Trump's Secret Circle Comes Back to Haunt Him as Files Near...

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2:15Michael Popok:As Ghislaine Maxwell effectively declares that her crimes are so bad and her testimony so wrong that she needs not one but two immunities in order for her to testify in Congress about what she saw and what she did. Donald Trump doesn't just have a Jeffrey Epstein and a Ghislaine Maxwell problem in the Epstein child sex trafficking cover-up scandal. He has a John Casablancus problem. Who's John Casablancus? Well, why don't you take a moment and figure out in your life how many child sex traffickers you have a relationship with. If the number is zero, which is probable, Donald Trump has three. And John Casablancus was Jeffrey Epstein before Jeffrey Epstein for Donald Trump.

3:08Michael Popok:And now, as Ghislaine Maxwell declares that she needs yet another, a second round of immunity, I thought it was time to tie all of it back together again about Donald Trump, girl models, girl modeling agencies, girl, teen beauty pageants here and abroad, and his relationship with John Casablancus, who admitted, even before Jeffrey Epstein did, admitted to raping a girl who was 15 years old and was a model in his agency, who married an 18-year-old that he met when he was 15, who died on his third marriage to yet another young model. And this is a friend of Donald Trump, somebody he was in business with, somebody that he used the Plaza Hotel like a flytrap, right?

4:01Similar to Mar-a-Lago

4:05Michael Popok:as ground zero for him to interact with girls. I'm Michael Popak. You're on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. There's so much talk about Jeffrey Epstein, it sort of sucks the oxygen out of the room. But before Jeffrey Epstein and before Ghislaine Maxwell, Donald Trump had a business relationship and a friendship with John Casablancus. Who's he? He ran an agency, a modeling agency in New York named Elite. He ran a modeling pageant for 14 to 19-year-olds called The Look of the year. And before Donald Trump in 1995 was declaring his friendship for Jeffrey Epstein, that he's a terrific guy in New York Magazine, before that, even before the 1992 video of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein ogling girls and cheerleaders and models who have been brought to Mar-a-Lago for them in that famous video, which I'm going to show you.

5:04Michael Popok:A year before that, Donald Trump was a judge for 14 to 19-year-olds in the look of the year competition run by John Casablancas. And Donald Trump went one step further. He wanted John Casablancas to have his headquarters in the Plaza Hotel in New York off of Central Park. And there's plenty of pictures, just like there are of Epstein and Trump, of Casablancas in Trump during this very time when Donald Trump was in his mid-40s chasing after models. So you've got the Epstein-Casablancus-Trump triangle, their connections by owning their own modeling agencies, including the Trump Modeling Management Company, them going abroad to go after girls and young women models and beauty patching contestants in Europe, conducting those pageants in New York.

6:04Michael Popok:And as John Casablanca infamously, notoriously, went after people in his employ and was told by female executives that he needed to stop preying on girls in his modeling agency, Donald Trump took the modeling thing and the beauty pageant thing to the next level, ultimately owning the Miss Teen USA pageant and other pageants. This is the circumstantial evidence that connects the dots between Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and John Casablancus, and this unholy trinity that was created by them. I'm Michael Popak, you're on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. What triggered me to come forward again with this hot take about Epstein is that I don't want the focus now to be distracted by the fact that they have signed off on a bill to release files that were always in the hands of one Donald Trump in the executive branch.

7:07Michael Popok:We never needed Congress to release the executive branch documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. And I doubt we're going to see the full, complete, transparent release of the documents, certainly not ones with Donald Trump's name on them. and then I heard that Ghislaine Maxwell is worried now that we've seen some emails that were obtained by the Epstein estate and a hard drive obtained by the Epstein estate that her story under oath to Todd Blanche the Department of Justice is not going to hang together and that she likely committed perjury so she wants a second immunity we have a child sex trafficker convicted of five felony counts serving 20 years in prison, and the government is considering giving her a second round of immunity?

