No, There Are Not Bill Clinton Or Richard Branson (Or Even Prince Andrew) Epstein Sex Tapes (That We Know Of)

This was debunked in 2019.

Jan 09, 2024

Here’s what I don’t like about “dumps” like the Epstein files — they’re basically misinformation minefields that look like a field of dreams to the people on all sides who are dying to say “I told you so!” about those they dislike politically. Liberals are hoping to get dirt on Trump and Dershowitz, while the Right is clamoring to get its own on Bill Clinton and whomever else.

Right now, the internet is abuzz with the news of the latest Epstein dump, complete with emails from Epstein victim Sarah Ransome to New York Post/Daily Mail writer Maureen Callahan. In the emails Ransome claims to have tapes of Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Richard Branson having sex with one of her friends, and also details Donald Trump’s thoughts and actions, re: the nipples of another friend.

Via Epstein docs (trigger warning obviously):

[M]y friend had sexual intercourse with Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson, sex tapes were in fact filmed on each separate occasion ... I eventually managed to persuade her to send me some of the video footage which she kept, implicating all three all men ... I have backed up the footage on several USB sticks and have securely sent them to various different locations throughout Europe. (Exhibit 5) […]
[A]nother friend ... was one of the many girls that had sexual relations with Donald Trump ... She confided in me about her casual friendship' with Donald. Mr. Trump definitely seemed to have a thing for her and she told me how he kept going on about how he liked her pert nipples'. Donald Trump liked flicking and sucking her nipples until they were raw. One evening when we were showering together she showed me her nipples. They looked incredibly painful as they were red and swollen and I remember wincing when I looked at them. I also know she had sexual relations with Trump at Jeffery's NY mansion on regular occasions as I once met Jen for coffee, just before she was going to meet Trump and Epstein together at his mansion." (Exhibit 6)

So there’s a little something for everybody! Well, except for those actually looking for those tapes — because as far as we know, they don’t actually exist.

The thing is … this is not a new story. It’s a fairly old one, and in 2019, Ransome told New Yorker writer Connie Bruck that not only did she not have the tapes, but that she invented their existence.

Via The New Yorker:

Ransome was another imperfect witness. In the fall of 2016, she had suggested to the New York Post that she had sex tapes of half a dozen prominent people, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump—but couldn’t provide the tapes when asked. (Ransome told me that she had invented the tapes to draw attention to Epstein’s behavior, and to make him believe that she had “evidence that would come out if he harmed me.”) In 2017, Boies represented Ransome in a lawsuit against Epstein for sex trafficking; last December, Epstein paid an undisclosed sum to settle. In a hearing, Maxwell’s lawyer mentioned Ransome’s allegation about Dershowitz, and the comment leaked to the press. Protected by the litigation privilege, it was reported in the Daily News, under the headline “Second Woman Claims Billionaire Perv Jeffrey Epstein ‘Directed’ Her To Have Sex With Alan Dershowitz.”

These emails were in the released documents because they were actually used by Alan Dershowitz’s attorneys to discredit Ransome, as she had also claimed that Epstein made her have sex with him.

Does this mean that such tapes definitely don’t exist or that Donald Trump does not have weirdly strong feelings about the nipples of sex trafficked women? They do not. There are, however, so many horrid things about Donald Trump that we know for a fact are true that this sort of (again, possibly false!) information is just gilding the lily.

I won’t rule out the possibility that someone has such tapes, because anything could be true. I will, however, rule out the right-wing fantasy that a sex tape implicating Bill Clinton would somehow impugn left-wing politics for years to come — particularly when dude was a moderate to begin with and we’ve known about his proclivities for decades now.

They do, however, mean that this email is, at the very least, not actual evidence of the former. It also doesn’t mean that everything Ransome ever said was a lie — imperfect victims exist, especially imperfect traumatized victims. Much of the evidence Ransome did provide was in the form of actual pictures showing young girls on his island, and there are pictures of her with him, so it’s not as if she’s just some person who didn’t actually even know him going around making up stories.

They also mean that it’s rather ironic that Donald Trump Jr. is out here posting about Clinton being on the tapes … when Ransome also claimed to have one of his dad.

This seems like a big deal and if true why has nothing been done about it? Breaking News: Court documents allege Jeffrey Epstein recorded sex tapes of Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and Sir Richard Branson. — Good try though!

It’s certainly not ideal, but people do sometimes make shit up that is particularly inflammatory to get attention in order to get people to take things that actually did happen more seriously. I wish that weren’t true and that people were either 100 percent truthful and good or 100 percent deceitful and evil, but we’re all a whole lot messier than that.

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The fact is, however, it is just extremely unlikely that any illegal or even particularly scandalous actions by anyone who has not been arrested yet are going to be in those files. There are not so many new revelations as there are new details to things that have been known/out/reported on for years. It’s not out of the question that something might be particularly damning but not criminal — even the mere thought of Donald Trump talking about “pert nipples” makes me want to throw up in my mouth — but do we seriously think that someone has been credibly asserting to have sex tapes of multiple powerful men since around 2016, that they shared this with a New York Post columnist, and no one has found them or been mysteriously disappeared? Call me a skeptic, but I’m gonna say nah.

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