Washington — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released emails exchanged between Jeffrey Epstein and others about President Trump.
Among the documents is a 2011 message from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, his longtime associate, that said Mr. Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims, whose name is redacted. In another email in 2019 to author Michael Wolff, Epstein wrote, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
Maxwell was convicted of conspiring in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Wolff has written several books about Mr. Trump.
House Democrats said the emails were turned over by Epstein’s estate, which they said released more than 23,000 documents that lawmakers are now reviewing. The full Oversight Committee also released more than 20,000 pages of records from Epstein’s estate Wednesday and claimed Democrats “cherry-pick” from the material “to generate clickbait.” The latest batch includes emails, records from court proceedings, transcripts from depositions, press clippings and other material.
Mr. Trump has previously said he cut ties with Epstein years ago, and he has not been accused of wrongdoing.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of selectively leaking emails to “create a fake narrative” to harm Mr. Trump. She said the unnamed victim in the emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who met Epstein in the summer of 2000, just before she turned 17, while working at the spa at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s South Florida club. Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, had not accused the president of any wrongdoing.
“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 in a statement. “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.”
Giuffre, who worked at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort before she was trafficked by Epstein, said in her memoir that Mr. Trump “couldn’t have been friendlier,” when she met him in his office.
CBS has not independently verified the emails.
In one of the messages from Epstein to Maxwell, dated April 2, 2011, the late financier wrote, “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. [Victim 1] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”
Maxwell then replies, “I have been thinking about that…”
In a second email that appears to be from Epstein to Wolff, dated Jan. 31, 2019, Epstein references a victim, whose name is redacted, and mentions Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s South Florida resort.
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” the message from Epstein reads.
In the third exchange released by House Democrats, which appears to be between Epstein and Wolff, Wolff writes on Dec. 15, 2015, “I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards.”
According to the email exchange, Epstein then replies, “if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Wolff responds, “I think you should let him hang himself. 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. 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.”
Mr. Trump announced his first run for the White House in June 2015 and would have been on the campaign trail when the emails between Wolff and Epstein were exchanged.
Wolff authored a book about the first few months of Mr. Trump’s first term in office, titled “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” that was released in 2018.
Mr. Trump and Epstein were friends for years and ran in the same social circles in New York and Florida from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. But the president said they had a falling out around 2004, more than a decade before Epstein was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019. Epstein had separately reached a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2007, in which he agreed to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges and serve an 18-month prison sentence.
Epstein died by suicide at a Manhattan correctional facility while awaiting trial.
The new release comes amid a push for more transparency on the Epstein files in Congress. The House is set to return Wednesday for the first time since Sept. 19. The lower chamber has been away from Washington while the Senate worked through an impasse on reopening the government. The House’s absence meant the newest member, Democrat Adelita Grijalva, was not sworn in, preventing her from becoming the final signature needed on a discharge petition to circumvent House GOP leaders and force a vote on a measure to compel the Justice Department to release all of the files from its investigation into Epstein. Grijalva is expected to sign the petition after she’s sworn in on Wednesday, starting the clock on the process to move forward with the bill. A vote likely wouldn’t come until next month.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, urged the Justice Department in a statement Wednesday to make the Epstein files public “immediately,” pledging that the panel “will continue pushing for answers and will not stop until we get justice for the victims.”
“The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” Garcia said. “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.”
Several tranches of records have been turned over to congressional investigators, including from Epstein’s estate. The House Oversight Committee has also sought information from a slew of former attorneys general and FBI directors, as well as former President Bill Clinton.
Lawmakers have also questioned Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney in South Florida when prosecutors investigated Epstein in the 2000s and reached the nonprosecution agreement with him.
Acosta went on to serve as Labor secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term but resigned in 2019 amid questions about his handling of Epstein’s case.
