Kellyanne Conway defends Trump's Epstein conspiracy retweet
President Trump's retweet of a conspiracy theory linking former President Bill Clinton to millionaire financier and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has caused a bit of a stir. But White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said the president really just "wants everything to be investigated."
Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell on Saturday morning after what has been ruled an apparent suicide, but it has already sparked a slew of conspiracy theories, many of which are directed at Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was also Trump's Democratic opponent in the 2016 general election.
Conway said that the questions surrounding Epstein and any possible co-conspirators in the alleged sex trafficking circuit, which involved minors, are purely "speculative," but that perhaps "there's a public interest in knowing more about that."
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Democratic presidential candidate and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) doesn't agree that Trump is merely pursuing justice. He told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday's State of the Union that the retweets are "another example" of Trump using his position of power to attack political enemies and as a way to distract from events like last weekend's shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
But even if most Democrats don't approve of Trump giving a platform to conspiracy theorists, that doesn't mean they want Epstein's case over and done with. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said there needs to be a "full investigation" into why Epstein was taken off suicide watch before his death. Tim O'Donnell
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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