Trump's Heart of Darkness
Warning: This story involves allegations of child abuse and rape
“His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain - why he did not instantly disappear.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
As millions of Americans faced the prospect of going hungry from having their basic food support suspended, Trump held a lavish Gatsby-themed Halloween party. Photos circulating from Mar-a-Lago showed scantily clad young dancers performing for wealthy old men in tuxedos.
One photograph stood out.
It showed a very young woman, partially naked, frolicking in a giant champagne glass. The photograph drew barely a flicker of attention from the media, even though she was performing for the president of the United States.
Trump’s Halloween spectacle came almost nine years to the day after another young woman was set to come forward with allegations that could have driven a stake through the heart of America’s Caligula.
The Press Conference That Never Was
It was November 2, 2016, just days before the presidential election. A woman using the name “Jane Doe” was set to host a press conference laying out allegations of her forcible confinement, beating and rape by Trump – brutal violations that took place when she was just 13 years old.
Jane Doe had a witness to back her up.
This witness wrote a statement describing the abuse suffered by Jane Doe and another 12-year-old girl at the hands of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. The witness stated the 12-year-old had been “disappeared” following one of the rapes.
But the press conference never happened.
It was hastily cancelled following death threats against the young woman and her lawyer. A few days later, Trump was elected. Jane Doe, whoever she is, went to ground.
I thought of Jane Doe as I looked at the photo of the very young woman (a teen perhaps) barely clothed in the fake glass of champagne. It was a stark reminder that the toxic world into which Jane Doe found herself has not gone away.
From Mar-a-lago to the Palace
Trump’s Gatsby celebration was about defiant excess and depravity. It took place as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal claimed its biggest name. The royal family has taken the unprecedented step of stripping Prince Andrew of all his titles. Andrew’s involvement in the sexual abuse scandal of Epstein has direct connections to Trump.
In 2022, Andrew was forced to pay an undisclosed sum to Virginia Giuffre, who at the age of 17, was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell, while working at Mar-a-Lago for Trump. Virginia was turned over to Andrew who raped her while she was dressed as a prepubescent girl.
Trump later said that his friend, Epstein, “stole” the teenager from him.
By age 19, Virginia was considered too old for the Epstein crowd. She escaped to Australia. As the sexual crimes of the Epstein empire began to break in the media, she was contacted by both Maxwell and Epstein and warned to keep her mouth shut. (1)
Virginia went public but committed suicide before Andrew ever paid a price.
Perhaps she never believed that justice would be done.
But things may have shifted.
The first to go down was Peter Mandelson, former British Ambassador to the United States. He was fired when his signature appeared in the same birthday greeting book that included a pornographic signature from Donald Trump. Trump denies having written the greeting.
Firing an ambassador would normally be a huge thing, but it was small potatoes compared to the fallout from Prince Andrew’s scandal. You just don’t strip the king’s brother of his titles and frog march him out of the palace. It doesn’t happen.
Word is that Andrew refused to sign any statement acknowledging his crimes. King Charles ignored him and issued a statement that Buckingham Palace expressed its “utmost sympathies” with the survivors of the abuse.
This suggests that the House of Windsor is in full damage control and is willing to throw an entitled royal under the bus to achieve the distance they need.
Trump says he feels bad for the Royal family. No doubt he is pondering the question: if it is possible for a member of the royal family to be taken down, then maybe a sitting president could also be vulnerable — especially a president with such a tainted track record.
But even as the calls for the release of the documents in the Epstein case grow louder, Trump grows more defiant.
And this is where I fear he may be right. Would any further release of evidence linking Trump to Epstein and the abuse of women have any impact at all? The evidence has always been there in plain sight. It’s just that no one in the media, the courts, or the electorate seemed particularly interested.
How is that even possible?
Jane Doe’s Story
Let’s go back to the press conference that never was.
The court filing of Jane Doe makes for very dark reading. In 1994, she would have been in the 8th grade. An apparent runaway, she landed at the Port Authority bus terminal with a dream of becoming a model. This was where she was spotted by a young woman known as “Tiffany Doe.” It was Tiffany’s job as “party planner” to procure attractive young girls for Epstein.
