New emails released on Wednesday suggest Donald Trump “knew about the girls” procured by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – but the White House quickly accused opponents of selectively leaking material to smear the president.
The president was mentioned in emails between the late pedophile, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and the author Michael Wolff, according to Democrats on the House oversight committee, who released three exchanges dating from 2011 to 2019.
The disclosures seemed designed to raise new questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any knowledge he may have had in the financier’s alleged exploitation of underage girls.
Trump did not send or receive any of the emails and has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.
“Oversight Dems have received new emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate that raise serious questions about Donald Trump and his knowledge of Epstein’s horrific crimes,” Democrats posted on Wednesday on social media. “Read them for yourself. It’s time to end this cover-up and RELEASE THE FILES.”
In one email to Wolff dated 31 January 2019, Epstein apparently wrote: “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever... of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine [sic] to stop.”
In another email from April 2011, Epstein claimed to Maxwell that Trump had “spent hours” with a victim, whose name is redacted.
“i want you to realise that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump...[VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him...he has never once been mentioned,” Epstein told Maxwell, according to the emails.
Wolff apparently wrote to Epstein on 15 December 2015 — the night of a debate in the Republican presidential primary – where the author told the disgraced financier that CNN was “planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards”.
Epstein replied: “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff replied to Epstein, according to the email. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.”
“You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt,” Wolff apparently continued. “Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”
According to a transcript from the debate, Trump never received a question about Epstein.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the Democrats of a “smear” campaign against Trump, adding that the “selectively leaked emails” were used to “create a fake narrative.”
She also named the redacted victim in the emails as the late Virginia Giuffre, and cited Giuffre’s words from her posthumous memoir that Trump “couldn’t have been friendlier” towards her.
“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.”
Trump has said publicly that he had a falling out with Epstein, who died by suicide in his prison cell in August 2019, because the disgraced financier “stole” young women working at his Mar-a-Lago spa too many times — including Giuffre.
The emails were obtained by Democrats on the committee after they subpoenaed documents and records from Epstein’s estate earlier this year.
The Trump administration was engulfed in a months-long crisis over the Epstein files during the summer after the president campaigned to release the documents last year.
In July, the justice department and the FBI released a joint memo effectively ruling a line under the matter, and said no further documents would be released.
The move sparked uproar within MAGA and beyond, as Democrats and rebel Republicans pursued the release of the files.
Maxwell is currently in a low-security Texas prison for her role in a sex-trafficking scheme with Epstein, but has reportedly asked Trump to commute her 20-year sentence.
Meanwhile, Democrat Adelita Grijalva was due to be sworn in on Wednesday as its newest member, more than seven weeks after winning a special election in Arizona to fill the seat last held by her late father. The swearing-in procedure by speaker Mike Johnson is likely to trigger a vote in the House about the release of the Epstein files.
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