The fact that an accuser of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein had retracted her allegations against former President Donald Trump was buried by media outlets. On Monday, various media outlets reported that Trump had been named in the latest Epstein documents, but they failed to mention in the beginning of their articles that the accuser had actually retracted those allegations back in 2019.
Court documents released on Monday included emails from Epstein victim Sarah Ransome to the New York Post in 2016, suggesting the existence of Epstein-related sex tapes involving several prominent individuals, including Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Sir Richard Branson.
However, Ransome was unable to provide the tapes when asked, and no such footage has ever been found. In 2019, Ransome admitted to the New Yorker that she had fabricated the tapes to draw attention to Epstein’s behavior and make him believe she had evidence that would be revealed if he harmed her. Despite this retraction, multiple media outlets still ran with the old news on Monday, burying the fact that Ransome’s claims had already been retracted years ago.
“These baseless accusations have been fully retracted because they are simply false and have no merit,” Steven Cheung, Trump spokesperson, said.
A headline by Daily Mail read, “Donald Trump named in latest Epstein documents: Sarah Ransome said he had sex with ‘many girls’ in email where she also claimed pedophile had tapes of the ex-president, Richard Branson, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton.”
“She retracted all her claims, telling Callahan she wanted to ‘walk away from this’, citing fears for her family,” Daily Mail eventually acknowledges in its article — four paragraphs down from the headline.
Another headline by the New York Post read, “Epstein accuser claims pedophile had sex tapes of Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson: new docs.”
“Ransome walked back the salacious allegations in an Oct. 23, 2016 email with a Post columnist, writing, ‘I would like to retract everything I have said to you and walk away from this,’ according to the filing,” the New York Post eventually admits in its article — also four paragraphs down from the headline.
Author and investigative reporter Vicky Ward has assessed that media outlets published new scandalous headlines on Monday, based on old and retracted news from four years ago. Vicky Ward, who initially covered Epstein in a profile article for Vanity Fair in 2003, made this observation.
“Very importantly, Sarah Ransome has since said that isn’t true — that she invented the sex tapes because she was so terrified of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the time,” Ward explained in a Monday video on her Substack titled, “Ignore The Salacious Headlines About Clinton, Trump.”
“This is why covering this story is so complicated. Witnesses, victims are afraid. People have imperfect memories and sometimes complex motives,” Ward added.
