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| Assassination of Charlie Kirk |
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Posted by: Lauren Johnson - 12-09-2025, 11:32 PM - Forum: Players, organisations, and events of deep politics
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Like a couple of wiseguys who approach the wife of the guy they just whacked expressing their sincerest condolences, Netanyahu and Trump just a few hours after the murder, call out the liberal anti-Semites who created the environment that created the lone gunman to kill this brave man. Other facts are of course coming out. From the Greyzone:
Quote:A Trump insider and longtime friend of Charlie Kirk tells The Grayzone how the assassinated conservative leader’s turning point on Israeli influence provoked a private backlash from Netanyahu’s allies that left him angry and afraid.
The source said anxiety spread within the Trump administration after an apparent Israeli spying operation was uncovered.
Charlie Kirk rejected an offer earlier this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to arrange a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization, America’s largest conservative youth association, according to a longtime friend of the slain commentator speaking on the condition of anonymity. The source told The Grayzone that the late pro-Trump influencer believed Netanyahu was trying to cow him into silence as he began to publicly question Israel’s overwhelming influence in Washington and demanded more space to criticize it.
In the weeks leading up to his September 10 assassination, Kirk had come to loathe the Israeli leader, regarding him as a “bully,” the source said. Kirk was disgusted by what he witnessed inside the Trump administration, where Netanyahu sought to personally dictate the president’s personnel decisions, and weaponized Israeli assets like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson to keep the White House firmly under its thumb.
According to Kirk’s friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle, Kirk strongly warned Trump last June against bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf. “Charlie was the only person who did that,” they said, recalling how Trump “barked at him” in response and angrily shut down the conversation. The source believes the incident confirmed in Kirk’s mind that the president of the United States had fallen under the control of a malign foreign power, and was leading his own country into a series of disastrous conflicts.
By the following month, Kirk had become the target of a sustained private campaign of intimidation and free-floating fury by wealthy and powerful allies of Netanyahu – figures he described in an interview as Jewish “leaders” and “stakeholders.”
“He was afraid of them,” the source emphasized.
At TPUSA, the rift with Israel widens
Kirk was 18 years old when he launched TPUSA in 2012. From its inception, his career was propelled by Zionist donors, who showered his young organization with money through neoconservative outfits like the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He repaid his wealthy backers over the years by unleashing a relentless firehose of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic diatribes, accepting propaganda trips to Israel, and sternly shutting down nationalist forces challenging his support for Israel during TPUSA events. In the Trump era, few American gentiles had proved more valuable to the self-proclaimed Jewish state than Charlie Kirk.
But as Israel’s genocidal assault on the besieged Gaza Strip drove an unprecedented backlash within grassroots right-wing circles, where only 24% of younger Republicans now sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians, Kirk began to shift. At times, he toed the Israeli line, spreading disinformation about babies beheaded by Hamas on October 7, and denying the famine imposed on the population of Gaza. Yet he simultaneously ceded to his base, wondering aloud if Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset, questioning whether the Israeli government allowed the October 7 attacks to proceed in order to advance long-term political goals, and parroting narratives familiar to his most vociferous critic on the right, streamer Nick Fuentes.
This July, at his TPUSA Student Action Summit, Kirk provided a forum for the right-wing grassroots to vent its fury about Israel’s political hammerlock on the Trump administration. There, speakers from former Fox News stalwarts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, to the anti-Zionist Jewish comedian Dave Smith, denounced Israel’s blood-soaked assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, branded Jeffrey Epstein as an Israeli intelligence asset, and openly taunted Zionist billionaires like Bill Ackman for “getting away with scams” despite having “no actual skills.”
Following the confab, Kirk was bombarded with infuriated text messages and phone calls from Netanyahu’s wealthy allies in the US, including many who had funded TPUSA. According to his longtime friend, the Zionist donors treated Kirk with outright contempt, essentially ordering him to fall back into line.
“He was being told what you’re not allowed to do, and it was driving him crazy,” Kirk’s friend recalled. The conservative youth leader was not only alienated by the hostile nature of the interactions, but “frightened” by the backlash.
The friend’s account dovetails with those of multiple right-wing commentators with access to Kirk.
“I think, in the end, Charlie was going through a spiritual transformation,” Candace Owens, a conservative influencer who shifted decisively against Israel after October 7, reflected after her friend’s killing. “I know it, he was going through a lot. There was a lot of pressure, and it’s hard for me to watch the people who were pressuring him just say the things that they’re saying.”
She continued: “They wanted him to lose everything for changing or even slightly modifying an opinion. It’s very hurtful to me.”
