Media outlets fail to acknowledge Epstein accuser's retraction of Trump involvement
Upon the release of the lists of Jeffrey Epstein's associates, many anti-Trump critics were hoping and praying that the former president would somehow be implicated.
When Trump's name was mentioned in the documents, most mainstream media outlets were quick to make it look as though the former president was involved, but failed to mention that an Epstein accuser actually retracted her comments about Trump's actions in 2019, Breitbart reported.
Breitbart noted:
Court documents made available on Monday included Epstein victim Sarah Ransome’s 2016 emails to the New York Post suggesting that she had Epstein-related sex tapes involving half a dozen prominent people, including Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Sir Richard Branson.
Notably, the tapes she claimed to once have could not be provided, and no footage of the aforementioned individuals has ever surfaced.
Flat out LIE. There are no Trump tapes. Ransome made this BS up. pic.twitter.com/2RqiQyNgnf
— It's 🇺🇸 Tiff 🇺🇸 (@TiffMoodNukes) January 9, 2024
According to a previous report by The New Yorker, the accuser admitted she "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.'"
That didn't stop the anti-Trump media from running with the original story as they conveniently overlooked the updated version that removes Trump from the equation.
Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, released a statement saying, "These baseless accusations have been fully retracted because they are simply false and have no merit."
Breitbart pointed to several media outlets that ran stories with the outdated news in the lede before eventually admitting, several paragraphs down in multiple cases, that the accuser had retracted her statements about Trump.
Author and investigative reporter Vicky Ward attempted to set the record straight this week. She uploaded a video to her Substack titled, "Ignore The Salacious Headlines About Clinton, Trump."
"Very importantly, Sarah Ransome has since said that isn’t true — that she invented the sex tapes because she was so terrified of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the time," she said.
She added, "This is why covering this story is so complicated. Witnesses, victims are afraid. People have imperfect memories and sometimes complex motives."
Only time will tell what comes out of the rest of the Epstein documents.
A long list of independent journalists is still pouring through them, and many believe there are more actual bombshells to come.