PULSE POINTS

❓WHAT HAPPENED: House Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) was found to have exchanged text messages with Jeffrey Epstein during a 2018 congressional hearing involving President Donald J. Trump.

👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Stacey Plaskett, Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Cohen, and Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD).

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📍WHEN & WHERE: The text exchanges occurred in 2019 during a live committee hearing where Michael Cohen testified against President Trump.

💬KEY QUOTE: “I got a text from Jeffrey Epstein, who at the time was my constituent, who was not public knowledge at that time [sic], that he was under federal investigation.” – Stacey Plaskett

🎯IMPACT: A Republican-led vote to censure Plaskett failed, leaving her committee assignments intact despite the controversy.

House Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) is attempting to explain away her text message exchange with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing with disgraced former Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen. The exchange shows Plaskett having not just a friendly demeanor with Epstein—who had already been convicted of being a sex offender—but also seeking his advice on Trump Organization figures’ testimony and how she should press Cohen.

Plaskett, who represents the U.S. Virgin Islands territory, where Epstein’s Little Saint James island—dubbed “Pedo Island”—is located, defended the text exchange, claiming she was unaware of Epstein’s criminal sexual history or that he was under federal investigation for sex trafficking. Further, Plaskett argued on the House floor on Tuesday that she had received many texts because of her shouting down Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) over remarks he made toward the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who was chairing the February 2019 hearing.

“I got a text from Jeffrey Epstein, who at the time was my constituent, who was not public knowledge at that time, that he was under federal investigation,” Plaskett argued on Tuesday. Despite her assertion, Epstein was convicted in 2008 of being a sex offender after being caught soliciting sex from a minor. In 2018, the Miami Herald published a detailed investigation into Epstein in which the newspaper detailed at least 60 women who alleged the pedophile financier had abused them when they were minors.

During her defense of communicating with Epstein, Plaskett did not reveal how either she or Epstein had obtained each other’s phone numbers, nor whether she had ever met with Epstein in person. Notably, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is also under fire for defending Plaskett’s communications with Epstein. “They want to give them another headline! Which is, that they’ve arraigned a Democratic member for taking a phone call from her constituent, Jeffrey Epstein, in the middle of a hearing. And, of course, I don’t think there are any rules here against taking phone calls in a hearing,” Raskin said on Tuesday.

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