Kirk appeared visibly outraged during an August 6 interview with conservative host Megyn Kelly, as he discussed the menacing messages he was receiving from pro-Israel bigwigs.
“It’s all of the sudden: ‘oh, Charlie: he’s no longer with us.’ Wait a second—what does ‘with us’ mean, exactly? I’m an American, okay? I represent this country,” he explained, before addressing the powerful Zionist interests harassing him.
“The more that you guys privately and publicly call our character into question—which is not isolated, it would be one thing if it were just one text, or two texts; it is dozens of texts—then we start to say, ‘whoa, hold the boat here,’” Kirk continued. “To be fair, some really good Jewish friends say, ‘that’s not all of us’… But these are leaders here. These are stakeholders.”
He went on to complain to Kelly, “I have less ability… to criticize the Israeli government than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird.”
In one of his final interviews, conducted with Israel’s premier influencer in the United States, Ben Shapiro, Kirk once again tried to raise the issue of censorship of Israel critics.
“A friend said to me, interestingly: ‘Charlie, okay, we’ve pushed back against the media on COVID, on lockdowns, on Ukraine, on the border,’” Kirk told Shapiro on September 9. “Maybe we should also ask the question: is the media totally presenting the truth when it comes to Israel? Just a question!”
According to Kirk’s longtime friend, Kirk’s resentment of Netanyahu and the Israel lobby was spreading within Trump’s inner circle. In fact, they said, the president himself was terrified of Netanyahu’s wrath, and feared the consequences of defying him.
During the past year, the Trump insider was told by contacts in the White House that the Secret Service had caught Israeli government personnel placing electronic devices on its emergency response vehicles on two separate occasions.
While The Grayzone was unable to confirm the story with the Secret Service or White House, such an incident would not have been unprecedented. Indeed, according to a report in Politico citing three former senior US officials, a cellphone spying device was placed by Israeli agents “near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington” toward the end of Trump’s first term in 2019.
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recounted a similar incident in his memoir, writing that his security team found a listening device in his bathroom soon after Netanyahu used his personal toilet.
The Israel-did-it theory
Kirk was killed this September 10 with a single shot fired by a sniper apparently positioned on a rooftop 200 meters away. He was shot while seated before a crowd of thousands at Utah State University in Orem, Utah on the first leg of his American Comeback Tour. The scene of Kirk collapsing from the impact of a gunshot to his neck just as he began answering a question about transgender mass shooters was perhaps the most shockingly vivid spectacle of assassination – and certainly the most viral – in human history.
There is currently no evidence of an Israeli government role in Kirk’s assassination. However, that has not stopped thousands of social media users from speculating that the pro-Trump operative’s shifting views on the issue contributed in some way to his death. By the time of publication, over 100,000 Twitter/X users have liked a September 11 post by libertarian influencer Ian Carroll declaring about Kirk, “He was their friend. He basically dedicated his life to them. And they murdered him in front of his family. Israel just shot themselves.”
Many advancing the unsubstantiated theory have pointed to a Twitter/X post by Harrison Smith, a personality at the pro-Trump Infowars network, stating on August 13 – almost a month before Kirk’s assassination – that he was told by “someone close to Charlie Kirk that Kirk thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against Israel.”
The frenzied speculation has set off shockwaves in Tel Aviv, where Netanyahu was compelled to explicitly deny that his government killed Kirk during a September 11 interview with NewsMax.
Netanyahu and his allies bury the Kirk crisis as “big tent” collapses
That appearance was just one of several interviews and statements the Prime Minister dedicated to Kirk in the wake of his killing in an effort to frame the late conservative leader’s legacy in a uniformly pro-Israel light. The major public relations push has occurred while Netanyahu wages a military campaign on seven fronts, punctuated by a regional assassination spree that most recently reached into the heart of Qatar, a US ally.
Netanyahu first tweeted prayers for Kirk at 3:02 PM in the afternoon on September 10, minutes after news of the shooting broke. He has since authored three additional posts about Kirk, even breaking away from the Israeli war cabinet to spend the afternoon of September 11 memorializing the conservative leader on Fox News.
During that interview, Netanyahu did his best to insinuate that Israel’s enemies were responsible for murdering Kirk, despite the fact no suspect was named or in custody at the time:
“The radical Islamists and their union with the ultra-progressives—they often speak about ‘human rights,’ they speak about ‘free speech’—but they use violence to try to take down their enemies,” the Prime Minister told Harris Faulkner.
In a September 10 Twitter/X post eulogizing the conservative leader, the Israeli Prime Minister described a recent phone conversation with Kirk.
“I spoke to him only two weeks ago and invited him to Israel,” Netanyahu declared. “Sadly, that visit will not take place.”
