“The View” co-hosts criticized Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett on Thursday for playing partisan politics by falsely accusing Republicans of taking money from sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Crockett accused Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin, former Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) of taking donations from Epstein, though it turned out the money came from a self-employed physician with the same name. The co-hosts said that Crockett should have owned up to her mistake and criticized her for making the Epstein case about politics rather than the sex trafficking victims.
” Okay, it is also false that Mitt Romney and the NRCC took money … so it’s not true that they took money from Jeffrey Epstein?” co-host Joy Behar asked. “Okay, yes, a different [Jeffrey Epstein]. It’s so confusing and annoying!”
“But Joy, This is why people get so frustrated with politicians. Something horrible was done. We all agree on that. Epstein engaged in horrific crimes, but people care more about, well, my team didn’t do it, your team did,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said. (RELATED: Epstein-Tied Democrat Delegate Digs Hole Even Deeper For Herself)
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Co-host Sara Haines then said that Crockett should just “own it” since the Epstein case is so severe.
“When she said, my team looked into this quickly, when you’re going to throw out an accusation that big, which we all know this case is that big, just own it, say it was a mistake, and move on,” Haines said. “Because to then try to say, well, they lie and we don’t lie, again, it’s the distrust in Congress and our politicians.”
Crockett attempted to defend her accusations against Zeldin, Romney and the NRCC by saying she did not have enough time to fact-check her team’s findings. She denied that she told a lie about Zeldin taking donations from Epstein.
“[Zeldin] admitted that the did receive donations from a Jeffrey Epstein, so at least I wasn’t trying to mislead people,” Crockett said on “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”
A physician who shares the same name as the sex offender made a $750 donation to Zeldin’s congressional campaign on April 24, 2020, and gave $250 on Aug. 31, 2020, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. Both of the donations were made a year after the disgraced sex offender died in his Manhattan jail cell.
The same individual also appeared to make two $250 donations to Romney’s campaign in 2012 when he ran for president, according to FEC records.
Crockett’s team also fell for obvious troll donations listing Epstein’s occupation as “child molester.” WinRed, which Crockett accused of taking donations from Epstein, received several micro-donations from someone using the name “JEFFREY EPSTEIN” while listing their occupation as “CHILD MOLESTOR” and their employer as “JEFFREY EPSTEIN.”
While both parties attacked one another over the files, documents found that Democratic Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett exchanged text messages with Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing with President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Epstein gave her the name of a Trump Organization aide right before her questioning. Epstein also donated to Plaskett, according to a Business Insider investigation.
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