What did Donald Trump do today?

He was credibly tied by direct victim testimony to the Epstein sex trafficking ring.

Democrats on the House Judiciary panel today released a horrifying 50-page report unveiling new allegations, supported by witness testimony, that Donald Trump "was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s." The report details evidence that "indicates that Trump abused, assaulted, and even raped numerous women alongside, and in coordination with, the most infamous sex trafficker in history."

The report also claims that the FBI and the DOJ—headed, respectively, by a Trump political loyalist with no other law enforcement qualifications and a series of his former personal defense lawyers—are deliberately hiding evidence of Trump's involvement, in an "abject dereliction of duty" that allows Epstein's other clients and co-conspirators to go free along with Trump.

The main body of the report details the patterns of predatory sexual behavior both men are known to have engaged in, and explains how the deeply exploitative world of modeling and pageants that both were involved in served as a cover for their sexual predation. (Trump owned a modeling agency which two of his three wives have worked for. He also encouraged his daughter Ivanka, about whom he has made public sexual comments, to work as a model.)

Five women are cited in the report as having "directly accused Trump of raping or sexually assaulting them in Epstein’s company or direct physical presence." One, Beatrice Keul, told Congressional staff that Trump forcibly raped while he had control of her passport. She also testified to his attempts to buy her silence after the fact with promises that he could get her into New York University, the exact tactic that Epstein was also known to use. 

Four other women report that Trump raped them, or attempted to force them to commit sexual acts, in Epstein's presence. Some of them were minor children at the time. Three additional women elaborated on Trump's awareness of the Epstein-Maxwell trafficking ring, including two women who were considered sufficiently credible witnesses to be called by the DOJ to testify against Maxwell in her 2022 trial.

The report details innumerable ways that the DOJ, at Trump's direction and under the supervision of people appointed because they were Trump loyalists who had defended him in court before his return to office, has derailed attempts to move forward with the Epstein investigation. These efforts include Attorney General Todd Blanche's extraordinary trip to "interview" Epstein's co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, and then to reward her with transfer to a resort-style minimum-security facility when she declined to implicate Trump. But it also goes into considerable detail regarding the Trump administration's outright flouting of the law requiring the release of the Epstein files, which Trump fought tooth and nail until it passed with veto-proof majorities.

The report makes clear its conclusion that the DOJ taking as its mission the criminal defense of Trump has not only shielded him, but other suspects who might otherwise be prosecuted:

There is more than enough evidence that many individuals other than Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell may have committed a crime. This includes Donald Trump. To cover up this inconvenient truth, DOJ has actively obstructed the Epstein investigation into any co-conspirators, attempted to prevent the release of the Epstein files, and then released an incomplete and heavily redacted set to the public—all while withholding key information about Trump in the process. As a result, this investigation has given a pass to all the individuals who took part in this decades-long, multibillion-dollar international sex trafficking ring that victimized over 1,000 women and girls. 

Independent of the matters related in the report released today, Trump has been credibly accused of sexual assault, harassment, or rape by at least 28 different women, ranging from underage children who say he peeped on them in the dressing rooms of the pageants he owned, to his own ex-wife, Ivana Trump. One of his victims, E. Jean Carroll, succeeded in winning a civil judgment against him for rape.

Trump has also made headlines in recent weeks by taking a sympathetic stand with other accused rapists and against their victims, although this is hardly new behavior for him. Earlier this month, he ran political interference for the members of a Cornell fraternity accused of a horrifying gang rape by attacking the prosecutor. And last week, he cheered on a political attack ad against Ohio Democratic candidate for governor that used her mother—who stood by as Acton's stepfather raped her as a young child and subsequently fled prosecution with him—to call her a "liar." 

Why does this matter?

• Rape is a horrifying crime, and the rape and trafficking of children even more so, and nobody—including Donald Trump—should get to walk away from their involvement in it. 

• There is a reason Trump is engaging in the most obvious cover-up and obstruction campaign ever seen, and it is not because he has nothing to fear from the truth.