🧨 The Epstein Pedophile Pipeline Ran Through Trump's Mar-a-Lago Spa — And the Receipts Are Ugly. And Undeniable.

The Wall Street Journal reports house calls, staff warnings, recruitment attempts, and a ban that came too late

In the middle of all the noise around Epstein, one detail should stop every American in their tracks: Mar-a-Lago’s spa was sending young women to Jeffrey Epstein’s house for “services” for years. Not rumor. Not a conspiracy thread. A system. And according to a new Wall Street Journal investigation, it continued even as staff warned each other that Epstein was dangerous.

Before I break down what the Journal reported and why it matters, I want to ask you from the heart to become a member today. I keep this work free for the world—for readers in Gaza, for students in public schools, for families living in deep poverty, for elders on fixed incomes—because a smaller circle of people who can afford it chooses to carry the cost. Please click here to become a member and please click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. Your support keeps this work free for them, and even for you when you can’t afford to pay.

Now let’s talk about what this reporting actually says—and what it exposes about power, silence, and the infrastructure that let Epstein operate.

What the Wall Street Journal reported

The Wall Street Journal published an investigation on December 30th, 2025 by Joe Palazzolo, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Khadeeja Safdar describing how the Mar-a-Lago spa allegedly functioned as a repeated point of contact between Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and young women who worked at the club.

According to the Journal, Mar-a-Lago’s spa routinely dispatched employees—“usually young women”—to Epstein’s nearby Palm Beach mansion for massages, manicures, and other services. The Journal says these house calls went on for years, even as employees warned each other about Epstein and described him as sexually inappropriate, including exposing himself during appointments.

Let me say this plainly: that’s not “social proximity.” That’s a pipeline.

The Journal reports Epstein was not a dues-paying member of Mar-a-Lago, but that employees said Trump instructed staff to treat him like one. Epstein had a spa account, and Maxwell reportedly booked appointments on his behalf. If you’re trying to understand how abuse thrives, this is the first truth: institutions create cover. A predator doesn’t need to be “in the club” officially if he’s treated like he’s in the club unofficially.

The reporting then gets even more specific. The Journal says the house-call practice came to a halt in 2003, after an 18-year-old beautician returned to the club and reported to managers that Epstein pressured her for sex. Former employees told the Journal that a manager faxed Trump about the allegation and urged him to ban Epstein, and that Trump said it was “a good letter” and told the manager to “kick him out.”

Trump’s White House responded by calling the reporting “innuendo” and “smear,” while also saying Trump “did nothing wrong” and that he kicked Epstein out for “being a creep.” That response is very revealing in itself, because it tries to turn this into a brand-cleaning moment: “See? He kicked him out.”

But the moral question isn’t simply, “Did Trump eventually kick him out?” The question is: why was the pipeline allowed to exist at all, and why was there no real accountability when staff reported misconduct?

Because here’s another key detail the Journal reported: the 18-year-old disclosed the incident to Mar-a-Lago’s HR team, but the incident was not reported to Palm Beach police, according to former employees and police. Police didn’t begin investigating Epstein until two years later, after a parent reported Epstein molested a 14-year-old girl.

Sit with that: an 18-year-old reports pressure for sex after being sent to Epstein’s home, and there’s no police report. That is not a minor administrative choice. That’s a decision that protects the institution and leaves other young women exposed.

This is what people miss when they reduce Epstein to a cartoon villain. A villain is one man. A system is what protects him.

The part that exposes the method

The Journal’s reporting doesn’t just describe a creepy man. It describes a process—one that looks uncomfortably similar to what survivors have described for years: proximity, recruitment, grooming, normalization, and silence.

The Journal reports that Maxwell allegedly used the spa as a recruitment channel, approaching young workers and offering “side jobs,” telling them they could make extra money by giving massages to her “friend.” It notes a 2009 deposition by Epstein’s house manager describing Maxwell visiting multiple Palm Beach spas searching for massage therapists—meaning this wasn’t casual; it was systematic.