7:56And that's phony immunity anyway, because you can't assert

8:01Michael Popok:the Fifth Amendment if you, in any context, certainly not in a civil context, you can't assert it unless it's a legitimate assertion. And if you have no legitimate basis upon which to be prosecuted for child sex trafficking, you can't put up the Fifth Amendment. If the MAGA Congress was being legitimate and being truthful to the American people, they would run out to court and get a federal judge to declare she doesn't have immunity. Or she doesn't have the Fifth Amendment right because there's no criminal prosecution. Or the government would have to give her immunity again. But let's have that fight in the courtroom.

8:44Michael Popok:him. Now, let me return to John Casablancas. In 1991, Donald Trump, a couple years running, was a judge in the Look of the Year pageant run by John Casablancas, who was also going after girls at that time and preying on them. Here's a clip of the Look of the Year pageant and Donald Trump judging it. Let's play the clip. The 58 contestants participated in an exhaustive round of personal interviews designed to help our judges discover what makes each one special you're five nine reading serious huh we may measure again tonight before okay okay thank you very much the concentration was intense inside the judging room and out I'm just so excited.

9:39Each girl was considered not only for her beauty and poise, but also for her personality and that indefinable something extra that makes a top model. You want to pull your hair back one second? Okay. All right. Thank you very much, Ingrid. Good luck for tonight.

10:01Michael Popok:Thank you. When it came time to choose the 21 finalists, emotions ran high as each judge expressed his or her opinion. That's 1991. That's a year before Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago with Jeffrey Epstein was busy going after girls in Mar-a-Lago, pointing at them, laughing about them, ogling them. Let's play the clip and put it in the timeline. This is a year after the pageant in New York. Play that clip.

11:27So So in and around that time period, and I want you to also think of the geography in New York,

11:35Michael Popok:Plaza Hotel is literally next to Bergdorf Goodman's. Bergdorf Goodman's is where, and across the street diagonal from Trump Tower. If you're following this at home, Trump Tower sits next to Tiffany's between 57th and 58th on Fifth Avenue. Bergdorf Goodman's, the woman's branch of it, is on 58th and 5th Avenue. Plaza Hotel is on 59th and 5th Avenue. So between 56th and 59th Street, three blocks and 5th Avenue, this is where Donald Trump, this was his triangle. This was his Bermuda Triangle. Every holiday season, I try to make my famous mashed potatoes. Emphasis is on dry. Let's just say last year, they could have doubled as drywall paste.

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13:09Michael Popok:And so in the 1991 era, he was busy forcing John Casablancas or recommending that John Casablancas run the elite modeling agency and this pageant out of the Plaza Hotel that he owned at the time. He then, in and around that same time period, ends up in the Bergdorf Goodman department store, bumping into E. Jean Carroll, then an editor and a writer for Elle magazine. And she proves in court, a civil court, federal court, that she was sexually abused in a dressing room by Donald Trump at that time. Other women, we're talking about the same era. We're talking about 1995, 1996. So 91, he's a pageant judge.

14:03Michael Popok:That's 91. 91, he forms Trump Modeling Management. 92, he's with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago. 95, 96, he sexually abuses E. Jean Carroll in a dressing room in the same neighborhood. And then you've got all the other women who testified in that case that he groped them, sexually assaulted them, or sexually abused them in and around the same time. You have Ms. Leeds, who said she was groped on a plane in first class by Donald Trump. You've got the reporter, Natasha Stojanovich, for People Magazine, who testified in the E. Jean Carroll case that Donald Trump pushed her up against the wall and started to groper and kiss her against her will.

14:48Michael Popok:Same time period. We're talking 1990, 1991, 1996, all in that same time period. The period that Donald Trump doesn't want to talk about. Now, John Casablanca was Epstein before Epstein. He admitted to raping a 15-year-old model. He married a model when she was 18, but met her when she was 15. And he died in disgrace in Brazil. Donald Trump is trying to get away from that relationship with

15:22Michael Popok:Casablancus. And Casablancus and Epstein had a relationship because it turns out that Casablancus was trying to refer people into Epstein in New York as a purported photographer, and that turned out to be Jeffrey Epstein as well. So this is the circumstantial evidence in and around that time period, right?