Left unmentioned was whether Kirk declined the invitation—just as he did with the Prime Minister’s offer to reload TPUSA’s coffers with donations from his coterie of wealthy American Jewish cutouts.
At the time of publication, a 22-year-old resident of Utah has been taken into custody after supposedly confessing to killing Kirk. The public may soon learn the true motives of the alleged assassin. Perhaps they will fuel the narrative which Trump and his allies advanced in the immediate wake of the shooting – that a leftist radical was responsible, and that a wave of draconian repression must follow.
But after the shooter’s initial escape and a series of federal law enforcement mishaps, a large sector of Americans will likely never believe the official story. Nor will they ever know where Kirk’s turning point on Israel would have taken the conservative movement.
Four days before the assassination, frustration among pro-Israel commentators bubbled over in public during an Fox News interview in which Ben Shapiro launched a chilling attack on Kirk without naming him.
“The problem with a ‘big tent’ is that you may end up with many clowns inside,” Shapiro told Fox host and fellow Zionist gatekeeper Mark Levin in an apparent critique of TPUSA.
“Just because you’re saying somebody votes Republican—that doesn’t mean that they ought to be the preacher at the front of the church, they’re not the person that ought to be leading the movement, if they are spending all day criticizing the President of the United States as ‘covering up a Mossad rape ring’ or ‘being a tool of the Israelis for hitting an Iranian nuclear facility.’”
When Kirk took his usual place at the “front of the church” four days later, he was cut down by a sniper’s bullet.
Within 24 hours of Kirk’s death, Shapiro announced that he would be launching his own campus speaking tour, vowing: “We’re gonna pick up that blood stained microphone where Charlie left it.”
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| Forum Access |
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Posted by: Magda Hassan - 23-08-2025, 04:15 AM - Forum: Forum Technical Issues
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It seems there were some issues with members being able to access the forum recently. Maybe even a message saying they were banned. This has been rectified now. No one is banned. And you should all have access to the usual forum functions. If there are still issues please contact me.
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| Who Was Epstein? Where did his money come from? |
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Posted by: Peter Lemkin - 09-08-2025, 09:24 PM - Forum: Players, organisations, and events of deep politics
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‘I was Epstein’s butler for 18 years. There’s no way he killed himself’
Trusted aide tells of life in disgraced financier’s inner circle, which included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Woody Allen
Henry Samuel. Robert Mendick Chief Reporter. Connor Stringer Deputy US Editor
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...on-cotrin/
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Valdson Vieira Cotrin with Jeffrey Epstein on his private jet in 2019. This photo, given exclusively to The Telegraph, may be one of the last taken of the financier and shows him wearing an Israel Defense Forces sweatshirt Credit: The Telegraph
Jeffrey Epstein “loved life too much” to kill himself and was confident of securing bail before he died, his butler for 18 years has told The Telegraph.
In an interview that will heap renewed pressure on the Trump administration to make [url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/07/23/epstein-documents-blocked-from-release/]the Epstein files public, one of his closest aides said he had spoken to the paedophile financier before he died and insisted he had been in good spirits.
Valdson Vieira Cotrin, who ran Epstein’s Paris home, told The Telegraph he could not accept the official verdict of suicide and feared that his own life was in danger.
He also said he believed that Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein victim who accused Prince Andrew of rape and died by suicide in April, was a victim of foul play.
Mr Cotrin also made the extraordinary claim to The Telegraph that Epstein told him he had been offered a job by Donald Trump in his first administration in 2016 – but had turned it down.
There is no evidence that the allegation is true, and Mr Trump has maintained that he stopped speaking to Epstein in 2004 after they fell out over a business deal.
But Mr Cotrin’s recollection of a conversation with his boss will fuel a growing demand for the full Epstein files – the trove of documents from the criminal investigations into the financier that allegedly name high-profile celebrities and politicians, possibly including Mr Trump – to be released.
In his exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Mr Cotrin, speaking on the record for the first time, also alleged that: - Prince Andrew visited Epstein in Saint Tropez along with a British photographer famous for taking pictures of naked girls and accused of having sex with a 13-year-old
- Prince Andrew was a frequent guest at Epstein’s Paris town house, with Royal protection bodyguards paid for by the British taxpayer
- Ghislaine Maxwell was the “authoritarian boss” who gave the orders in the Epstein household
- Epstein gave money to Woody Allen to finance one of his movies
Mr Cotrin remains in possession of a number of photographs taken with friends of Epstein, including a photo of himself with Bill Clinton on the so-called Lolita Express, Epstein’s private plane that he used to traffic underage girls and women for sex.
