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A new look at Katie Johnson's allegations about tRump
Last edited Tue Jul 29, 2025, 12:07 PM - Edit history (1)
This is an excellent blog post and includes the full transcript of Johnson's video testimony
https://katemanne.substack.com/p/the-actual-conspiracy-theory-surrounding
The real conspiracy theory around Trump and Epstein is that multiple apparently unconnected women lied, and continue to lie, about Trump’s behavior. This with nothing to gain, and much to lose, by speaking out about his misdeeds.
Let’s start with Katie Johnson, the pseudonym adopted by the woman who I wrote about here last time. Her story, if we take her word for it, goes like this: for decades, she was silent, after Trump allegedly raped her at the age of thirteen, at the home of Jeffrey Epstein, in 1994. She also alleges that Trump sexually abused her there on three prior occasions. Katie never planned to speak about this publicly until 2016, when Trump was running for president. Katie met a TV producer at a party who offered to tell her story: Norm Lubow, who adopted the pseudonym Al Taylor. He shopped around her video testimony to multiple media outlets, who found—upon vetting him—that he had once been a producer on the Jerry Springer show and that he had an anti-Trump agenda, among other red flags. The story fizzled out and Katie was assumed to be a liar who Lubow had coached or scripted. At the same time, her lawsuit in California was filed incompetently, and her lawsuit in New York (filed by a respectable attorney, who met and video conferenced with Katie) was dropped, after she received threats, including death threats. For the same reason, she cancelled her planned press conference in LA a few days before the presidential election, where she had planned to warn America about the kind of man they were on the verge of electing.
Again, that’s all if we take Katie’s word for it. Another possibility, of course, is that Lubow did coach or script Katie’s lengthy video testimony. A few points, however: that testimony is compelling, at least in my view. It was widely dismissed when it surfaced in 2016 partly because what Katie was saying was judged just too incredible when it came to Epstein’s sex trafficking of teen girls. Remember, the full story about his crimes didn’t emerge until late in 2018, thanks to Julie K. Brown’s trenchant and prize-winning reporting in The Miami Herald. We now know that what Katie said about Epstein was not only plausible but completely true. Moreover, Katie wouldn’t be the first woman to mistakenly rely on an unscrupulous huckster in order to tell her story: the same is true, notoriously, of the former sex worker Stormy Daniels. People initially dismissed Daniels’s account because she was represented by the huckster lawyer, Michael Avenatti. But Daniels was clearly telling the truth about Trump’s hiring her in 2006 and then, a decade later, paying her hush money. To cite the fact that her lawyer was shonky was, intentionally or not, dismissing Daniels via guilt by association. Many people may have made the same mistake vis-à-vis Katie Johnson. After all, as we’ll consider shortly, numerous women have testified in ways that corroborate her story.
Katie’s lawsuits and video testimony have long stuck in my mind. Back in 2016, and even 2024—when they briefly resurfaced on Twitter—I didn’t know quite what to make of them. But now, I suggest, we should at least listen to Katie. Here is one especially relevant part of the video transcript, which I did myself (it simply isn’t out there). I am making it available to you now in full (at the end of this post) partly because the video has—interestingly enough—disappeared from one common source, on X, and also because no journalist has seemingly ever bothered to write down her words. This despite the video providing the clearest and fullest account of what Americans are now clamoring for: a sense of Trump’s alleged entanglement with Epstein. When women speak, and tell us of rich and powerful white men’s misdeeds, we not only don’t believe them; we often don’t even bother to listen in the first place. One hopes that now, in the wake of 2017’s #MeToo moment, we are at least slightly savvier about the importance of hearing even imperfect victims (or, rather, those who had deeply imperfect initial representation). Here’s Katie, on her final encounter with Trump at Epstein’s mansion, where she alleges she was tied to the bed for an orchestrated rape “fantasy.” (“It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing,” as she put it.)
Let’s start with Katie Johnson, the pseudonym adopted by the woman who I wrote about here last time. Her story, if we take her word for it, goes like this: for decades, she was silent, after Trump allegedly raped her at the age of thirteen, at the home of Jeffrey Epstein, in 1994. She also alleges that Trump sexually abused her there on three prior occasions. Katie never planned to speak about this publicly until 2016, when Trump was running for president. Katie met a TV producer at a party who offered to tell her story: Norm Lubow, who adopted the pseudonym Al Taylor. He shopped around her video testimony to multiple media outlets, who found—upon vetting him—that he had once been a producer on the Jerry Springer show and that he had an anti-Trump agenda, among other red flags. The story fizzled out and Katie was assumed to be a liar who Lubow had coached or scripted. At the same time, her lawsuit in California was filed incompetently, and her lawsuit in New York (filed by a respectable attorney, who met and video conferenced with Katie) was dropped, after she received threats, including death threats. For the same reason, she cancelled her planned press conference in LA a few days before the presidential election, where she had planned to warn America about the kind of man they were on the verge of electing.
Again, that’s all if we take Katie’s word for it. Another possibility, of course, is that Lubow did coach or script Katie’s lengthy video testimony. A few points, however: that testimony is compelling, at least in my view. It was widely dismissed when it surfaced in 2016 partly because what Katie was saying was judged just too incredible when it came to Epstein’s sex trafficking of teen girls. Remember, the full story about his crimes didn’t emerge until late in 2018, thanks to Julie K. Brown’s trenchant and prize-winning reporting in The Miami Herald. We now know that what Katie said about Epstein was not only plausible but completely true. Moreover, Katie wouldn’t be the first woman to mistakenly rely on an unscrupulous huckster in order to tell her story: the same is true, notoriously, of the former sex worker Stormy Daniels. People initially dismissed Daniels’s account because she was represented by the huckster lawyer, Michael Avenatti. But Daniels was clearly telling the truth about Trump’s hiring her in 2006 and then, a decade later, paying her hush money. To cite the fact that her lawyer was shonky was, intentionally or not, dismissing Daniels via guilt by association. Many people may have made the same mistake vis-à-vis Katie Johnson. After all, as we’ll consider shortly, numerous women have testified in ways that corroborate her story.
Katie’s lawsuits and video testimony have long stuck in my mind. Back in 2016, and even 2024—when they briefly resurfaced on Twitter—I didn’t know quite what to make of them. But now, I suggest, we should at least listen to Katie. Here is one especially relevant part of the video transcript, which I did myself (it simply isn’t out there). I am making it available to you now in full (at the end of this post) partly because the video has—interestingly enough—disappeared from one common source, on X, and also because no journalist has seemingly ever bothered to write down her words. This despite the video providing the clearest and fullest account of what Americans are now clamoring for: a sense of Trump’s alleged entanglement with Epstein. When women speak, and tell us of rich and powerful white men’s misdeeds, we not only don’t believe them; we often don’t even bother to listen in the first place. One hopes that now, in the wake of 2017’s #MeToo moment, we are at least slightly savvier about the importance of hearing even imperfect victims (or, rather, those who had deeply imperfect initial representation). Here’s Katie, on her final encounter with Trump at Epstein’s mansion, where she alleges she was tied to the bed for an orchestrated rape “fantasy.” (“It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing,” as she put it.)
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