Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.
The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files reportedly detailing the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term of office.
Later on Wednesday, the committee’s Republican majority countered by releasing its own tranche of 23,000 documents, accusing Democrats of “cherry picking” the memos “to generate clickbait”.
Trump, meanwhile, fired off a post to his Truth Social platform in which he said Democrats “are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects”.
The president urged House members to focus instead on the upcoming vote to reopen the government: “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”
Numerous victims have said they were assaulted at Epstein’s infamous parties that took place at his home in New York, his Florida mansion, and at his compound at Little St James in the US Virgin Islands, to which “clients” would be ferried by private jet.
In one of the memos released Wednesday, Epstein alleged to his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in April 2011 that Trump had a lengthy engagement in the company of one of the disgraced financier’s sex-trafficked victims.
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [victim name redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned,” the message reads.
In her reply, Maxwell said: “I have been thinking about that.”
A second message, sent by Epstein to Trump biographer Michael Wolff in January 2019, indicates that Trump had asked him to resign from Mar-a-Lago, the president’s exclusive members-only club in Florida.
But Epstein said he was “never a member ever” and adds “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”.
Epstein’s long-time friend and co-conspirator Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence after her conviction for sex-trafficking crimes, including procuring girls to be abused.
A third message, sent by Epstein to Wolff in December 2015, solicited the author’s advice about fashioning a response for Trump to questions CNN was reportedly preparing to ask him about their relationship.
“If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein asked.
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responded.
“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 …
“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.”
Trump has consistently denied having knowledge of Epstein’s activities, which included the operation of a sex-trafficking ring that procured teen girls for wealthy and influential associates. Epstein killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in a lunchtime press briefing at the White House, called the release of the emails “a manufactured hoax by the Democratic party” to distract from the reopening of the government.
She also expanded on an earlier statement in which she identified the unnamed victim in the redacted email as Virginia Giuffre, who named Epstein, Maxwell and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, among her abusers, but never publicly accused Trump.
In her posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Giuffre said she was recruited by Maxwell from Mar-a-Lago, where she worked as a teenager. She died by suicide in April aged 41.
“Ms Giuffre, and God rest her soul, maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her,” Leavitt said.
“It’s a question worth asking the Democratic party why they chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and is, unfortunately, no longer with us.”
Leavitt insisted that “these emails proved absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong”.
Democrats, however, have accused the White House of covering up Trump’s alleged involvement and have consistently called on Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, to release documents about the scandal which have come to be known as the Epstein files.
In a statement, the oversight committee’s ranking member, Robert Garcia, said: “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. 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.”
Other Democrats joined calls for more transparency from the White House.
Ro Khanna, a California Democratic congressman, told the Guardian that this was “exactly why” he was working with the Republican representative Thomas Massie to force a House floor vote on the full release of the Epstein files.
“The public deserves transparency and the survivors deserve justice,” he said.
In a post to X, Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator, wrote: “Americans deserve the full truth. The administration needs to keep its promise and release the Epstein files.”
A vote could come quickly as the House prepared to reconvene Wednesday after the lengthy government shutdown.
The Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, who has opposed the release of the full tranche of Epstein investigation records, has said he will swear in Arizona’s newly elected congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, set to be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition that would force a vote.
“Republicans are running a pedophile protection program, they are intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said on Tuesday, accusing Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in for seven weeks to defend Trump.
Maxwell, meanwhile, is seeking a commutation of her sentence from Trump, according to Democrats on the House judiciary committee.
The supreme court last month rejected Maxwell’s appeal to overturn her criminal conviction.
Additional reporting by Shrai Popat