Bill Clinton on board Epstein’s private jet in a new picture obtained exclusively by The Telegraph Credit: The Telegraph
The existence of the photo showing Mr Clinton on board Epstein’s jet will also fuel demands for the former president to reveal his full dealings with Epstein.
Mr Clinton was issued with a subpoena on Tuesday, demanding he give evidence to a congressional committee investigating the financier.
Mr Cotrin also shared a photograph of himself with Epstein, taken on his private jet in January 2019, which may be one of the last taken of the financier.
Epstein looks puffy, but is smiling and relaxed, and is notably wearing an Israel Defense Forces sweatshirt. Epstein has long been accused of being an operative for Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, although last month his former lawyer told The Telegraph that Epstein used to laugh off the claim.
Mr Cotrin, who acted as Epstein’s butler, chauffeur and cook in Paris, recalled driving his boss to Le Bourget airport in Paris to catch a flight to New York, where he was arrested upon landing on July 6 2019.
Epstein, who was 66, was charged with sex trafficking underage girls and remanded in custody. He was found hanged in his cell on Aug 10 that year.
But Mr Cotrin is insistent that Epstein would never have killed himself. Epstein had told him he was planning to negotiate with the judge in the case to secure bail, having been held in custody as a possible flight risk.
“I am like his brother [Mark Epstein]. I don’t believe this was suicide. He loved life too much,” said Mr Cotrin.
Mr Cotrin recalled seeing Epstein for the last time. Epstein, he said, was relaxed and had been talking about making more investments in his islands – he had discreetly bought a second, which Mr Cotrin visited – as well as spending more time in Paris.
“I drove him to Le Bourget airport. It was a Saturday, because on Monday he was supposed to appear before the judge regarding all these accusations,” he said.
“When I got home, two young women rang, his main girlfriend who had been with him officially for several years, Karyna [Shuliak] and another who worked for him. And then they told me, ‘Mr Epstein has gone to prison. He arrived in New York. The police were waiting for him’.”
Mr Cotrin’s partner, Maria Gomes de Melo, who also knew Epstein well, recalled that in Paris, Epstein had said goodbye to her and added: “I’ll be back next week”. Ms de Melo told him: “Sir, don’t go.”
She also questioned the official conclusion that he had killed himself. Mark Epstein has suggested the financier may have been murdered, ordering a second autopsy that tended to back up that assertion.
“On the Saturday late, we got the news that he had hanged himself, and honestly, he loved life too much to float away like that,” she said.
The Department of Justice has released nearly 11 hours of surveillance video from outside Epstein’s cell in the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center, but a crucial minute from 11:58:58pm to midnight was missing. That has further fuelled conspiracy theories that Epstein was murdered to silence him.
Mr Cotrin remains fiercely loyal to Epstein and insists he never saw his boss cavorting, let alone having sex, with underage girls.
He said young women were hired to give Epstein massages and to cut his nails, adding: “The girls did that to him, but it stopped there.”
Mr Cotrin gave an extraordinary insight into Epstein’s world, and the rich and famous who would stop by for his guidance and hospitality.
Mr Cotrin, who has joint French and Brazilian nationalities, worked for Epstein for 18 years, managing his sumptuous eight-bedroom Paris apartment on Avenue Foch, overlooking the Arc de Triomphe. He lived in a garret flat on the sixth floor.
Jeffrey Epstein’s eight-bedroom Paris apartment, on Avenue Foch
But he also worked dozens of times at Epstein’s properties in New York, Palm Beach, Florida and on Little St James, Epstein’s private Caribbean island – dubbed ‘“paedophile island” – where he is said to have trapped and raped often underage victims.
“He trusted me completely,” said Mr Cotrin, who has not worked since his boss’s death six years ago.
“I was his chauffeur, his cook, his housekeeper. I did everything in Paris, I was his only full-time, paid-up employee and worked for him from 2001 until his death. If someone could have seen something, it’s Valdson, there’s no one else,” he said.
His interview with The Telegraph took place in his French home over a beer and Brazilian bread and cheese balls, which he says were a hit with Bill Gates. Upstairs, a large photo of Mr Cotrin and Epstein taken on the “Lolita Express” hung on one wall, alongside another with the butler and Mr Clinton.
Mr Cotrin reeled off a list of dignitaries who came to visit Epstein over two decades, including Prince Andrew, who he cooked for and chauffeured “five or six times” in Paris and New York; Mr Clinton, whom he met once in Epstein’s jet during a stopover in Paris; Lord Mandelson, now the UK’s ambassador to Washington DC; Woody Allen; and Israeli ex-prime minister Ehud Barak, along with other Middle Eastern dignitaries.
