A batch of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails released by House Democrats Wednesday reveal that the late convicted sex offender wrote in 2019 that Donald Trump “knew about the girls” in Epstein’s sex trafficking case, despite the president’s constant denials over the years.
In another email to confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote in 2011 that Trump spent “spent hours at my house” with one of the Epstein’s victims, describing the future president as “the dog that hasn’t barked,” noting that “he has never once been mentioned,” The New York Times reports. It’s unclear what exactly Epstein meant when he said Trump had not been mentioned.
The three emails were found among thousands of pages of documents that the House Oversight Committee obtained regarding the Epstein case. Two of the emails were between Epstein and author Michael Wolff, who at the time was writing a tell-all book about the Trump administration, with the other email being a conversation between Epstein and Maxwell, who was later convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in the sex trafficking case. Trump’s Justice Department transferred Maxwell to a minimum-security facility earlier this year, and the president has not ruled out pardoning the convicted sex trafficker.
“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,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
In one of the Wolff emails from January 2019 — just months before Epstein died by suicide in his prison cell in August 2019 — Epstein wrote: “Of course [Trump] knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop,” which calls into question Trump’s denials about knowing the details of allegations against the financier prior to the sex trafficking case. The email does not elaborate on what exactly Trump allegedly asked Maxwell to “stop” doing.
“Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate clickbait that is not grounded in the facts,” Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said of the emails in a statement. “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.”
Trump responded later on Wednesday. “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,” he wrote. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”
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While the Epstein case was overshadowed in recent weeks by the government shutdown, the scandal will likely come back into the forefront after Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, is finally seated into Congress, two months after she was elected. Grijalva represents the deciding vote to force a measure demanding that the White House release of all Epstein files.
Several revelations about Trump and Epstein have emerged since the Justice Department announced earlier this year that it would be closing its case into Epstein, and not releasing any more material. The Wall Street Journal reported on, and subsequently released, a birthday letter Trump allegedly wrote to Epstein in the early 2000s, one that included a lewd drawing of a female figure and in which Trump cryptically wrote that he and Epstein have “certain things in common.” Trump sued the outlet over the report, claiming the letter didn’t actually exist. Once the letter was made public, Trump claimed his signature may have been forged.
The Journal also reported that the Justice Department told Trump his name appears in the Epstein files.
Trump has in recent years said that Epstein is a “creep” and that the two had a falling out. The president said in July that the falling out came after Epstein “stole” young women who were employed at Mar-a-Lago, including Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims who died by suicide earlier this year.
“It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been ‘stolen’ from Mar-a-Lago,” Giuffre’s family said in a statement to The Atlantic. “It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions.”
Trump has long claimed he had no knowledge of Epstein’s illegal activities, but the two appeared to be close friends for several years, and Trump has lauded Epstein in the past, telling New York magazine in 2002 that Epstein is a “terrific guy” he has “known for 15 years.”
“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do,” Trump told the magazine, “and many of them are on the younger side.”
From Rolling Stone US
