This report appears today in the Daily Mail but the source on which it’s based appears pretty ironclad. Ira Rosen was a producer at 60 Minutes and this week St. Martin’s Press published his latest book “Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes.” The book includes Rosen’s account of a meeting with Jeffrey Epstein’s right hand woman Ghislaine Maxwell back in 2016.

The meeting took place in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. At the time Maxwell supported Hillary and Rosen pressed her on rumors that Epstein had made videos of many of his famous friends including Donald Trump.

‘I want the tapes. I know he [Epstein] was videotaping everyone and I want the tapes of Trump with the girls,’ Rosen told her.

Maxwell replied: ‘I don’t know where they are.’

Rosen writes he told her to ‘ask Epstein’, adding that the ‘fate of the country is at stake.’

‘Trump could be elected president and how would you feel if those tapes emerged after he was in office?’ Rosen asked Maxwell.

‘She gave me a stern look and pointed a finger in my face. She said: “I am the daughter of a press baron. I know the way you people think. If you do one side, you must do the other. If you get the tapes on Trump you have to do Clinton”.’

Those comments were taken by Rosen as confirmation that video tapes of Trump and Clinton do exist. But Maxwell claimed that Epstein had never shared with her the location of those tapes.

Bill Clinton as denied a close relationship with Epstein and specifically denied ever visiting his private island, Little St. James. But last year Netflix released a special about Epstein which included an on-camera interview with the man who set up communications on the island. Steve Scully said he remembers seeing Clinton and Epstein together on the island, though he says there were no young girls around at the time.

In addition to visiting the island, there’s a similar report that Clinton also visited Epstein’s New Mexico Ranch. A security consultant named Jared Kellogg was given a tour of the ranch so that he could submit a bid to add video surveillance to the property. He submitted the bid but never got the job or heard anything about it again. However, during the tour he remembers his point of contact, who was named Brice, told him that both Bill and Hillary had visited the ranch. So it seems possible Epstein did have opportunities to make tapes of Bill Clinton, though what they show is anyone’s guess.

As for Maxwell not knowing where the tapes are, that may be true, If Epstein died before revealing their location to her then perhaps they are gone for good. But at least one friend of Maxwell’s has speculated that she was holding onto the tapes as a get-out-of-jail-free card. “If Ghislaine goes down, she’s going to take the whole damn lot of them with her,” the friend claimed.

But so far, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Maxwell has been in jail for months awaiting trial and recently her attorney claimed she was physically abused by a prison guard:

“Recently, out of view of the security camera, Ms. Maxwell was placed in her isolation cell and physically abused during a pat down search. When she asked that the camera be used to capture the occurrence, a guard replied ‘no.’ ”

“When Ms. Maxwell recoiled in pain and when she said she would report the mistreatment, she was threatened with disciplinary action,” Sternheim wrote.

“Within a week and while the same team was in charge, Ms. Maxwell was the subject of further retaliation for reporting the abuse: a guard ordered Ms. Maxwell into a shower to clean, sanitize, and scrub the walls with a broom. Ms. Maxwell’s request to have the camera record the guard alone with her in the confined space was again denied.”

If Maxwell had tapes of famous figures, you’d think she’d have made an effort to use them by now. Instead she’s sitting in jail awaiting trial and complaining about having to scrub the showers.