A photograph of Lord Mandelson with Epstein and Mr Cotrin, taken at the Paris apartment on Epstein’s birthday, has been widely circulated, causing Lord Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister, huge embarrassment.
Peter Mandelson (left) and Epstein, celebrating a birthday at Epstein’s Paris apartment in January 2007. Mr Cotrin is holding the cake
Mr Cotrin has refused countless requests for interviews since Epstein was found hanged in his prison cell, but told The Telegraph he was breaking his silence to “tell my truth” about Epstein, to whom he refers as “Monsieur” or “Patron”.
Mr Cotrin and Ms Gomes de Melo, 65, who often accompanied him to Epstein’s properties, both insist they never saw any evidence of the sexual abuse multiple young women have said they suffered.
“I want to say with all my heart from the life I lived with him, Monsieur is not the man they say he was,” insisted Mr Cotrin.
One reason the couple had declined to talk publicly was concern for their own safety. They pointed to what they consider Epstein’s mysterious death and also the suicides of Ms Giuffre, who had accused Prince Andrew of rape (he denied it but paid her millions of pounds to settle a civil case) and Jean-Luc Brunel, who ran a modelling agency that procured girls for Epstein.
Giuffre took her own life at her home in Australia in April, aged 41. Brunel was found dead in his prison cell in Paris in February 2022, after apparently hanging himself. He was awaiting trial on charges of raping a 17-year-old girl.
“And what about Virginia [Giuffre] Roberts?” said Mr Cotrin, adding: “I’m scared because after what happened to them, poor Valdson, who knows?”
Mr Cotrin’s interview with the Telegraph took place in his French home over a beer and Brazilian bread and cheese balls, which he says were a hit with Bill Gates
Mr Cotrin never met Mr Trump – Mr Trump and Epstein had fallen out over the sale of a property in Palm Beach in 2004.
However, Mr Cotrin said that Epstein had boasted of being offered a job by Mr Trump after his surprise first presidential election win in November 2016.
The claim – if true – would be dynamite, although there is no evidence to back it up. Sources inside Mr Trump’s first administration told The Telegraph that Mr Cotrin’s recollection appeared fanciful.
Mr Cotrin said: “I can tell you one thing [regarding Mr Trump]. A few days after Trump’s [2016] election, Mr Epstein arrived in Paris on Monday or Tuesday, and I went to pick him up at the airport.
“He said: ‘Valdson, you saw that Trump is the new US president?’
“‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I saw it on the news in Paris.’
“‘Well, Trump asked me to work for him in the new government’.
“I said: ‘Congratulations. I’m happy for you,’ in my bad English. He said: ‘No, I didn’t accept.’”
Mr Cotrin insisted Epstein was not in the habit of trumpeting false claims in such a confidential setting. He said his boss made no mention of what position that might be.
“I was surprised, because I would have thought such a position could be interesting, but I asked no more questions as it wasn’t my place,” said Mr Cotrin. “In my job, one waits to be spoken to.
“But in my opinion, if he did turn it down, it was because he liked his freedom. I think he didn’t want to be controlled by anyone, because once you accept a position, a job of any kind in a government, the president is going to give you orders and you have to listen to him.
“That’s how it is. Just look at Elon Musk and all his financial power, and see what happened in his life today.”
Donald Trump with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 1992 Credit: NBC News
Epstein would visit his Paris home “for a week roughly every two months” but periodically Mr Cotrin was flown abroad to cook for famous friends. “It could be a dinner with Ehud Barak, Bill Gates. Epstein hired top chefs in New York or Paris and then he asked me to show them what I did because he liked it,” he recalled.
There is no suggestion that any of the dignitaries were involved with the women hired by Epstein, and Mr Cotrin said he saw nothing inappropriate.
But Mr Trump’s Maga movement has long contended that “Deep State” elites continue to protect Epstein’s most powerful associates in the Democratic Party and Hollywood.
After the 2024 election win, the Trump administration acknowledged that it was reviewing tens of thousands of documents and videos related to Epstein.
But in a memo made public last month, the Justice Department and FBI said there was no evidence that the disgraced financier kept a “client list” or was blackmailing powerful figures. The memo also dismissed the claim that Epstein was murdered in jail, confirming his death by suicide, and said the agencies would not be releasing any more information on the investigation.
Mr Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the case.
Mr Cotrin continued to work for Epstein even after he was first convicted of sex crimes in 2008. Three years earlier, in 2005, the FBI and Florida police began an investigation into Epstein for the alleged sex trafficking of more than 30 young women, mostly minors.
