Epstein Alleged in Emails That Trump Knew of His Conduct
In a message obtained by Congress, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein wrote that Donald J. Trump spent hours at his house with one of Mr. Epstein’s victims.
House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Mr. Epstein’s victims, among other messages that suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Mr. Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged.
Mr. Trump has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. He has said that he and Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019, were once friendly but had a falling out.
But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails, which they selected from thousands of pages of documents received by their panel, raised new questions about the relationship between the two men. In one of the messages, Mr. Epstein flatly asserted that Mr. Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. In another, Mr. Epstein pondered how to address questions from the news media about their relationship as Mr. Trump was becoming a national political figure.
Committee Republicans on Wednesday released the rest of the newly obtained material, condemning Democrats for choosing three that referred to Mr. Trump. They also identified the unnamed victim mentioned in two of the emails as Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April and had said that she had not witnessed Mr. Trump participating in the sexual abuse of minors at Mr. Epstein’s home.
In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, cited Ms. Giuffre’s past remarks about Mr. Trump, denouncing “selectively released emails” that she said were meant to “smear” the president.
“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,” Ms. Leavitt said. “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.”
In his email, Mr. Epstein mentioned a victim of his sex-trafficking operation. He also mentioned Mar-a-Lago, then disputed that Mr. Trump had ever asked him to resign from the club. “Never a member ever,” Mr. Epstein wrote.
Mr. Wolff was also involved in a third email exchange, which began on Dec. 15, 2015, the night of a debate in the Republican presidential primary. Mr. Wolff emailed Mr. Epstein and warned him that CNN was “planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.”
Mr. Epstein wrote back, “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
Mr. Wolff advised inaction, suggesting that Mr. Trump might try to deny a close association with Mr. Epstein. “I think you should let him hang himself,” he wrote of Mr. Trump. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable P.R. and political currency” that could be used to “hang him” later or “save him, generating a debt.”
Mr. Trump never received a question about the matter in that debate, according to a transcript. It was unclear if he was asked about it separately.
