The Real George Mitchell Tragedy: Having Sex With A Child Would Be Bad Enough – But Now He’s Also Considered A Liar

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell has gone from being a metaphorical international peace-making God to his word having no credibility.

The Democrat from Maine allegedly having had sex with a 17-year-old girl at pedo Jeffrey Epstein‘s request was enough to erase Mitchell from his historic reputation helping bring peace to Northern Ireland.

But as bad if not worse, people don’t believe him when he says he didn’t.

For George Mitchell, that’s really the tragedy – that his word is no longer reliable.

Even his own Maine institute doesn’t believe him.

Not even necessarily because he allegedly had sex with a child – but because the leaders of his own institute believe he’s lying.

The guy who brought what people thought could never happen – peace in Northern Ireland – is now considered a fraud.

If Mitchell’s memory is faulty then one would expect either him or, if it’s due to dementia, someone on his behalf to say that he doesn’t remember having sex with a child.

But then the implication is, well, he may have. But can’t remember.

“I didn’t know her. I didn’t have contact with her. I didn’t meet her. I didn’t talk to her.” Mitchell the seasoned lawyer has a way of parsing his denials.

So even if Mitchell’s denials are true, the problem is the people who matter aren’t buying any of it.

That is the true tragedy of what has happened to George Mitchell – that his very word, once something as solid as granite, is now nothing more than trash.

“How should we react when we discover that someone, once accorded almost god-like status, turns out to have feet of clay?” the commentator Alex Kane asked in the Irish News, a Belfast daily. For the institutions and public figures that once feted President Bill Clinton and his envoy Mitchell, it is an agonizing question.

“Mitchell, a Senate majority leader until 1995, was an inspired choice to chair multiparty talks. Indefatigable, affable and astute, he steered negotiations to an agreement in 1998 that drew a line under a brutal conflict and saved countless lives,” reports TheGuardian.com.

Mitchell returned last June for the premiere of a film about his negotiating triumph. “It was like the return of the hero,” said Noel Doran, a former editor of the Irish News who attended the screening. “It almost felt like a privilege to be in the same room as him.”

The reverence had persisted despite an allegation by Virginia Giuffre in 2019 that she had been forced to have sex with Mitchell in the 1990s, and despite his name appearing multiple times in the “Epstein files.”

Mitchell denies any wrongdoing or ever meeting Giuffre but this month, after another release of Epstein material, former supporters wrenched off the halo.

The US-Ireland Alliance announced earlier this month that its George J Mitchell scholarship program would no longer bear his name.

“We are not a court of law. We are an organization which must make decisions that reflect what we stand for,” the alliance’s founder and president, Trina Vargo, said this week. “Given all the new information that has come to light, we felt we could no longer ask our alums and future applicants to wear the name Mitchell.”

Queen’s University Belfast, which forged a close partnership with Mitchell during and after his term as the university’s chancellor from 1999 to 2009, followed suit. It erased his name from its Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, scrubbed laudatory articles from its website and removed his bust – estimated to have cost $47,000 – from the campus.

The moves followed information from the latest Epstein files, Queen’s said in a statement. “Senator Mitchell previously provided public reassurances regarding his contact with Epstein. The recent files have shown this to be incorrect and in light of this information, the university acted accordingly.”

To add insult to injury, and perhaps the worst blow to George Mitchell, the George Mitchell Institute in Maine dropped his name from its banner.

His own institute has banished George Mitchell.

The Belfast city council now is considering rescinding Mitchell’s key to the city, a proposal backed by nationalist and unionist parties.

“It is a poignant irony – even in disgrace, the former envoy from Maine has brought both sides together,” TheGuardian.com said.

Mitchell has claimed Giuffre’s identification of him was a case of mistaken identity.

“In 2021, Ms Giuffre supplied a photograph to OK! Magazine, which incorrectly captioned it as depicting Senator Mitchell standing behind Jeffrey Epstein,” the ex-senator’s spokesman said. “The individual in the photograph was not Senator Mitchell. The publisher acknowledged the incorrect caption and removed it.”

From there, Mitchell’s mouthpiece went on to the rehearsed boilerplate denial – that the senator had never met or had any contact with Giuffre or any underage women, and had learned of Epstein’s criminal activity through media reports about his 2008 prosecution and conviction, after which Mitchell “declined or deflected” invitations from Epstein’s office.

“Senator Mitchell profoundly regrets ever having known Jeffrey Epstein and condemns, without reservation, the horrific harm Epstein inflicted on so many women,” his spokesperson said.

No one believes George Mitchell anymore.

That’s the sad legacy of the Waterville native who, after breaking through the chains of an impoverished blue-collar upbringing, reaching the highest pinnacles of public life, became known at age 92 for lying about sexually trafficking a teenage girl.