He pleaded guilty in state court to just two felony charges, including soliciting a minor, as part of a plea deal that avoided far tougher federal charges. In the end, Epstein served just 13 months in prison and was obliged to register as a sex offender.
The deal, described by victims’ lawyers as “extraordinarily lenient”, protected Epstein and unnamed co-conspirators from future prosecution.
Mr Cotrin said: “I remember the first time he went to prison. It was in Florida and I accompanied him to Palm Beach airport. The boss called me and said, ‘I’m going to jail. To prison.’
“I said, ‘Why, Monsieur?’ He said: ‘Because of these ladies.’”
Mr Cotrin has no recollection of Epstein ever meeting Mr Trump – either in Paris or in Florida – but did recall Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s one-time girlfriend, driving to Mr Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.
“She used to pop over there very often in her Mercedes shortly after I was taken on in the early 2000s,” he said. He added that he had no idea who she visited.
Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell, his one-time girlfriend who was jailed for 20 years after conspiring with him to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls
In 2021, Maxwell, the daughter of the disgraced British newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
Maxwell, 63, has been moved to a minimum security jail in Texas after giving two days of testimony in July to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is also Mr Trump’s former personal attorney.
Maxwell was well aware of the goings-on inside Epstein’s households, and Mr Cotrin is certain she holds the key if any other celebrities or politicians are to be dragged into the scandal.
Mr Cotrin said: “If anyone knows things, it’s Ms Maxwell. She was the boss and the lady of the house. She was harder and more authoritarian because [she was] more bourgeois. She didn’t give massages, but she was in charge. For a long time, she ran everything in the house.”
Mr Cotrin said that, in every home, there were notepads to jot down messages. He had a photograph of two – one with Epstein’s name on it and the other headed Lady Ghislaine.
Lady Ghislaine was the name of the luxury yacht from which her father was presumed to have fallen overboard to his death in November 1991.
Mr Cotrin had a photograph of two notepads, one with Epstein’s name on it and the other headed Lady Ghislaine
“We wrote in either depending on who the message was for,” said Mr Cotrin. “I also kept the boss’s professional American Express card, which no longer works, of course, as a memento. I told myself it might bring me luck for later.”
He remembered being hired by Epstein in 2001, but said that Maxwell had been instrumental in sorting out the details, suggesting she controlled the day-to-day running of the Epstein homes.
“The first time I met him, he came out of his jet with a beautiful woman aged around 25 to 30. and he was in a tatty sweatsuit. He often looked like a tramp in cheap clothes. I had my CV. He looked at me and said: ‘How old are you?’ Forty. ‘How long have you been working for?’ I said 20 years. He said: ‘You’ve got the job.’
“Then he said: ‘Where’s Ms Maxwell?’ My English is bad and she speaks perfect French, so he handed me the phone. She said, ‘Don’t worry, he wants you to work for us, come to Avenue Foch tomorrow.’ He said, ‘Is it ok now?’ And that was it.”
Asked whether he saw Maxwell bring back girls for Epstein, he said: “I never saw Madame leave the house, go anywhere and come back with a new girl, never. It was more people who came to see her – whether they were contacts she had before or other people, I can’t tell you.
“But to say, ‘Oh yes, Ms Maxwell was here, she went to Trocadero and came back with two women I didn’t know,’ that’s not true. Never.”
Maxwell introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew, and Mr Cotrin recalled first serving the Duke of York along with the late, disgraced British photographer David Hamilton at a property in Saint-Tropez in the early 2000s. The pair “came for tea”.
David Hamilton at a property in Saint-Tropez in 1999. He died by suicide in 2016 following allegations he had abused underage models as young as 13
The presence of Hamilton is ironic given that he died by suicide in 2016 following allegations that he had abused underage models as young as 13. The accusations came after decades in which he was feted for his semi-erotic, soft-focus shots of mostly nude girls in their early teens, which he said depicted “a lost paradise”.
“It was my first year working for Monsieur, so it was 2002,” said Mr Cotrin. “There were many girls. At that time, he was at the height of his powers, both financially and as a young man. In terms of women, it was a merry-go-round. Two arrived and two left every day.”
But there were no big parties. “Monsieur was not a socialite,” he insisted.
He said he also served the Duke in Paris when Epstein lent him his flat. He was not sure of the dates.
“I remember him coming twice to Paris. Once for two or three nights, and the second time for two nights. And when he came to Paris, he came alone with his bodyguards. Monsieur told me to look after him. I picked him up in the boss’s Mercedes. It was a V12 600, very luxurious.
“He was a very nice man, very polite. He taught me how to make a proper cup of tea. He told me: ‘Valdson, it’s not strong enough.’
