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With midterm elections one week away, Americans face many questions about the future of their government. The most important question, in my view, took over the top spot in our internal survey just yesterday. It goes like this: Do I want to support the political party that has enabled our current president, Donald J. Trump, to be repeatedly and credibly accused of unspeakable crimes -- rape, child sexual abuse, and perhaps much more -- all the while consorting and perhaps conspiring with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who pled guilty to prostitution-related offenses in Florida and was charged with federal sex-trafficking crimes in New York, where he died in prison under mysterious circumstances on August 10, 2019.
The unpleasant questions Americans might ask themselves do not stop there. Consider these: Do I believe the Republican Party deserves my support, despite growing signs that its members have unlawfully covered up evidence that makes Watergate look like a child's birthday party, with Trump making Richard Nixon -- once considered our most devious president ever -- look like an Eagle Scout? Has our country been led for almost six years by a pedophile who appears to have acted on his worst urges, who seems to have committed acts of child sexual abuse that push us to the grotesque edges of our imaginations -- to places we do not want to go? And this pedophile has been representing the United States on the world stage, often under the most serious and somber occasions? If I supported this man in the past, perhaps blindly, have I been a pedophile protector? Is it time for others like me -- and I am sure there are many who fit that description -- to let the scales fall from our eyes, allow the courts to play their role, and have this president and perhaps dozens of his Republican allies -- if convicted of these apparent crimes -- sent to prison for appropriate terms? Are these steps necessary to allow our country to rebuild our democracy while we still have one?
Obviously these will be weighty elections next Tuesday, unlike any our country ever has faced. So what happened yesterday that led us to this place? A jointly published article at TIME and Yahoo! News provides one of the best overviews of yesterday's activities I've seen. Under the headline "New details of rape allegation against Trump revealed in House Democrats Epstein Report," Phillip Wang writes:
A woman who had accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in 1993 described it to congressional staff as rape and said the interaction left her bleeding and bruised, according to a report released Monday by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee examining Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Beatrice Keul, a model and former Miss Switzerland, alleged to Judiciary Committee staff that she was raped by Trump in a Plaza Hotel suite in Manhattan when she was 24. Keul said that while attending the American Dream Pageant, which had a partnership with Trump, she met with Trump at a press luncheon at the event.
Trump, according to Keul, promised to arrange her visa in the U.S. and ensure her acceptance into New York University through his friend Paolo Zampolli, a close Trump ally who was, until earlier this month, part of his Administration. At the same event, she also spent at least 10 minutes talking to Epstein who she said claimed to have organized "many parties with Don."
Keul's accusations stand out in the Epstein matter because they have her interacting with Trump and Epstein in roughly the same time frame. They also differ from other accounts because Keul was 24 years old at the time of the alleged assault, as opposed to reports that involve much younger victims. The report includes accounts involving victims in the 13-16 age range, and we will have more on those cases in upcoming posts.Wang writes:
Later that day, Keul alleges, Trump invited her to a hotel suite where Trump "grabbed Keul from behind and forcibly raped her," causing "bleeding and bruising on multiple parts of her body," the report says. Following the incident, Keul alleges Trump made her promise she would keep quiet and repeated his promise for visa and college admission.
Because Keul's passport had been taken from her on her arrival, she was not able to leave the contest following the incident, she alleges, according to the report. After she returned to Switzerland, she declined to participate in an additional Trump-sponsored pageant in Hawaii several weeks later.
TIME has been unable to independently verify details of Keul's account.
How did the Trump administration react to the report? A spokesperson essentially brushed it off as a political stunt by "crazed Democrats," TIME reports:
In a statement, the White House denies the allegations and says that President Trump has been "fully exonerated of anything related to Epstein." "This 'report' is nothing more than a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans from the surging Republican momentum driven by President Trump's historic achievements," White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis says.
The actions ascribed to Trump in the report could accurately be called "historic," coming from a U.S. president. But I'm not sure many Americans would see them as "achievements." Given Trump's sagging approval ratings, it's not clear the source of "momentum" to which the White House refers. Will voters come to think their president and his staffers are leveling with them? It's hard to see how, given that a spokesperson seems to have blown off not only the Keul allegations but others in the report that describe additional savage acts by Trump. Wang writes:
Keul has previously spoken in public about her sexual assault allegations against Trump, but the report provided new details of the alleged rape—as well as reviewing similar accounts of other Trump accusers.
In addition to Keul's account, the report also compiled allegations from four other women who have directly accused Trump of rape or sexual assault in connection with the Epstein investigation. The allegations, spanning from the mid-1980s to the 1990s, had all been previously made public either through media interviews or FBI testimony released as part of the Epstein files.
The report's release, just over a week before Election Day, comes as Democrats are working to signal to voters how they will make use of their power if they gain control of one or both chambers of Congress.
On Monday, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee, called on the Department of Justice to appoint an independent special counsel to oversee the investigation of allegations mentioned in the report. So far, Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime Epstein confidant, is the only person to have been convicted of sex trafficking of minors in connection with the Epstein case.
"An independent special counsel must investigate Epstein's co-conspirators and DOJ's cover-up and ensure that state and foreign prosecutors have the evidence they need to pursue justice," Raskin said in a statement.
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