15:51Michael Popok:Let's also talk about the pageant ownership. Now, while Epstein owned a modeling agency, Casablanca's owned a modeling agency and Trump owned a modeling agency all around the same time, they also went to Europe to go find girls and women at other pageants overseas. And who does Donald Trump marry? Marla Maples, a model. Melania Knauss from Slovenia, now the first lady, a model, a young model. So in my world, we call this circumstantial evidence, and it's more than enough for me to convince a jury that Donald Trump was involved with the child sex trafficking and the predator behavior. And at the worst, at best for him, he turned a blind eye and was willfully negligent in his relationships with these people, knowing that this was going on and not turning it in to authorities.

16:57Michael Popok:When he owned the pageant, one of the pageants, one of the pageant contestants later testified as a survivor that she felt the most abused in her entire life when Donald Trump barged into the dressing room of one of the pageants and eyed her top to bottom. He didn't have to undress her with her eyes. She was undressed because he went in where no man should go into the dressing room on purpose with pageant contestants, something he told Howard Stern in the 1990s, which she later confirmed in her interview on CNN. Let's play the clip. Now for now, Sam Holden, she's a former Miss USA contestant. She says Donald Trump personally inspected each woman prior to the 2006 contest.

17:42So, Sam, look, you know, you said you talked about this personal inspection and, you know, you said it was the dirtiest you felt in your entire life. Tell me exactly what happened. What did he do? So we were at Trump Towers doing the media tour in New York City, and so he lined all 51 of us up. And I thought it was going to be, hi, how are you, nice to meet you, that type of kind of meet and greet thing. It was not. It was him going down and one by one looking us over like we were pieces of meat, and he was trying to decide which piece of meat he wanted. And I was hoping that would be the end, that I wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.

18:20And so then on finals night when I'm sitting in hair and makeup getting ready and just my robe and he comes walking backstage and I'm so startled like what what are you doing back here? We're a bunch of women getting ready for a beauty pageant that we've been working towards, you know, Miss USA. Yeah, exactly like why are you back here? And then I saw him walk into the dressing room just like he has bragged about on Howard Stern and the audio is out there for anybody and everybody to hear. He brags about this. It's not that I'm accusing him. I'm simply verifying what he himself has said.

19:01Michael Popok:And all that against the backdrop of Ghislaine Maxwell having the audacity to ask for, beg for, demand a second immunity agreement before she'll testify to the American people. Why? Because she knows she lied during her interaction with Todd Blanche. We've seen the emails in which she and Jeffrey Epstein back in 2011 are kibitzing about whether Donald Trump is going to get caught because he spent hours, according to Epstein, in Epstein's house with a young girl. To which Ghislaine Maxwell says, I was just thinking about that. And yet when she was interviewed by Todd Blanche, she said she saw nothing untoward involving Donald Trump and Epstein.

19:49Michael Popok:That's a lie. She knows it's a lie. She knows she blew her immunity agreement. She's been campaigning to get her sentence commuted or get a pardon. And with all the criminals that Donald Trump is busy pardoning in the last, since the beginning of the administration, let alone in the last week or two, would it strike anybody as implausible that he would pardon Ghislaine Maxwell? He will if he thinks it'll save his political hide. But I'll end this hot take the way I started it. Count on no fingers how many people in your life are convicted, indicted, or accused child sex traffickers or predators that you count as your friends.

20:31Michael Popok:Donald Trump has three. Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and John Casablancas. I haven't even talked about the former Prince Andrew, Andrew Windsor, and his relationship with Donald Trump and those in the administration. If I'm right, I believe that Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, attended the wedding of Fergie and Andrew's daughter. I don't know if it was Eugenia or one of them. There is this connection at the very, very top, besides the fact that Lutnick bought his townhouse from Jeffrey Epstein and Lex Wexner. I mean, it's just, yeah, sure. Could it all be coincidental? Maybe. And then the prosecutor that lets Jeffrey Epstein off the hook, the U.S.

21:19Michael Popok:attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta, then gets the top job as labor secretary within Donald Trump's administration a year or two later? Coincidence? I don't think so. This is why we're going to continue on the Midas Tech Network and Legal AF to drill down on all of this, to keep our sights, to keep them in our sights, to keep the heavy artillery trained on it on behalf of survivors everywhere and to obtain justice for them and to get disgusting, immoral, heartless people out of the White House. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither.

21:58Michael Popok:That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Wear legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

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