House Democrats celebrated the imminent re-opening of the federal government on Wednesday with a return to business as usual.
And in the case of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, business as usual means pulling out every stop to try to link President Donald Trump with the late convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
But Republicans, the White House, and Trump himself are firing back.
In a news release, Oversight Committee Democrats published three cryptic emails written by Epstein in 2011, 2015, and 2019 that referred to Trump.
In two, Epstein was corresponding with a Michael Wolff, apparently the scandal writer who authored “Fire and Fury,” a purported “expose” about Trump’s first term. In one, the recipient was Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former-lover-turned-procuress.
In a 2019 email to Wolff, Epstein wrote Trump “knew about the girls,” but there’s no context.
The reference was apparently to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago sometime in the 2000s, before Epstein’s 2008 conviction for solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
In a July interview, Trump said he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because Epstein was poaching Trump workers.
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote in the email. “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
Do these emails change your opinion about the Epstein case?
In another email exchange, this one from 2015, Wolfe told Epstein that he expected Trump to be asked about Epstein during a CNN appearance.
Epstein responded: “if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
And in a 2011 email to Maxwell, Epstein called Trump the “dog that hasn’t barked.”
A victim’s name redacted by Democrats “spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned,” Epstein wrote.
For Republicans on the Oversight Committee, the name that was redacted is key. It was now-deceased Virginia Giuffre, the best known of Epstein’s victims. She has made statements that exonerated Trump of being tied up in Epstein’s sex crimes world.
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.
Democrats are trying to create a fake… https://t.co/vd7gw3kJl0
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) November 12, 2025
“Why did Democrats cover up the name when the Estate didn’t redact it in the redacted documents provided to the committee?” the House Oversight Republicans wrote in a post on the social media platform X.
“It’s because this victim, Virginia Giuffre, publicly said that she never witnessed wrongdoing by President Trump,” the post added.
“Democrats are trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump. Shame on them.”
Another statement by Oversight Republicans went even further, noting that of 20,000 pages of documents obtained from Epstein’s estate, Democrats were highlighting only three, according to Politico.
“Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts,” the statement said, according to Politico.
“The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials. Democrats should stop politicizing this investigation and focus on delivering transparency, accountability, and justice for the survivors.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was similarly scathing in her dismissal of the Oversight Democrats’ supposed revelations.
“The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump,” Leavitt said in a statement, according to Politico.
“The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions.”
And in a post on the Truth Social platform, Trump linked the Democrats’ publication of the emails to the Democratic collapse that’s put the federal government back on the road to reopening.
“The 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,” Trump wrote.
“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap. The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk — and they should pay a fair price. 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 end of the shutdown also means that House Speaker Mike Johnson swore into office on Wednesday Arizona Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva.
Grijalva represents the likely deciding signature on a discharge petition in the House, HR 4405, demanding that the Justice Department “release all documents and records in possession of the Department of Justice relating to Jeffrey Epstein” and to the investigations of his activities.
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