Washington Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York implied that the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein frequently referred to President Donald Trump in his emails because he was “obsessed” with him.
“If you take these 20,000 plus documents that were just released by House Republicans — Epstein emails that came from the Epstein estate — take those as the Epstein files, and Trump is all over those files. Not because of anything Trump says,” York explained on Fox News’s Will Cain Show Monday. “He’s never heard Trump in any of the files. But because Jeffery Epstein could not stop talking about him.”
Before this most recent release, Trump’s name appeared four times in last year’s release of documents, while former President Bill Clinton’s appeared 73 times. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing, with zero witnesses testifying to interacting with either of the two in a sexual manner.
“I think one theory that you come to as you read is that there’s no doubt that a lot of people who knew Epstein thought that Jeffery Epstein thought that he was very, very smart,” York said. “Somebody with such high self-regard can sometimes get a little bit upset when one of his friends achieves more than he does, rises higher than he does, makes more money than he does. Of course, Donald Trump did achieve the ultimate and became president of the United States.”
“Looking back at Epstein, he was just obsessed with whatever Trump was doing as Trump was rising to power,” York added.
York’s Fox News appearance came on the eve of a press conference featuring Epstein’s victims hosted by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Tuesday.
Johanna Sjoberg, a victim of Epstein, testified that Epstein told her that Trump “likes them young” when referring to girls.
OPINION: JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S RESENTMENT TOWARDS DONALD TRUMP
Earlier this year, Trump explained how he broke off his friendship with Epstein. Trump said he banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago resort over a dispute about Epstein poaching employees. Trump’s association with Epstein is known, but the full extent of it or whether the president is associated with Epstein’s crimes is not.
Notably, this falling out came before Epstein pleaded guilty to child sex trafficking in 2008. While Trump told New York magazine he’d known Epstein for 15 years, after this guilty plea, there is no evidence that Trump continued contact with Epstein.