Signed, Epstein’s Mother (1975)
Signed, Epstein’s Lover (2025)
Dear Mr. Kotter. Please excuse Juan for being absent yesterday. He was sick. And also the day before that. And probably tomorrow, too.
- Epstein’s Mother
Those of a certain vintage remember the “Epstein’s Mother” gag on the television comedy, Welcome Back, Kotter. These days, the name “Epstein” evokes Donald Trump’s former best buddy, who died in prison while under investigation for trafficking under-age girls for sex with the help of his lover and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Welcome Back, Kotter was based on Gabe Kaplan’s stand-up routine that was inspired by his high school experience. Juan Epstein, played by the late Robert Hegyes, was one of his students.
“The funniest of all Epstein's antics was that he that he always had an excuse note for every occasion,” wrote the blog centerfieldmaz after Mr. Hegyes’ passing. “‘Hey Mr. Kotter I got a note.’ The note would be lip synched by Juan as Mr. Kotter read it aloud.” The notes were signed, “Epstein’s mother.” Kotter, played by Kaplan, kept the letters in the Epstein File.
Google the phrase, “Epstein file.” You’ll get links, none containing Juan Epstein’s handiwork. Instead, you wind up with articles like this. The Epstein du jour is Jeffrey.
Ironically, Jeffrey Epstein was teaching high-school aged children when Welcome Back, Kotter debuted in 1975. “Some remember a skilled educator, intelligent and quick-witted,” reported NPR. “Others recall a too-young teacher who was smarmy, unqualified and casually social with students,” added NPR, with one noting, “There was a mild sense of creepiness."
“In a 2009 deposition,” NPR reported, “an attorney asked Epstein if he ever had any ‘sexual contact’ with female students he was teaching at Dalton. Epstein returned the question with his own: ‘While I was a teacher?’” When asked if he had sexual encounters with any students after he left the school, Epstein replied, "Not that I remember." When asked whether he ever dated a former student, he pled the Fifth.
Donald Trump is 2025’s Juan Epstein. Epstein’s Mother has been replaced by Epstein’s Lover. Trump desperately needs a written excuse, signed by Ghislaine Maxwell. He needs a “get out of jail free” card, and Maxwell is uniquely positioned to come up with one.
Jeffrey Epstein was dismissed from the Dalton School in 1976 for performance issues. A little more than a decade later, he befriended Trump.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told the New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” Trump enjoyed it with him.
Consider a party at Mar-a-Lago in 1992, recounted in The New York Times in 2019. A Florida-based businessman organized a “calendar girl” competition at Trump’s request. “I arranged to have some contestants fly in,” he told the Times. “At the very first party, I said, ‘Who’s coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.’ It was him and Epstein.” Just the two of them, a sexual predator, and a future president, two peas in a gilded pod enjoying a “House of Lycus” moment.
Trump is desperate to erase that encounter, and others, from the national consciousness. “But during the 15 years that the men were friends,” reported The Guardian, “there were plenty of incidents that displayed Trump and Epstein’s closeness.”
Stacey Williams, a model, met the two men at a party in 1992. “Moments after they arrived,” noted The Guardian in 2024, “Trump greeted Williams, pulled her toward him and started groping her. She said he put his hands ‘all over my breasts’ as well as her waist and her buttocks. She said she froze because she was ‘deeply confused’ about what was happening. At the same time, she said she believed she saw the two men smiling at each other.”
Is her story believable? Two words: Access Hollywood.
Jeffrey Epstein died in prison before facing trial over alleged misconduct with under-age girls. But there are documents, recordings, logs, and other items in evidence compiled during the investigations of both Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted of trafficking under-age women to have sex with Epstein and other well-heeled heels.
Attorney General Pam Bondi “and other officials in the Justice Department had long suggested that previously undisclosed files on Mr. Epstein’s case included a ‘client list,’” reported The New York Times – then inexplicably insisted there was no list. “If you’re worried that the Jeffrey Epstein files may potentially expose the convicted sex offender’s former friend, President Donald Trump, to, um, legal unpleasantness,” notes the San Francisco Chronicle, “don’t worry. They now no longer exist. Magic, really.”
What does exist are two reasons to suspect the files threaten Trump: first, the history of Trump and Epstein partying and ogling young women; second, Trump’s shifting explanations for why their relationship ended.
Which brings us back to the letters from “Epstein’s Mother.” If anybody knows what Jeffrey Epstein did and with whom, it’s Maxwell, the co-conspirator and convicted child trafficker. If anybody can write an excuse for Juan – I mean Donald – it’s her.
Trump lawyer and Justice Department official Todd Blanche – he is both – recently interviewed Maxwell. She must have given the right answers, because she was immediately relocated to a minimum-security prison camp, a lifestyle upgrade. Coming next, this letter:
Please excuse Donald for anything that happened while he was partying with his friend, Jeffrey Epstein. Donald didn’t do anything wrong. His only interaction with young girls was to lead them in noonday prayer.
- Epstein’s Lover.