According to documents released on Wednesday, Jeffrey Epstein said in a 2019 email to a journalist that Donald Trump “knew about the girls,” although it is not clear what he knew and whether it had anything to do with the former’s offences. Democrats were accused by the White House of selectively disclosing the emails to defame the US president.
Three emails mentioning Trump were made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, including one from 2011 in which Epstein informed Ghislaine Maxwell, a confidant, that Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s home with a victim of sex-trafficking.
The revelations appeared to be intended to question Trump’s friendship with Epstein and his potential knowledge of what prosecutors describe as the latter’s years-long attempt to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has maintained that he ended their friendship years ago and has continuously denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes.
Republicans on the committee later claimed that the victim was Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein of setting her up for sexual encounters with several of his wealthy and powerful friends. The Democrats’ version of the 2011 email censored the victim’s identity. In 2019, while awaiting trial on federal charges, Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail.
The emails that were made public on Wednesday are among the 23,000 papers that the Oversight Committee received from Epstein’s estate.
Trump ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’, said Giuffre.
She passed away earlier this year and had long maintained that Trump was not one of the individuals who had victimised her.
She stated under oath in a court deposition that she didn’t think Trump knew about Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls. Additionally, she did not accuse Trump of any misconduct in her recently published memoir, which detailed her only encounter with him as a spa attendant at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Giuffre wrote in her memoir that her father, who also worked at the club, introduced her to Trump. She added that Trump was amiable and that he promised to assist her in finding babysitting positions with club patrons.
Giuffre wrote Trump “couldn’t have been friendlier.”
In sworn depositions, other members of Epstein’s household staff stated that although Trump visited Epstein’s home, they did not witness him acting inappropriately.
Republicans claim the emails were leaked to disparage Trump.
Democrats “selectively leaked emails” to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt 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 government shutdown “and so many other subjects,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“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!” the US president wrote.
Trump claimed in July that he had barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because he was “taking people who worked for me” including Giuffre. He said that the women had been “taken out of the spa, hired by him — in other words, gone.”
“I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people,’” Trump told reporters about his conversation with Epstein. When asked if Giuffre was among the employees that Epstein had poached, the president hesitated before declaring that Epstein “stole her.”
Committee Republicans retaliated by releasing what they claimed to be an extra 20,000 pages of records from Epstein’s estate shortly after Democrats made the Trump-related emails public. Among them were a plethora of emails that Epstein had written over several years, many of which included his comments—often negative ones—on Trump’s political ascent and his correspondence with media.
Conspiracy theorists and internet sleuths who had anticipated new revelations were disappointed when the FBI and the Justice Department abruptly announced that they would not be releasing additional documents that investigators had spent weeks examining during the summer, casting a shadow over Trump’s presidency.
“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” Epstein wrote in a 2019 email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump.
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote in an email dated April 2, 2011, to Maxwell, a former girlfriend who is currently in prison for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking. “Virginia spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”
“I have been thinking about that,” Maxwell said in response that same day.
According to Leavitt, the individual mentioned in the emails is Giuffre, who died by suicide in April after accusing Britain’s then-Prince Andrew and other powerful individuals of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager.
After weeks of being pressured to act regarding Andrew’s relationship with Epstein, King Charles III recently stripped his brother of his titles and exiled him from his royal residence. Andrew has denied Giuffre’s accusations and claimed he doesn’t remember meeting her.
In other communication, Epstein and Maxwell accused Giuffre of making up stories about her alleged sexual encounters with prominent people, however it was unclear what Epstein meant when he said that Trump was a dog that “hadn’t barked.”
Giuffre “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions,” Leavitt said in a statement.
According to the statement, “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.
“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.”
Wolff and Maxwell’s lawyer David Markus, and Giuffre’s family representatives received messages requesting comment.
In an interview with the second-in-command of the Justice Department in July, Maxwell consistently denied seeing any inappropriate sexual encounters with Trump.
“I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects,” according to a transcript of the interview, Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Giuffre came forward in public following an initial inquiry that resulted in Epstein receiving an 18-month prison sentence in Florida. Epstein entered into a secret agreement to escape federal prosecution by entering a guilty plea to comparatively minor state-level counts of soliciting prostitution. And in 2009, he was released.