Epstein alleged in emails that Trump knew of his conduct

WASHINGTON - House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Donald Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims, among other messages that suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged.

Trump has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. He has said that he and Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019, were once friendly but had a falling out.

But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails, which they selected from thousands of pages of documents released by their panel Wednesday, raised new questions about the relationship between the two men. In one of the messages, Epstein flatly asserted that Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. In another, Epstein pondered how to address questions from the news media about their relationship as Trump was becoming a national political figure.

Committee Republicans swiftly identified the unnamed victim mentioned in two of the emails as Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April and had said that she had not witnessed Trump participating in the sexual abuse of minors at Epstein’s home. They later released unredacted versions of the emails that clearly identify Giuffre.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt cited Giuffre’s past remarks about Trump, denouncing “selectively released emails” meant to “smear” the president.

“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” Leavitt said. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

The messages are certain to inflame the debate on Capitol Hill over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files, and top officials’ decision to backtrack on a promise to fully release all of its investigative material in the case. That issue, which has split Republicans and alienated some of Trump’s right-wing supporters, had faded to the background as the government shutdown dragged on.

“These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.

The emails were turned over to the committee in response to a set of subpoenas Democrats effectively forced Republicans to issue for files related to Epstein. So far, the Justice Department has provided the panel with little that was not already public. Democrats and a few Republicans have been pressing for a far broader set of disclosures from the administration’s Epstein investigation, a move that Trump and GOP leaders in Congress vehemently oppose.

The three separate email exchanges released Wednesday were all from after Epstein’s 2008 plea deal in Florida on state charges of soliciting prostitution, in which federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges. They came years after Trump and Epstein had a reported falling out in the early 2000s. One was addressed to Epstein’s longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, while two were with author Michael Wolff.

In one email from April 2011, Epstein told Maxwell, who was later convicted on charges related to facilitating his crimes, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.” He added that an unnamed victim “spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”

“I have been thinking about that,” Maxwell wrote back.

The emails were provided to the Oversight Committee along with a larger tranche of documents from Epstein’s estate that the panel requested as part of its investigation into Epstein and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.

The committee’s staff redacted victims’ names and any identifying information from the emails. Because the full set of documents has not been released, it was not clear whether the emails had been excerpted from larger conversations that might have provided fuller context.

Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused Democrats of politicizing the investigation.

“Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate clickbait that is not grounded in the facts,” a committee spokesperson said. “The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials.”

They sought to play down Epstein’s assertion that Trump had spent extensive time with one of the victims by publicly naming Giuffre, whose name was redacted in the emails. Giuffre had said that Maxwell recruited her into Epstein’s sex ring while she was working at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, as a teenager.

“I never saw or witnessed Donald Trump participate in those acts, but was he in the house of Jeffrey Epstein,” Giuffre added. “I’ve heard he has been, but I haven’t seen him myself so I don’t know.”

Trump has called Epstein a “creep” and has insisted he never engaged in any wrongdoing with him or Maxwell. He has condemned the continued questions about his handling of the case as a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.

Both Trump and Epstein split their time between New York and Palm Beach, Florida, and they were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s. Their relationship appeared to fizzle out around 2004, though Trump and those close to him have offered different accounts of why. By one account, they fell out after trying to outbid each other on a piece of Palm Beach real estate.

Last summer, Trump said Epstein had “hired” away spa attendants at Mar-a-Lago. He said he had kicked Epstein out of his club, and that he believed one of the women was Giuffre.

At the time Epstein emailed Maxwell in 2011 calling Trump the “dog that didn’t bark,” Trump was a reality television star and New York tabloid celebrity who was years away from becoming president.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration released the transcript of a courthouse interview with Maxwell, who acknowledged that Trump and Epstein had once had a social relationship, but denied any connection between Trump and the sex-trafficking ring.

Epstein’s email from 2019, which claims Trump “knew about the girls” and asked Maxwell “to stop,” was sent to Wolff, who had recently written a tell-all book about the president.

Epstein was months away from the arrest and federal charges that would send him to prison, but he was the focus of significant attention after the Miami Herald had published a series of articles drawing renewed attention to the secret agreement he had signed in 2008.

In his email, Epstein mentioned a victim of his sex-trafficking operation. He also mentioned Mar-a-Lago, then disputed that Trump had ever asked him to resign from the club. “Never a member ever,” Epstein wrote.

Wolff was also involved in a third email exchange, which began on Dec. 15, 2015, the night of a debate in the Republican presidential primary. Wolff emailed Epstein and warned him that CNN was “planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.”

Wolff advised inaction, suggesting that Trump might try to deny a close association with Epstein. “I think you should let him hang himself,” he wrote of Trump. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency” that could be used to “hang him” later or “save him, generating a debt.”

Trump never received a question about the matter in that debate, according to a transcript. It was unclear if he was asked about it separately.

The Democrats’ release of the emails came hours before Speaker Mike Johnson was scheduled to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., whom he has avoided seating for nearly two months since she won her election.

She is expected to provide the final signature necessary on a petition to force a House vote on a measure demanding that the Trump administration release all of its investigative material pertaining to Epstein. The White House has strongly opposed the measure.