Fox News on Sunday repeatedly featured a well-known photo of convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein posing with
Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago – but each time Trump was edited out of the image.
However, Trump’s future wife, Melania Knauss, was not cropped from the photo, which can be viewed in the video above.
The segment focused on longtime Epstein associate and
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell – also in the photo – who allegedly recruited and groomed teenage sex victims for Epstein, according to charges announced alongside her arrest last week. Maxwell has denied the allegations.Epstein and Maxwell for years moved in the same
New York social circles as Trump, who called Epstein a “fun” and “terrific guy” in a now-infamous New York magazine interview in 2002.
“It is even said that he likes beautiful
Women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” the future president added.
Police began investigating Epstein in 2005, and he was charged in
Florida the following year with several counts of unlawful sex acts with a minor. He eventually pleaded guilty to two lesser counts carrying an 18-month sentence as part of a controversial plea deal.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail cell last year awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges, filed a month before his death.
Following Maxwell’s arrest, Trump’s son Eric tweeted a photo of former president
Bill Clinton walking daughter
Chelsea down an aisle at her wedding in 2010. Maxwell appears to be one of the wedding guests in the background. Trump commented: “Birds of a feather.”
He was quickly inundated with replies showing the Mar-a-Lago photo, and others of his dad with both Epstein and Maxwell. The tweet vanished the following day.Well that's just awkward. pic.twitter.com/nE4PE7E7QS— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) July 3, 2020Eric Trump, who tweeted earlier about Bill Clinton and Ghislaine Maxwell, was literally himself on his dad’s private jet with her. FFS. You cannot make this stuff up. https://t.co/dz7jo9H002— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 3, 2020Eric may be on to something pic.twitter.com/dnvE4Y8eEy— KD (@Fly_Sistah) July 2, 2020Seriously, why would he tweet this? https://t.co/ibSDUkPKNPpic.twitter.com/b4S3SvApP1— George Conway (@gtconway3d) July 3, 2020