Epstein’s “Take Down” of Trump and an Empathetic Alternative

Epstein’s “Take Down” of Trump and an Empathetic Alternative
by Rev. John McFadden

It’s reasonable to suspect that the Epstein files contain notes indicating that, in 1994, Jeffrey Epstein saw Donald Trump forcibly raping a 13-year-old girl in Epstein’s New York City mansion. That would qualify as confirmation for Epstein’s belief that he had information that would “take down” Trump.

The suspicion is reasonable, because credible evidence of not only the alleged rape but also Epstein’s presence during it exists. Court-filed depositions of an eyewitness to the alleged rape and what’s called a hearsay witness are key. There’s also a transcription of a 29-minute video tape of the alleged victim telling her story in the kind of detail that persuades police investigators. If this evidence does ruin Trump politically, he might be amenable to a compassionately intended intervention for him.

Challenges to the validity and presumed effect of the rape allegation exist, but I offer counters to them. To begin, a few District Attorneys I consulted and many lay people responded, “So what, Trump’s sexual violations are already well known.” But that misses the point that all the other cases are about adults, not a girl one year out of childhood. And violent rape of a minor is exponentially more inflammatory.

Some lawyers I consulted added another “So what,” saying that the statute of limitations on this case ran out long ago. But apparently unknown even to the alleged victim’s attorneys, the law in New York City states that the statute of limitations on forcible rape of a minor never runs out. And the possibility that the alleged victim could at any time make a claim to a prosecutor might move Trump to cut his losses and submit to what could be, in every sense of the word, an enriching transformation process.

Other critics dismissed this story when it first became known in mid-2016, partly because the alleged victim, known by the pseudonym Katie Johnson, was represented by an obviously underqualified real estate lawyer. But in October of 2016 when the claimant launched a civil suit against Trump and Epstein, an award-winning attorney filed it in the United States District Court of Manhattan, and another prominent lawyer agreed to litigate this case. Moreover, the judge accepted the case and set a December 2016 date for a status hearing.

Mainstream journalists did not report this allegation for good reason, good but not indisputable. Johnson had scheduled a press conference for November 2nd, 2016, but she cancelled it that day and, on the fourth, dropped her suit. And if claimants don’t submit to interviews, their allegations usually shouldn’t be reported. But it’s obvious that the combination of the publicly available depositions of her two witnesses and Johnson’s unusually detailed story has what police call “investigatory credibility,” the credibility needed to justify an expensive, time-consuming investigation. And perhaps on that basis alone, this allegation should be reported. Add that the accepted criteria for early published reports of claims against Harvey Weinstein appear to challenge the mainstream press’s decision in Johnson’s case.

Some observers even argued that Johnson might not be a real person, implying that her claim was entirely fake. But pictures of her appear in a well-known publication. In one of them, she was sitting beside Lisa Bloom, one of her legal advisors.

Without a claimant, of course, this allegation can’t be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by journalists. That’s what a managing editor of a liberal newspaper said he would to establish for him to risk publishing a story that threatens a president, especially a powerful vengeful one.

But perhaps the court of public opinion will be affected by a complete version of this report. Perhaps ordinary people will react emotionally. Placards like, “Don’ let Trump near your daughter,” might proliferate. This story might dominate the news enough that he wouldn’t be able to change the subject. He then might be so unable to govern that he’d be forced to end his presidency perhaps by impeachment or by his most influential backers.

The above evidence and argument is not intended to condemn Trump. That’s not the spirit with which I’ve investigated this story. On the contrary, I’ve just published a book, Enlightened Empathy: Relief of America’s Turmoil, that’s about unconditional empathy. (Incidentally, it’s peppered with citations for the facts and professional opinions presented here.) The initial point of confronting him with his disgusting behavior is to help him, not whip up self-righteous condemnations against him. Rather, I want to help him and the electorate take seriously how more troubled and troubling he is than even his most condemning critics say. (That’s mostly what Johnson wanted to do.) He recently admitted that he doesn’t think he qualifies to get into heaven, betraying that he might be more vulnerable to feeling guilty than people think, as I try to substantiate by quoting his other self-revealing statements.

My ultimate reason for analyzing him here and in my book is to make a case for the compassionate intervention for him that’s presented in the book. The intervention is modeled on the Alcoholics Anonymous-based intervention that’s been effective in rescuing abusive men and their family from their torment.

But is there any hope that an intervention of a massively defensive person would work? Real life stories of White Supremacists and criminal sociopaths’ transformations by means of empathy alone in my book help make this prospect worth considering.

Rev. John McFadden, is an ordained Presbyterian minister and Analytic Pastoral Counselor living in Noe Valley, San Francisco. with his wife, the artist Pattie Gerrie, and their three dogs, Santo, Lionel, and Lilly.  He is the author of the new book “Enlightened Empathy: Relief from America’s Turmoil.”