NY Post, Daily Mail run clickbait headlines about Trump Epstein tapes, accuser recanted years ago

A new set of documents from the case between Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell concerning Jeffrey Epstein were released on Monday. The New York Post, The Daily Mail, and other outlets took those documents and ran false headlines that claimed there was footage of Donald Trump having sex with Epstein's victims. The accuser quoted in that Exhibit recanted her comments years later in a New Yorker interview.

"A Jeffrey Epstein accuser once claimed former President Donald Trump allegedly had 'sexual relations' with one of her unnamed friends at the late pedophile’s New York home 'on regular occasions,' according to another trove of court documents unsealed Monday," The New York Post said.

"Sarah Ransome," the Post continued, "in a string of 2016 emails to then-New York Post columnist Maureen Callahan also claimed that she had copies of tapes Epstein had made of some of his high-profile friends — Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and British business magnate Richard Branson — allegedly having sex with an unnamed woman."

"Ransome claimed in those emails that Trump had sex with 'many girls', including a friend of hers who is not named, who she says also slept with Bill Clinton and Virgin billionaire Richard Branson," The Daily Mail wrote. "It is claimed that Epstein filmed each of these sexual encounters - and that the woman involved also obtained copies of the tapes."

The original headline was: "Donald Trump named in latest Epstein documents: Sarah Ransome said he had sex with 'many girls' in email where she also claimed pedophile had tapes of the ex-president, Richard Branson, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton"


Headline from NY Post

In the Exhibit, however, there are comments from Sarah Ransome, an Epstein witness, in which she alleged that her friend, one of Epstein's victims, had "footage" of Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, and Prince Andrew having sex with that friend. That friend, per Ransome, also alleged that Donald Trump had sex with girls at Epstein's mansion in New York. As evidence of the claims, Ransome said she had viewed video of her friend having sex with Prince Andrew, Clinton and Branson. But there were not comments from Ransome indicating that there was footage of Trump having sex with any victims.


The friend, per Sarah Ransome, had footage implicating Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and Richard Branson

The comments that got closest to hewing to the claim made by the Daily Mail and the New York Post were that she would "make sure that everyone on the God damn planet see's that footage and photo's" and that she would release them to Wiki Leaks. However, in those comments, Trump is not implicated in who would be seen on the alleged footage.


Comments from Ransome

The New Yorker wrote in 2019 that "Ransome was another imperfect witness. In the fall of 2016, she had suggested to the New York Post that she had sex tapes of half a dozen prominent people, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump—but couldn’t provide the tapes when asked. (Ransome told me that she had 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.')" 



Trump's team responded to the allegations from the news outlets, saying "These baseless accusations have been fully retracted because they are simply false and have no merit." 

The Daily Mail wrote in a follow up article that "Trump has not been accused of crimes or wrongdoing." The documents that were released were from emails exchanged between Ransome and a Daily Mail columnist, Maureen Callahan in 2016. Callahan was with the New York Post at the time.