cheap and there were some words I didn’t even understand.

Something about his, you know, the shape of his penis being directly related to his mole or, I mean, I’m not too familiar with the Jewish tradition—but I’m pretty sure that whatever he was saying wasn’t very nice. He also referred to, you know, people of Hispanic origin, he called them Spicks. That was around the first time that the World Trade Center had gotten bombed in the 90s. And he was talking about the towel heads and how we would just be better off if we didn’t let them in and basically got rid of everyone, every single one that was already here. And it made me really uncomfortable, really, really uncomfortable.

He also loved to call Black people n----- and Arabic people he called sand n-----. The only time that he tried to give me some money was our last encounter together, where he acted out a rape fantasy. I was forced to give that money back because Jeffrey Epstein paid us after the party. I don’t even know why he gave it to me, maybe to make me feel more cheap. It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing.

The next thing that Tiffany approached me with was that he had a fantasy where he walked in on his maids, maids basically making out and it was some type of fantasy for him. At that point, I was like, “I don’t want to be involved with anything that has to do with him.” But she’s like, “You are just basically the other one. So, there’s nothing that you will have to do. Just—he’s requesting you to be involved.” So, I reluctantly—I mean, I felt like I didn’t have a choice there, but it was basically, he’s walking in on his two maids, I was one of the maids, I was the white maid. And there was a Spanish girl, Maria, who was the Hispanic maid. And we were making out and he walks in and he gets really angry and threatens to call immigration on Maria if she doesn’t come over and make things right and give him a blow job.

So, while she is over there giving him a blow job, I am supposed to look scared like, “Oh, oh no,” cleaning up things and pretending like I’m trying to go back to my job as a maid. And then he’s being so rude to Maria. I felt so bad for her. It just didn’t seem like a fantasy. It’s the weirdest fantasy as far as that goes. He was threatening, he was threatening to call immigration on her. She wasn’t even near going down to give him, perform oral sex on him before he slapped her away and said, “What are you doing? You know you need to put a condom on.” And she’s trying to say “I’m so sorry.” And he’s like, “You can’t even, I can’t even understand what you’re saying. Just speak English!” He called her derogatory comments. And then he’s like, “You know what, you don’t know what you’re doing. Have her come over and show you how it’s done.” And so I, again, I said that I didn’t—I had to go over there or else he was going to call immigration on Maria. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but he said that if I didn’t show her how to perform oral sex on him, then he was going to call immigration on her and then get rid of us both.

Anything that was in relation to him getting off or being satisfied or happy had to do with him being in power, extreme power. And it was always intimidating when he was like that. You didn’t really know if it was true. If you refused to play along, would he really call immigration on Maria? Would he really get rid of us both? And I didn’t even want to know what that meant. It wasn’t a game.

The one night that I had the blonde wig on, he mentioned that I reminded him of his daughter. And actually the maid’s fantasy, I didn’t have a blonde wig on. I was trying to stay away from blonde wigs at the time. But he actually requested, told Tiffany that that’s what he wanted me to wear. Like he wanted it, and anytime I put it on, anytime I had it on and he’d see me, he would say, “Oh man, you look—” and it wasn’t like a, “Oh, you remind me of my daughter.” It was this sick, evil “You remind me of my daughter.” It was just this weird pleasure, sick smile. Like I don’t even want to know what he was thinking about. I could imagine what he was thinking about.

After the parties would end, we were to report to Mr. Epstein and basically tell him everything that happened, with who, what they liked, what they disliked, if there was any requests, if there was any talk about anything. That’s what we told Mr. Epstein—everything. And then he paid us, and then we got to go home.

The fact that Trump has a chance to be the next president makes me feel disgusting inside. I’ve always been proud to be an American. I think we live in a beautiful country. But I just see him ruining everything. He’s horrible, what he portrays on the outside isn’t even that great, but people don’t even know the half of how evil, how sick and twisted that man is. I have a friend that’s been my friend ever since the school year that I stopped going, the eighth grade. I confided in her, and she knows all about it. She knows everything…

I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to save the country that I believe that we have. I know what he does behind closed doors. I’m willing to sacrifice my life to put our country back in the right—like, going maybe in some type of positive direction. Not even, there’s no right or wrong, but a positive direction. This guy’s not going to take us anywhere positive.

You know, as far as my life changing by coming out with this information, I’ve thought long and hard about whether or not I should. And I’ve gone back and forth. But I think that the American people need to know what kind of man this person is. And if my life changes because of that, then so be it. But the American people need to know what they’re dealing with. If I had the chance to talk to Donald Trump, I would run the other way. I’m scared of him like I’ve never been scared of anything else in my entire life. I can’t explain it to you, but the fear of him even being in a next room, I have a panic attack.

The last encounter that I had with Donald Trump, Tiffany approached me about a rape scene that was supposed to be played out. And I didn’t like the sound of that at all. But Tiffany promised, assured me that it wasn’t going to be—if it was anything I wasn’t comfortable with, we could stop. That she would be right there and that it wouldn’t get out of hand. And that it was just a fantasy, like it wasn’t really going to happen. And so I told her that I would. I mean Tiffany was always nice to me. I trusted her, or else I wouldn’t have always done what she asked me to.

But she was there and he came in and I was basically tied to a bed with pantyhose. And they were so tight it hurt to even lay there. And I tried to say something and he was just “Shut up! Shut up, bitch!” He was being really, really rough.

It just didn’t seem like a fantasy. And I started to get scared and he was basically like ripping my clothes off. And I got freaked out. I told him that I didn’t want to do this. I screamed over for Tiffany and she was like, “Mr. Trump, she’s only, she’s not—this is scaring her.” And he’s like, “Oh you shut up too.” He just turned into this animal. It was like a completely different, completely different person. It was like everyone in the room was scared of him. And I couldn’t do anything about it.

He ripped off all my clothes and he started to basically have sex with me and I was screaming. I’d never had sex before, it was my first time and Tiffany was yelling at him too. She was saying I was a virgin and he told us to just shut the fuck up and just basically took my virginity while I was crying and telling him to stop and basically begging for him to just stop. And Tiffany didn’t know what else to do either. No one was there to help us, or me. And so, after the fact, he basically finishes. It didn’t take that long at all. But it felt like it was like five and a half hours. It felt like it was an eternity.

I was crying and Tiffany was consoling me and she was apologizing. She told me that she would never put me in that situation again. But he comes over mad because I was crying and he said that I should be thankful that someone like Donald Trump took my virginity. Well, he didn’t say took my virginity. He said, I should be glad that someone like Donald Trump popped my cherry and not some pimply little 14 year old. And I just was like, “What if I get pregnant?” Not even talking to him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I was talking to Tiffany and he said, “Well you’ll get an abortion then, bitch.” And then just walked away. And I told Tiffany I needed to go home. I never went back again.

I guess it’s for you to decide. I don’t have any kids myself because I’m afraid to have kids because who knows what kind of damage they can get into, but if you have a 13-year-old daughter, would you be okay with the person who’s running our country doing that to your little girl? And I just, I don’t know. I just want people to know. I think that I have a faith in our society that we’ll make the right choice. He seemed to be taking great pleasure in dominance and control and the more I screamed, the more I got scared, the more he was enraged with power and it was like he was just charged with it. It was scary.