New Epstein emails claim Trump 'spent hours' with victim

Emails from sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein released by a House Oversight Committee Wednesday say that President Donald Trump “spent hours” with a victim at his house and “knew about the girls.”

The three emails – one of them between Epstein and his now-convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell – are the first to be released publicly by the Oversight Committee that say Trump was with a victim. Trump has denied he participated in any of Epstein’s crimes and has maintained that he was unaware the New York financier was trafficking underage girls and young women.

In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the Democrats of “selectively” leaking emails to “the liberal media” to create a “fake narrative to smear President Trump.”

She said the unnamed victim, whose name is redacted from one of the emails, is the late Virginia Giuffre, who had previously denied that Trump was involved in Epstein’s crimes.

The emails released are among 23,000 pages of documents that the Committee has received from Epstein’s estate, at least 20,000 of which were later made public Wednesday.

The three emails were written during critical times in Epstein’s life. One was in 2011, when the FBI was beginning to suspect that the crimes Epstein committed in Florida in the early 2000s went beyond those he committed in Palm Beach; the second exchange came in 2015, after Giuffre filed a court affidavit accusing Epstein and Maxwell of running a sex trafficking network that catered to wealthy and politically connected men.

The third email, in 2019, came less than a month after the Miami Herald published an investigation into Epstein’s abuse of dozens of high school girls. The series “Perversion of Justice,” detailed how federal prosecutors negotiated a “sweetheart deal” that gave Epstein and others federal immunity for sex trafficking of the girls — and how federal prosecutors — under former Miami US Attorney Alexander Acosta — sealed the agreement so that no one would know. The series led to widespread outrage over the case.

In one email made public Wednesday, written in 2011, Epstein wrote to Maxwell that Trump spent “hours” at his house with one of Epstein’s sex trafficking victims, adding that “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.” The email was written years after Epstein served a short jail term as part of the plea deal he received in Florida in 2008. However, in 2011, new allegations against Epstein had surfaced, and the FBI was once again interviewing potential new victims.

In another email, written in January 2019, Epstein wrote to the author Michael Wolff: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” Epstein, feeling pressure after the Herald’s series, also at the time had sent two payments to two women who had been involved in helping him recruit underage girls. The payments, authorities later said, were an attempt to keep them quiet.

The third exchange is between Wolff and Epstein, from December 2015, when Trump was scheduled to do a CNN interview in advance of the 2016 election. Wolff seems to suggest to Epstein that if Trump goes on to win the presidency, he would have leverage over Trump.

Wolff: “I hear CNN is planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.”

Epstein: “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”

Wolff: “I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or in 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.”

“The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. 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,” said Ranking Democrat Rep. Robert Garcia of California.

The stunning new development comes as the House prepares to force a Congressional vote to release case files that the Department of Justice and the FBI has on the Epstein case. During the run-up to the 2024 election, Trump and his acolytes promised transparency in the case, including releasing all the government files on the various investigations conducted over the years. However, shortly after he was elected, Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, and his FBI director, Kash Patel, abruptly changed their minds – effectively closing the files. They claimed there was no “credible” evidence that other people were involved in Epstein’s crimes.

Epstein’s victims have mobilized in recent months, appearing in private before members of Congress to urge them to release all records held by the Department of Justice and the FBI. Their effort has been stymied by Congressional Republicans, who have voted not to release the files.

The House is expected to swear in a new Democrat from Arizona this week who will be the deciding vote that could lead to a full House vote on the release of the files.

Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan federal jail cell while awaiting trial in August 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging, although a subsequent investigation by the Federal Bureau of Prisons noted that cameras in the unit were not working properly and that guards had fabricated their reports. Epstein’s brother, Mark, believes his brother was killed because he had damaging information on powerful people.

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—Staff writer Emily Goodin contributed to this report.