'My friends will get hurt': Trump blew up over threats to expose Epstein accomplices
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) revealed new details about her split with President Donald Trump over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The retiring Republican congresswoman spoke to the New York Times for a nearly 7,600-word profile covering her decision to leave Congress after two terms, and she told the newspaper that she overlooked some glaring clues about Trump's longtime friendship with the late sex offender, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
“The story to me was that I’d seen pictures of Epstein with all these people, and Trump is just one of several," Greene told the newspaper, "and then, for me, I’d seen that Bill Clinton is on the flight logs for his plane like 20-something times. So, for people like me, it wasn’t suspicious, and then we’d heard the general stories of how Epstein used to be a member of Mar-a-Lago, but Trump kicked him out. Why would I think he’s done anything wrong, right?”
But doubts began to creep into her mind after meeting with some Epstein survivors in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting, and she found their stories credible and surprisingly inspiring.
"Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had," the Times reported. "In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man. After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women."
The congresswoman didn't know those names herself but said she could have gotten them from the victims, and she told the Times that Trump called her to voice his displeasure with the threat.
"Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone," the Times reported. "Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, 'My friends will get hurt.'"
"When she urged Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office, she says, he angrily informed her that they had done nothing to merit the honor," the report added. "It would be the last conversation Greene and Trump would ever have."