“One time, I drove him to a soirée at the Eiffel Tower. I left him at the foot of a building and came back a few hours later.
“Once, a woman aged between 25-30 came to Monsieur’s flat in Avenue Foch to serve him tea. They talked together, but I never saw them touch each other. It lasted about an hour, and then she left. I also met him in New York, maybe once or twice.”
‘He told me to cook for the Prince’
Epstein’s servant also cooked for his boss, who was not a big eater. “Monsieur didn’t eat much – he grazed. But he told me to cook for the Prince, who had an appetite. Upon Monsieur’s instructions, in New York I prepared fresh mushrooms, a nice steak filet French-style – seared on both sides, rare in the middle – with sauce au poivre.”
The Duke clearly approved. “He asked me: ‘Who taught you to cook like that?’ I told him I taught myself,” he recalled. “He said: ‘I never had better’ and yet he had all that staff and good cooks.” Mr Cotrin took it as a compliment, coming from a royal.
Rattling through the globally known figures he came across, the ex-butler mentioned Mr Clinton, whom he met just once in the autumn of 2002 when the former US president passed through Paris at the end of a nine-day trip with Epstein.
Flight logs indicate that Mr Clinton was on Epstein’s private jet at least 26 times between 2001 and 2003.
“When Monsieur went on tour to Africa in 2002, when I got to Le Bourget to fetch the boss, he asked me whether I wanted to meet ‘the president’. I thought it was George W Bush, but no, it was Clinton. I was trembling as it’s not every day you meet someone of that stature,” he said.
Mr Clinton had been travelling with Kevin Spacey, Maxwell and Epstein himself. Also present was a 21-year-old masseuse, Chauntae Davies, who later testified that she was repeatedly raped and abused by Epstein, whose “little black book” contained 14 phone numbers for Mr Trump, and 21 for Mr Clinton.
Mr Clinton then joined in a tour the Duke of York led around Buckingham Palace, in which Maxwell and Spacey were pictured sitting side-by-side in thrones reserved for the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The extraordinary photograph of Maxwell and Spacey on the thrones was first made public by The Telegraph. Another obtained by The Telegraph showed Mr Clinton, Prince Andrew and Maxwell in Buckingham Palace.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Kevin Spacey sitting on thrones belonging to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace
Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell in Buckingham Palace
The former US president has always denied having had any knowledge of the “terrible crimes” committed by Epstein.
However, he has come under fresh scrutiny since July, when it was reported that he praised Epstein’s “childlike curiosity” in a birthday message to the paedophile in 2003.
Mr Cotrin remembers that Epstein often laughed in front of a painting he bought of Mr Clinton in red high heels and a blue dress – just like the one Monica Lewinsky reportedly wore for their Oval Office encounter – that hung in his Manhattan mansion.
A painting Epstein bought of Mr Clinton in red high heels and a blue dress
The butler then brandished a photo of himself alongside the Democrat ex-president, now 78, in Epstein’s luxury Boeing 727. “Monsieur said: ‘You’re not going to sell that photo, are you?’” He never did.
Mr Cotrin had no recollection of another notorious photograph – the one taken in 2007 of himself presenting a birthday cake to Epstein, in which Lord Mandelson is also present.
Lord Mandelson has always insisted he “regretted ever meeting” Epstein or “being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell”.
Mr Cotrin struggled to recall the birthday in 2007. “I saw so many important people, it’s hard,” he said. “But I remember his [Mandelson’s] face and do recall travelling with that man in Mr Epstein’s private jet with him from his island. We flew from Saint Thomas to New York.
“It was soon after I started working for Monsieur, in the early 2000s. I remember he had a trade position at the time.”
Lord Mandelson was the European Commissioner for Trade from November 2004 to October 2008.
“I have no recollection of any of their conversations, as my job was to make myself scarce,” he said. “All I can say is that I got the impression that nobody came to see Epstein to bring him something but to ask for something, whether it be money, although some like Bill Gates clearly didn’t need it – business advice or investment tips.”
He met the Microsoft billionaire a couple of times in Paris and New York, he recalled, and drove Woody Allen around at the request of his boss. Mr Cotrin and his partner alleged that Epstein gave Allen money for a film, though they didn’t know the details. The Telegraph reached out to Allen’s representative for comment.
Allen has likened Epstein to Dracula, with “young female vampires who service the place”.
Epstein is photographed walking with Woody Allen on Madison Avenue in New York in 2013
Mr Cotrin said the Paris home, which has been sold in the aftermath of Epstein’s death, contained “a large gym, a massage room, a dining room, there was a nice kitchen, [eight] bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and around 820 square metres”.
