President Donald Trump’s White House is deflecting criticism from one of former President Bill Clinton’s top economic advisers, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, regarding the comparative relationship that Trump and Clinton had with the late convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.“Just as President Trump has said, he’s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told AlterNet in a statement. “And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”Jackson concluded, “Meanwhile, Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Stacey Plaskett have yet to explain why they were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender.”The statement was sent in response to AlterNet’s question about a quote by Shapiro. Speaking to AlterNet last week, the economist said that “no one believes that President Clinton was anything more than an acquaintance of Jeffrey Epstein, all before Epstein was convicted of prostitution with a young girl in 2008.”He added, “President Clinton knew him in the same way many, many others did—as part of a large social network of wealthy acquaintances.” After pointing out that not even the Republicans asking Clinton questions suggested the two men were close friends or discussed young women, “as Epstein and President Trump did,” Shapiro added Trump was accused of “forcing himself sexually on a young teenager.””The hearing today is nothing more than political theater likely mounted to draw the public attention away from the tens or hundreds of thousands of instances in which President Trump is named in the Epstein files, even as the Justice Department has held back a reported 3 million pages from the files,” Shapiro concluded.While the Trump team has tried to distract from the accusations against the president by making unfounded or exaggerated accusations against Democrats, the iPaper reported Friday that Dr. David Andersen, an associate professor of U.S. politics at Durham University, believed forcing Clinton to testify might boomerang against Trump.“Having them forced to testify now sets a dangerous precedent for the future that is going to put Trump in jeopardy,” Andersen said.He added, “If and when Democrats recapture the House, they will certainly use this as a precedent to compel Trump, Melania, and the rest of the Trump family to testify before them, particularly after Trump leaves office.”Indeed, critics like conservative commentator William Kristol have argued that if the truth comes out about Trump, it will reveal that he and many of his close advisers are part of the “Epstein class.”“Trump is saddened by any embarrassment to the royal family,” Kristol argued in February for The Bulwark about Trump’s response saying he was saddened by the then-recent arrest of former UK prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. “And there is no evidence the Trump administration has any interest in seeing justice done, or any intention of having the truth come out. We have an executive branch that is on the side of the Epstein class, not the Epstein survivors.”
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