A week after yet another woman came forward with sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, author Michael Wolff has released over 100 hours of bombshell audio tapes confirming not just the assaults, but that Epstein and Trump's alleged broken friendship was intact while Trump was in the White House.
The Daily Beast broke the story late Thursday, handing the flailing Trump campaign an additional unwelcome October surprise just five days before Election Day and after several weeks of bad press.
The recordings, which Wolff shared on his podcast, Fire & Fury, on Thursday, make it clear that Epstein was privy to what should have been Top Secret government information. But Trump's competitive relationship with Epstein extended beyond fighting over women.
It's also now obvious that the "falling out" between Epstein and Trump was manufactured for the public. Falsely rumored to be either about Epstein acting inappropriately with a Mar-A-Lago member's young daughter or a real estate deal gone bad, they simply kept their friendship a secret.
Epstein's access to the White House in 2017 and his rivalry with Steve Bannon for Trump's favor may have been what led to his arrest and eventual death by suicide in prison in 2019. The circumstances around that incident remain murky.
Wolff also alleges Epstein showed him about half a dozen photos of Trump taken "in the late 90s" with “topless young women” sitting in his lap by the pool at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, home.
While the Trump campaign tries to push back against Wolff, it's hard to dispute Epstein's own words on the tapes.