Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Donald Trump “spent hours” at Mr. Epstein's home with a sex trafficking victim, and in a separate message years later said that Mr. Trump “knew about the girls,” according to reports published Nov. 12.
The emails, released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, deepen questions about Trump's friendship with Epstein and any knowledge he may have had about what prosecutors say is Epstein's years-long efforts to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Mr Epstein's alleged crimes and said he ended their relationship years ago.
The messages are part of a package of 23,000 documents provided by Epstein's estate to the Oversight Committee. The press release resurfaced a storyline that plagued Trump's presidency over the summer, when the FBI and Justice Department suddenly announced they would not release additional documents that investigators had spent weeks poring over, disappointing conspiracy theorists and online sleuths who had expected to see new revelations.
In an April 2, 2011, email to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's girlfriend who is now in prison for conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking, Mr. Epstein wrote: “I want you to understand that the dog that didn't bark is Trump. (Redacted name) spent hours with him at my house, he was never mentioned. Police Chief, etc. I'm 75% there.”
Ms Maxwell replied the same day: “I've thought about it.”
The name of the man who allegedly spent time with Mr. Trump was redacted from the email, but House Democrats called the man a “victim.”
In a separate email to journalist Michael Wolf, who wrote extensively about Trump in 2019, Epstein wrote of Trump: “Of course he knew about the girls because he asked Ghislaine to stop.”
White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt accused Democrats of “selectively leaking emails” to “create a false story to smear President Trump.”
She said in a statement that the unnamed person mentioned in the emails is Virginia Giuffre, who accused Britain's then-Prince Andrew and other powerful men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager and committed suicide in April. Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, who was recently stripped of his titles and evicted from his royal residence by King Charles III after weeks of pressure to change his relationship with Mr Epstein, denied Ms Giuffre's allegations and said he had no memory of meeting her.
Ms. Leavitt said in a statement that Ms. Giuffre “repeatedly stated that President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing and “could not have been friendlier” to her in their limited interactions.”
“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago because he abused his female employees, including Giuffre,” the statement said. “These stories are nothing more than bad faith attempts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any reasonable American can see right through this hoax and a clear distraction from the reopening of government.”
Ms. Giuffre spoke publicly after the initial investigation resulted in an 18-month prison sentence in Florida for Mr. Epstein, who struck a secret deal to avoid federal prosecution by instead pleading guilty to relatively minor state charges of soliciting prostitution. He was released in 2009.
In subsequent lawsuits, Ms. Giuffre said she was a teenage spa worker at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's club in Palm Beach, Florida, when Ms. Maxwell approached her in 2000.
Mr Epstein committed suicide in a New York City prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.
Lawyers for Ms Maxwell, a British socialite, argue that she should never have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls for sexual abuse by Mr Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence, although she was transferred from a maximum-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after being interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July.
This story was reported by the Associated Press.
