News - Middle East: Donald Trump’s former chief of staff has revealed that the US president's name is listed on files of the dead convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein, a wealthy New York socialite who died in prison during Trump's first presidency after confessing to his crimes, was reportedly running a Mossad blackmail ring that targeted rich and powerful figures, including Trump was his closest friend for 15 years.The Trump administration recently ruled that Epstein's death in 2019 was suicide by hanging. The controversy over the conditions of Epstein’s death in federal custody, has reignited speculation of a cover-up.

Mick Mulvaney, a Republican politician from South Carolina who was US President Donald Trump’s chief of staff in 2019, revealed that Trump had been listed in the names recorded in the Epstein files.

"He’s in the files. A lot of people are in the files," Mulvaney told Al Jazeera in an interview on Thursday.Mulvaney said he believed that the information in the Epstein files was not made available to the public because many important figures from both the Republican and Democratic political parties were included in it. However, he also claimed that if something incriminating had been in the files about Trump it would have been released by the previous Democratic administration.
"If there was something in the files that was particularly damning about Donald Trump, the files would have been released by the Biden administration," he said.
"That’s why Trump doesn’t want to release it and why Biden didn’t release it either," Mulvaney said.
In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that she had a list of Epstein’s clients “sitting on my desk right now”.
The White House later clarified that Bondi was referring to files relating to Epstein's crimes.
In the meantime, The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and FBI have concluded that Epstein had "no incriminating client list" that could implicate high-profile figures.
However, another former Trump employee revealed on Wednesday that Trump and Epstein were "best friends".
Speaking to CNN, former president and chief operating officer of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, Jack O’Donnell, said he had reprimanded Trump for bringing a 19-year-old into the casino with the child sex trafficker in tow.
The incident occurred while O’Donnell was atop the casino, between 1987 and 1990, according to the former C-suite executive.
“He frequently came down to Atlantic City, the two of them, to attend special events,” O’Donnell told the network. “In my mind, it was his best friend, you know, from really the time I was there for four years.”
Host Erin Burnett then rolled a 2019 clip of Trump in which the 45th president denied reported ties between himself and Epstein, claiming that he only knew the New York financier “like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” and that he was “not a fan” of Epstein’s.
However, O’Donnell insists that dosesn't square with what he witnessed between the pair during his time running the popular casino.
“One incident that I think kind of proves their closeness and how much they hung out together—one time, a Monday morning, I came in and the commission was waiting, the inspectors were waiting in my office, and Donald and Jeffrey had come into the casino in the wee hours of Sunday morning, 1:00, 1:30 in the morning,” O’Donnell told CNN.
“You know, two buddies, they had three women with them, and the commission was waiting for me because they had determined that the women that they brought down were underaged to be in the casino,” O’Donnell continued. “And when I asked them how they knew that, by the way, one of them was the number three-ranked tennis player in the world, okay, and this guy happened to be a tennis fan, and he said, ‘Jack, I know she’s 19 years old.’”
The commission effectively gave Trump a free pass that night, deciding not to fine him or the casino for bringing someone underaged into the casino, O’Donnell recalled. But in turn, O’Donnell had to “read [Trump] the Riot Act.”
“I had to call him and say, ‘Look, they’ve given you a break this time, but if this happens again, the fine is gonna be substantial and it’s gonna be on your head,’” O’Donnell said. “And oh, by the way, it’s not gonna look good, you and this guy Epstein, coming down here with these young women.”
“They were pretty good buddies,” O’Donnell said, so he advised Trump at the time that he shouldn’t be “hanging out with ”Epstein."  
In the meantime, Trump has described reports of a secret list of clients belonging to Epstein as a "hoax".
Trump, who said his former best friend was a "creep", has threatened to take legal action against those who use the dead sex-offenders' confessions against him.Israeli spies targeting important people for extortion is a huge story that is only rarely mentioned in the mainstream media.
However, the Israelis regularly top the list for seemingly friendly countries that aggressively conduct espionage against their closest supporters.
The most damaging espionage in American history is said to be the Israeli purchase of numerous US state secrets, including the National Security Agency's ten-volume manual on how they gather their signal intelligence alongside names of thousands of agents who had worked with US intelligence agencies, from Texan former intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard.
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