And of course, the reporting places Virginia Giuffre in this story. Giuffre said Maxwell recruited her in 2000 while she was working at Mar-a-Lago, and she said she was 16 years old when she left the spa to work for Epstein. Giuffre’s story has been public for years, but the Journal’s reporting adds new framing about how the Mar-a-Lago spa culture and house-call practices created a context where Maxwell could operate.

I want to be careful here and fair: Giuffre, in deposition testimony and later accounts, said she never observed Trump participating in abuse and described him as friendly in an encounter. That matters for accuracy.

But it does not erase the larger institutional reality: a teenager working at Mar-a-Lago was recruited into Epstein’s world, and the spa environment is described as a repeated access point.

That is the story. And it is not “innuendo” to ask why any institution would allow that kind of access to keep happening.

What the “ban” does and doesn’t mean

The Journal’s account will be used in two predictable ways.

One side will say: “This proves Trump was involved.” The Journal does not claim that, and we shouldn’t either without evidence. Serious reporting doesn’t need to exaggerate.

The other side will say: “This proves Trump did the right thing because he kicked Epstein out.” That’s also not the full truth.

Because if the Journal’s reporting is accurate, then “kicking him out” happened after years of house calls, after staff warnings, after an environment where Maxwell could recruit, and only after an 18-year-old’s complaint landed on a manager’s desk and was faxed upward.

And even then, the most damning detail isn’t the ban. It’s the lack of law enforcement involvement. If the complaint was serious enough to ban a man from the spa, it was serious enough to call the police. The Journal says that didn’t happen.

That’s not “a mistake.” That’s a choice. And it’s a choice that fits what we’ve watched repeatedly in cases of elite abuse: protect the brand, protect the institution, protect the powerful, move the problem out of sight, and keep the machine running.

The Journal also reports that Trump and Epstein continued to cross paths even after the ban, including competing for a property in late 2004 and a record of calls in Epstein’s message book. Again: that doesn’t prove criminality. But it does puncture the clean story that everything ended instantly and decisively.

The truth is usually messier—and the mess is where systems hide.

The deeper point

Here’s why I’m writing about this now.

Epstein is often treated in public conversation like a monstrous outlier—some uniquely depraved man who slipped through cracks. That framing is comforting because it allows everyone else to feel innocent: “He was an exception.”

But the Journal’s reporting points to the opposite: he thrived because institutions created predictable access. He thrived because normal professional pathways—spas, appointments, “house calls,” side gigs—became cover for exploitation. He thrived because staff warnings became informal whispers instead of formal reports. He thrived because HR was involved but police were not. He thrived because people were afraid of the consequences of naming the truth out loud.

This is the part that matters for 2026, for politics, for media, for morality: power doesn’t just harm; power builds systems that allow harm. Then it builds narratives afterward to avoid accountability.

And that’s why this reporting matters even beyond Trump and beyond Mar-a-Lago. Because Mar-a-Lago isn’t just a club. It’s the president’s stage. It’s his symbol. It’s where power gathers and performs itself. If Epstein’s access ran through that environment in the way the Journal describes, it tells you something about how close predation can sit to power while everyone pretends not to see.

And if you’re asking yourself why these stories keep coming out in drips—why it takes decades for truths to surface—the answer is: because the people with the most influence benefit from delay. Delay dilutes outrage. Delay protects reputations. Delay makes facts feel like “old news.” Delay makes accountability feel impossible.

I refuse to let it be diluted.

If the Journal’s reporting is accurate, then the moral conclusion is simple: this didn’t happen because nobody knew. It happened because the system didn’t treat danger as an emergency until it couldn’t be ignored.

That is not just a story about Epstein.

That is a story about America.

If you want me to keep doing this kind of work—reading closely, separating hard facts from spin, refusing to let power rewrite history—I need you with me. Please click here to become a member and please click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. I keep this work free for the world, but I can only do that if some of you decide to carry it.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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