The delegate from the Virgin Islands, Stacey Plaskett — who is the Democratic ranking member on House Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee — made a name for herself and not in a good way when she went after journalist Matt Taibbi during a hearing on the Twitter Files and tried to get him to reveal his sources. She later sent him a letter accusing him of perjury and seemingly threatening him with potential jail time.

Not exactly a good look for the Democrats who claim to care about “democracy” when they go after journalists when they don’t like what the journalists are revealing.

I also reported on how she recently seemed to be saying the quiet part out loud when she said that Trump needed to be “shot,” then quickly corrected it to “stopped.”

Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands): "[Trump] needs to be shot— stopped." pic.twitter.com/E2nIzVJuwY

— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) June 18, 2023

But now questions are being raised about Plaskett and her connections to Jeffrey Epstein. She won big in her election in the Virgin Islands in 2014, and now there’s a new report that says that might be due in part to Epstein.

Plaskett met Epstein numerous times after her entry into politics in 2014, visting Epstein’s office in the Virgin Islands and his New York City townhouse, she said in a deposition last month. The meetings occurred years after Epstein’s conviction on child sex crimes was publicly known, but Plaskett nonetheless met the registered sex offender to solicit campaign donations for herself and Democratic committees. Though she has denied knowing Epstein contributed to her campaign, emails revealed in court documents show her directing a fundraising consultant to ensure Epstein is invited to her fundraiser. “I would be grateful for his support,” Plaskett wrote in the July 2018 email.

Details of the relationship are revealed in court documents released as part of a lawsuit the government of the Virgin Islands filed against JPMorgan, where Epstein banked for years. Emails released in the case show that Epstein jumped at a request in 2014 to help Plaskett in her underdog campaign.

According to the emails, it was the former first lady of the Virgin Islands who asked Epstein to help Plaskett. Cecile de Jongh also happened to have been an office manager for Epstein. “Your help is needed. We are trying to get Stacey Plaskett elected to Congress,” de Jongh wrote to him on June 19, 2014. She wrote about Plaskett’s competitor Shawn-Michael Malone who had just blasted Epstein and his sexual actions during a Senate hearing the week before.

“He is nasty and needs to be defeated,” de Jongh wrote of Malone, adding that “we would have a friend in Stacey.”

She asked Epstein to donate to help Plaskett reach a goal of $75,000 to win the election. Epstein told de Jongh that several of his employees would contribute to Plaskett. And they did to the tune of $10,400, according to campaign finance records. Plaskett went on to prevail over Malone in what newspapers called “one of the biggest upsets” the territory had seen.

Plaskett defeated Malone by just 737 votes in a low-turnout primary, indicating the boost from Epstein could have made a significant difference in the race.

Yet even after that win, Plaskett still had ties to Epstein. She got contributions to her campaigns in 2016 and 2018. She had his support long into 2018 and was still contacting him.

“If you would share this invitation with Jeffrey I’d be much appreciative. I would be grateful for his support and the support of those that he may direct to assist me,” Plaskett wrote in a July 12, 2018, email to Epstein associate Lesley Groff.

Epstein instructed Groff to “get maximum [amount].” He and two of his employees, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, contributed maximum donations of $2,700 to Plaskett’s campaign on July 23, 2018, campaign records show.

Plaskett also testified in a deposition on May 9 that she kept talking to him, visited his townhouse in Manhattan in September 2018, and asked him to contribute $30,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Plaskett acknowledged in her deposition that she was aware of Epstein’s reputation and that she “could have” known by the time they met in New York that Epstein took young women to his Virgin Islands getaway.

So what did Plaskett say about all this? “I regret accepting that campaign contribution, but at the time I was unaware that my campaign had received it,” she claimed on a Virgin Islands radio station last month. She attacked Epstein and said he was “reprehensible” and “truly disgusted by his actions.”

But seemingly not reprehensible enough to have kept her from continuing to seek his support and contributions to the Democrats. Plaskett needs to check her own house before she goes after anyone else and explain why she was soliciting Epstein for support.