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Today is the deadline for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. As of this writing, the Epstein files have not been released, although for months, the congressional oversight committee has been steadily releasing photos and emails to and from Epstein. The reporting has ticked up several notches too. The New York Times just dropped a big piece in which they spoke to over 30 associates of Epstein and Donald Trump, and the focus is on the closeness of the two men throughout the 1990s and early ‘00s. Basically, they competed with each other for women and girls, and they were constantly trying to impress each other with their misogyny, depravity and sexual gossip. You can read the full NYT piece here. An excerpt:

Jeffrey Epstein was a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be with.” He and Donald J. Trump also had “no formal relationship.” They went to a lot of the same parties. But they “did not socialize together.” They were never really friends, just business acquaintances. Or “there was no relationship” at all. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

For nearly a quarter-century, Mr. Trump and his representatives have offered shifting, often contradictory accounts of his relationship with Mr. Epstein, one sporadically captured by society photographers and in news clips before they fell out sometime in the mid-2000s. Closely scrutinized since Mr. Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell during Mr. Trump’s first term, their friendship — and questions about what the president knew of Mr. Epstein’s abuses — now threatens to consume his second one.

Beginning in the late 1980s, the two men forged a bond intense enough to leave others who knew them with the impression that they were each other’s closest friend, The Times found. Mr. Epstein was then a little-known financier who cultivated mystery around the scope and source of his self-made wealth. Mr. Trump, six years older, was a real estate scion who relished publicity and exaggerated his successes. Neither man drank or did drugs. They pursued women in a game of ego and dominance. Female bodies were currency.

Over nearly two decades, as Mr. Trump cut a swath through the party circuits of New York and Florida, Mr. Epstein was perhaps his most reliable wingman. During the 1990s and early 2000s, they prowled Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and Mr. Trump’s Plaza Hotel, at least one of Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City casinos and both their Palm Beach homes. They visited each other’s offices and spoke often by phone, according to other former Epstein employees and women who spent time in his homes. With other men, Mr. Epstein might discuss tax shelters, international affairs or neuroscience. With Mr. Trump, he talked about sex.

“I just think it was trophy hunting,” Stacey Williams, who rose to fame as a star of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions during the 1990s, said in an interview with The Times. In social media posts and interviews with news outlets in recent years, Ms. Williams has described how Mr. Trump groped her in 1993 at Trump Tower while Mr. Epstein — whom she was then dating — watched. “I think Jeffrey liked that he had this Sports Illustrated model who had this name, and that Trump was pursuing me,” she said. Mr. Trump has denied her account.

[From The NY Times]

It goes on and on – some people in this circle believed that Epstein saved Trump from bankruptcy at one point, and Epstein apparently thought Trump was a moron about business. But Trump loved Epstein’s access to women and girls, and Epstein loved “competing” with Trump for women. Epstein got off on Trump pursuing the same women. Trump visited Epstein’s New York office often, and Trump was a regular at Epstein’s Florida mansion. Epstein used to party constantly at Mar-a-Lago. Trump would often fly to Florida on Epstein’s plane, which was already known as the Lolita Express. Epstein introduced himself to women and girls in Trump’s orbit by saying “I’m Jeffrey. I’m Don’s best friend.” When Trump got into beauty pageants, both he and Epstein used the pageants as hunting grounds.

There’s also a haunting story of a 14-year-old model invited to Mar-a-Lago and ordered to “dress sexy” for the party. She brought her mother, who was chasing off grown men trying to hit on her daughter and feed her daughter champagne all night. At one point, mother and daughter ran into Marla Maples, who told the mother: “Whatever you do, do not let her around any of these men, and especially my husband. Protect her.”

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