“New York was much bigger. Three or four times that. So it was seven floors, also with a sauna and steam room. He had to have a massage and sauna every day – it was a need with him”.
Despite scores of testimonies by alleged victims and other evidence, Mr Cotrin and his partner refuse to believe Epstein had sex with underage girls.
“I would like to tell the truth that I knew. It’s not the truth the world is talking about,” said the butler. He was aware that young women were coming and going from the Paris home, but was not aware of wrongdoing.
“If something abnormal that was scary and someone screamed or was abused, I would have phoned the police – but I saw nothing,” he said. “I can’t understand everything that’s being said, because I really lived almost his private life, not everything, but almost.
“I can’t rule out foul play. But you can’t live with someone for 18 years and not see the good or the bad. I did everything, I took care of the house, was his chauffeur, his cook. I even changed his sheets.
“In 18 years, how many times do you think I would have seen the signs of someone who had done sexual acts? If you ask me, he just liked to surround himself with girls without necessarily having sex with them. It was mostly for show.”
But he added: “It’s true [Epstein] wasn’t into older women. He preferred the company of younger women and liked to change those around him. But that doesn’t mean they were underage – they certainly didn’t look it to me. Some would stay for 10 minutes and leave if not comfortable, others would stay.”
Mr Cotrin painted a picture of Epstein as anything but an unbridled hedonist. “He didn’t like food, alcohol, he wasn’t a socialite.
“And I can tell you that in 80 per cent of cases, nothing happened with women to the extent I told some young women, ‘I’m not like him, at least I go all the way. All he does is have massages and nothing else’. I said it loud so he could hear me when he annoyed me.
“He rarely did anything with these young women. All they did was say ‘I’ll rub your back, I’ll cut your nails’. The girls did that to him, but it stopped there.”
Mr Cotrin’s partner, Ms Gomes de Melo, backed him up. “Never did we see anything untoward with any underage women in 20 or so years, neither in New York, nor on the island or in Paris,” she said.
“They nicknamed his plane the ‘Lolita Express’. It flew from New York to the island. I took that plane with him, my husband. But there were no young girls. There was the pilot, the co-pilot, him, an assistant, and just me. That’s it.”
Epstein standing in front of his private jet
She said that a police search of the Paris home by French police had also yielded nothing, bar some nude photos on the walls, along with photographs on the mantelpiece of Epstein with a host of famous people, from Fidel Castro to Pope Jean-Paul II, as well as Mr Trump, Mr Clinton and Allen.
“There was one of I think a Sultan of Dubai and a wealthy Saudi,” recalled Mr Cotrin. He said French police “took them all and never gave them back”.
Ms Gomes de Melo said: “The police came in with machines. They said they were for scanning the walls and floors in case there were hidden cameras or rooms with hidden children and torture devices. They did a thorough job. They arrived at 2pm and they left at 4am. There were 16 of them. They found nothing.”
But she did say the house also contained numerous pictures of Ms Giuffre, whose allegations against Epstein – and later Prince Andrew – effectively sparked the FBI investigation that led to Epstein’s downfall.
The Duke of York, Virginia Giuffre, and Ghislaine Maxwell in Maxwell’s London home. The photograph is said to have been taken on March 10 2001
“There were lots of photos of Virginia, who accused Prince Andrew, in the Paris flat. And at one point, when I was there with my husband, I said to Epstein: ‘Sir, are you going to throw the photos away?’ since we knew it was she who had started all [the lawsuits]. And he said: ‘Why, Maria? She was part of my life. I have nothing to hide.’”
The photographs of Ms Giuffre were taken away by the French police.
Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing and suggested the infamous photograph of himself with Ms Giuffre taken in Maxwell’s London home may have been a fake. Ms Gomes de Melo agreed. “For me, it’s a photo montage. Because if you look closely at the girl’s hand, it’s not around Andrew’s arm,” she said.
In the aftermath of Epstein’s death, Mr Cotrin has struggled to find work – tainted, presumably, by association with Epstein.
There was an apparent lump in his throat as he recalled driving Epstein that one last time to the airport in Paris, a month before his death.
“I often tell myself, I should have had an accident with him on the way to the airport, not a fatal one, just one that prevented him from leaving. Sometimes chance can change everything,” he said.
“We could have been hospitalised, I could have broken an arm, but the next day everything would have been different. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but that’s what I would have wanted.”
It is an astonishing wish, but an intriguing one too. For if Epstein hadn’t died in custody, perhaps the full truth of what happened in those homes in Paris and elsewhere might have come out.
“You can write this too,” said Mr Cotrin. “The day I die, I would like to continue serving him up there – his tea, coffee, his sandwiches, his bread and cheese buns.”
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