Jane Doe was brought into the Epstein world at a time when Trump was bragging publicly about his close friendship with Epstein. To Trump, Epstein was a “terrific guy… [who] likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
According to the court filings, Trump knew Jane was only 13 years old. She and another 12-year-old named Maria were forced to perform sex acts on Epstein and Trump. Both girls were degraded and abused. The witness affidavit from Tiffany Doe stated that Maria went missing soon after this party.
Then, Trump had Jane Doe tied up on a bed where she was raped. Jane stated that when she begged him to stop, he slapped her across the face and said he could do whatever he liked.
Jane Doe said Trump warned her that he would have her and her family killed if she dared tell anyone.
Witness Tiffany Doe backed up the allegation of physical threat.
In her affidavit, she stated Trump warned “she shouldn’t say anything unless she wanted to disappear like the 12-year-old female Maria and that he was capable of having her whole family killed.”
It was a sordid story. But if journalists were worried about going forward on mere rumours, they could have simply referenced the public court filings of the Southern District of New York. The whole story was written for them.
When word came out that the press conference had been cancelled the media merely shrugged. The headlines at the time stated that Jane Doe had “failed to appear”. There was little interest in following up on the fact that she had gone into hiding from death threats. Instead, they hammered Jane Doe’s lawyer with questions about whether the press conference had been coordinated with the Hilary Clinton campaign.
Other media like Vox dismissed Jane Doe out of hand. They pointed out that the young woman provided an address for an abandoned house. Sure, Vox admitted, Jane Doe had said she was homeless, but it still made her case look “fishy.” (2)
End of story.
The publication Jezebel downplayed the allegations of violence and child rape as merely “unflattering” for Trump. They wrote off Jane Doe, saying that even for Trump, her story seemed “beyond the pale.” (3)
Case closed.
This was a full year before #MeToo reset the balance in favour of sexual abuse survivors. When given the choice of investigating the story of child rape brought forward by a homeless young woman or giving the benefit of the doubt to a very powerful man, media sided with the man running to be president.
It is possible that the press was right when they wrote off the allegations as a scheme cooked up by a young hustler. But to accept this premise meant journalists had to ignore a mountain of evidence on Trump and Epstein.
Rumours connecting Trump to rape had a long and ugly history. In the 1993 book, The Lost Tycoon, former Newsweek reporter Harry Hurt III wrote that Ivana Trump accused her husband of violent rape and vicious assault in her 1990 divorce deposition. Following a substantial financial payout and a non-disclosure agreement, Ivana modified her story by saying she had not been raped “in a criminal sense.” (4)
During the 2016 election, the allegations of sexual misconduct were swirling around Trump. After being accused of sexual assault by a woman on an airplane, he boasted about it at a MAGA rally:
“Believe me, she would not be my first choice. Check her out on Facebook. You’ll understand.” (5)
It was the same insult he threw at E. Jean Carroll when she accused him of rape. But her case went to court, and she was vindicated.
Then in late October 2016, the Access Hollywood tape was released.
The “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape was explosive proof that Trump believed he was so powerful he could sexually assault women without repercussions. Since the 1970s over 25 woman had come forward with allegations of sexual assault by Trump. He called them all liars and when allegations were made in the 2016 election, he said he would sue every one of them once he became president.
The Hollywood Access tape should have ended Trump’s election bid. But it didn’t. Within half an hour of the release of the bombshell audio, the first massive batch of Democratic Party emails stolen by Russian hackers was released.
The role of Russian interference in getting Trump elected is well documented. The timing of the release of various stolen emails was crucial for slowing momentum for Clinton while giving Trump the breathing space he needed when the Hollywood access tape was released.
On the one hand, there was hard evidence of a sexual predator running for the most powerful office in the land, and a witness that had been frightened into silence. On the other hand, there were stolen emails hacked by the Russians that exposed petty squabbles within the Clinton campaign.
The media jumped on the latter.
Jane Doe could have been the missing piece to bring Trump’s world crashing down. Or would it have changed anything at all?
