New York Times: All The Epstein Connections Fit To Bury
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Wednesday’s release of Jeffrey Epstein’s private emails not only uncovered further details of President Donald Trump’s connection to the accused leader of a sex-trafficking network, but they have also exposed the role of a New York Times reporter in the scandal.
Landon Thomas Jr. worked as correspondent for the Times for almost 17 years, covering financial stories. The Epstein emails reveal that Thomas was also intimately involved in discussions with Epstein about Trump and offered advice to Epstein when other journalists were investigating him about sex trafficking.
In a 2015 email, Epstein asked Thomas, “would you like photso [sic] of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen.” The reporter replied, “Yes!!!”
In another email that year, Epstein told Thomas that he “gave” his “20 year old girlfriend” to Trump in 1993.
In emails from 2016 and 2017, Thomas sent Epstein emails warning him about another reporter’s investigations into Epstein’s allegations of sex trafficking. In another email with Epstein, Thomas said he told writer John Connolly that Epstein was “a hell of a guy,” and later warned Epstein that Connolly was “digging around again.”
Thomas was seemingly pushed out at the Times in 2019, but in its public statement about the parting of ways, the paper did not inform the public about Thomas’ discussions with Epstein about Trump or his apparent attempt to do public relations on behalf of the convicted sex offender. Instead, the Times said Thomas had violated the outlet’s ethics policy.
It is not currently known whether Times management was aware of these emails between Epstein and Thomas, but the paper certainly had a high level of interest in purportedly scandalous emails when they were connected to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
What is known is that Thomas’ former employer has again and again published content that is favorable to Trump. The paper passed off a Black Republican operative’s praise of Trump as if he were merely a private citizen. The Times proclaimed in June that America is now living in the “age of Trump.” In a June review of Trump’s official presidential portrait, the Times gushed that the “subject’s mood has actually brightened” from his previous portrait. And the paper loves to regurgitate Trump’s absurd rhetoric without context of his habit of lying or failing to deliver on his grandiose promises.
The disclosure of a cozy relationship between a Times reporter and Epstein casts even more of a shadow over the paper’s management and its failure to fully inform the public about the powerful.
Published with permission of Daily Kos