House Democrats on Wednesday put out a batch of old emails that show disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein trying to implicate President Trump in his sex trafficking operation.
Months before his arrest and jailhouse suicide in 2019, the late Epstein wrote to best-selling Trump biographer Michael Wolff with titillating information about the then-president. Epstein, long shut out of the president’s circle, insisted Mr. Trump was aware of the young women Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell had surrounded themselves with and who later accused them of sexual abuse.
“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine [sic] to stop,” Epstein wrote to Mr. Wolff, who was working on a book about Trump at the time.
The email and several others made public Wednesday by the Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are redacted and lacking context. Democratic Party lawmakers say they “raise glaring questions about what the White House is hiding” about Mr. Trump’s past relationship with Epstein.
Republicans on the Oversight panel said the Democrats used the redactions to hide information that shows Mr. Trump didn’t do anything wrong. The redacted name is that of the late Virginia Giuffre, who was one of Epstein’s victims. She never accused Mr. Trump of engaging in wrongdoing.
“Why did Democrats cover up the name when the Estate didn’t redact it in the redacted documents provided to the committee? It’s because this victim, Virginia Giuffre, publicly said that she never witnessed wrongdoing by President Trump,” The GOP said in response to the emails.
“Democrats are trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump. Shame on them.”
Democrats and a few Republicans plan to force a House vote that would require the Trump Justice Department to release all the files on Epstein, who federal prosecutors charged with sex trafficking in 2019, and Maxwell, who in 2022 was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.
The Democrats contend the Trump administration is hiding the files to protect wealthy and influential men who victimized the girls in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring.
Democrats released just three emails, spaced years apart and dating back to 2011, three years after Epstein accepted a guilty plea on charges of soliciting prostitution with a minor.
At the time, Epstein was facing multiple lawsuits from his female victims.
In the 2011 email, Epstein wrote to Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year sentence for serving as Epstein’s accomplice in sex trafficking.
Epstein called Mr. Trump “that dog that hasn’t barked” and suggested he was working on a way to implicate his former friend.
The two men palled around during the 1980s and 1990s but their friendship ended on a bitter note in 2004, when Mr. Trump outbid Epstein for an oceanfront property in Palm Beach.
In the message to Maxwell, Epstein claimed an alleged female victim whose name was redacted, “spent hours at my house” with Mr. Trump.
Epstein said Mr. Trump “has never once been mentioned. Police chief, etc. im 75% there.”
Maxwell responds, “I have been thinking about that.”
It’s not entirely clear what Epstein or Maxwell meant.
A third message Democrats released was written to Mr. Wolff by Epstein as the two pondered what Mr. Trump, then running for the Republican presidential nomination, might say about his relationship with Epstein during his upcoming CNN interview.
Epstein asks Mr. Wolff, “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
Mr. Wolff, writing back to Epstein, said the disgraced financier “should let him hang himself.”
Mr. Trump, along with other wealthy and influential people, among them former President Bill Clinton, had taken multiple trips on Epstein’s private plane, often accompanied by his family. Mr. Trump had also visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home.
“If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency,” Mr. Wolff advised Epstein. “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.”
Mr. Wolff offered a third possible outcome and said Mr. Trump could 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.”
Democrats have been releasing a steady stream of material they say shows Mr. Trump is attempting to hide his involvement in Epstein’s sex trafficking.
On Monday, Democrats on the Oversight Committee released claims from an anonymous whistleblower that Maxwell is receiving “lavish” treatment at a minimum security prison in Texas, purportedly as a reward for her August statement that she never saw Mr. Trump partake in any wrongdoing at Epstein’s properties.
Epstein had been taking jabs at Mr. Trump for years.
He told Mr. Wolff in earlier interviews that he was Mr. Trump’s “closest friend” for a decade and characterized Mr. Trump as a womanizer who targeted married women.
Epstein’s attorney, David Schoen, said Epstein had no dirt on the president. Mr. Schoen provided legal advice to Epstein and was hired as his lead criminal defense attorney nine days before he was found dead in a New York jail cell in August 2019.
“I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump,” Mr. Schoen said on X. “I specifically asked him!”
Tapes of Mr. Wolff’s interview with Epstein were released before the 2024 presidential election. The Trump campaign characterized the move as election interference.
• Mary McCue Bell contributed to this story.