Evil in Plain Sight
Trump’s manifest evil has always been there in plain sight. By his actions, he forces everyone else to either pretend they don’t see or become complicit.
He never hid his relationship with Epstein or tried to downplay their obsession with young females. The powerful men who moved in the circle with Trump and Epstein didn’t try to hide their connections either. It was all over the society pages.
Epstein, like Trump, seemed untouchable. New York City is a big city, but not that big. The rumours of his predilection for pedophilia and blackmail would have been known to the media, police and fellow party goers.
Rumours had it that he was protected because of ties to the Russian mob, Israeli intelligence, or because he simply had so much dirt on everyone. And still the rich and powerful came to his parties.
When Jane Doe went to ground, nobody seemed interested in who threatened her or what happened to 12-year-old Marie. Nobody bothered to verify the story of Tiffany Doe, who had the job of picking up young girls at the bus station.
This manifest failure is enough to make you believe in conspiracies. And this is where the story gets so much darker.
The QAnon Storm
On the eve of Jane Doe’s press conference, Twitter exploded with online allegations that the New York City police had been covering up an extensive sex trafficking ring implicating the most powerful men in the country.
But this trafficking ring had nothing to do with Mar-a-Lago or Epstein’s mansion. This alleged sex trafficking ring was supposedly being run out of a pizza parlour in Washington for the benefit of the top Democrats and Liberals. “Pizzagate” may rank as one of the dumbest conspiracies ever, but it served its purpose.
The origins lay in an online joke between young INCELs on 4Chan who were trolling through the stolen Democratic Party emails. The 4Chan army was poking fun at the many email conversations among democrat staffers about ordering pizza from the local Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria. The 4Chan trolls began to shit post that maybe all the talk about pizza and various toppings was metaphors for pedophilia.
But then this stupid joke was picked up and weaponized by the political right.
In the final week of the 2016 campaign, “pizzagate” exploded online. The notion that the Democrats and high-powered liberals were using a low-rent pizza parlour to traffic children was clearly ridiculous. But it didn’t matter.
“Pizzagate” allowed the right to drive online rage and conspiracy against Hilary Clinton while diverting attention from Trump’s obvious problems. Offshore bot operations in the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Vietnam heavily amplified the conspiracy.
Trump won the election, but the allegations against Epstein and Trump continued to grow. In response, the right-wing conspiracy narrative became bolder and darker.
In 2017, a series of anonymous posts from someone calling themself Q spun a bizarre story of Democrat child trafficking and how Donald Trump was secretly taking down the “deep state” to free the children.
It was nuts. But so was everything else in Trumpland.
The Trump White House actively promoted the QAnon conspiracy. Senior Republicans, such as Michael Flynn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert, went all in.
By 2022, the Q conspiracy was so embedded in the American political psyche that nearly 30% of Republican voters believed that Democrats were kidnapping and killing children while accepting the premise of Donald Trump as a stealth super hero protecting the children.
All the while, Trump continued to act out in plain sight.
It was as if Jane Doe never existed. And even today, as the Epstein scandal moves ever closer to the White House, the story of Jane Doe remains disappeared from public memory.
The one thing that future generations will ask themselves is how the many crimes of Donald Trump attracted so little response from all the people who had the job of holding such behaviour in check.
The girl in the champagne glass reminds us that Trump still thinks he is untouchable.
In Hiding in Plain Sight, author Sarah Kendzior writes about the failure of the media and political class to confront the abuses of Donald Trump. Of Jane Doe, she observes:
“In the 1990s, history ended with the spectre of the wealthiest men in the world raping teenage girls provided by a mafia-affiliated blackmailer.
History ended in a sealed file, history ended in a silent scream, history ended with the last man warning you that if you tell anyone, you’d end too.”
Legacy media’s abdication of moral responsibility made way for this creep and others like him. I had wondered if this story would ever resurface in a way that receives traction. I hope the lid blows off soon.
"One photograph stood out."
It sure did, and I pointed it out to everyone I knew -- trump is now happy to be the new Epstein - out loud for the world to see -- because he thinks he is untouchable.