WASHINGTON — The slow drip of revelations detailing President Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein that have plagued the White House all year has turned into a deluge after House lawmakers released a trove of documents that suggest the president may have intimate knowledge of his friend's criminal activities.
The extent of Epstein's interest in Trump became clear Thursday as media outlets reviewed more than 20,000 documents from the convicted sex offender's estate released by the House Oversight Committee, prompting a bipartisan House majority, including up to half of Republican lawmakers, to declare support for a measure designed to force the Justice Department to release all files related to the Epstein investigation.
In one email discovered Thursday that Epstein sent to himself months before he committed suicide in federal prison, he wrote, “Trump knew.” White House denied that Trump knew or participated in Epstein's decades-long operation, which abused more than 200 women and girls.
The scandal comes at a dangerous political moment for Trump, whose approval rating stands at 36% in the latest Associated Press-NORC poll, and whose grip on the Republican Party and the MAGA movement has begun to erode as his final term in office comes to an end ahead of next year's midterm elections.
Trump Administration Attempts failed to suppress the scandal to sway interest in the case among the public across the political spectrum.
The records paint the most extensive picture yet of Trump's relationship with Epstein, the subject of endless fad and conspiracy theories online, and growing bipartisan interest in Congress.
In several emails, Epstein, a disgraced financier who maintained a close friendship with Trump before falling out in the mid-2000s, said the latter “knew about the girls” involved in his operation and that Trump “spent hours” alone with one of them. Epstein also claimed he could have “destroyed him” by providing incriminating information.
In several conversations, Epstein presented himself as someone who knew Trump well. The emails show how he tracked Trump's business practices and the evolution of the president's policy efforts.
Other reports indicate that Epstein closely monitored Trump's movements early in his first term, at one point attempting to contact the Russian government to share his “insight” into Trump's tendencies and thinking.
White House officials tried to prevent the files from being made public on Wednesday. has a tense meeting with a GOP congressman In the White House Situation Room, the move the administration said demonstrated its willingness to “sit down with members of Congress to discuss their concerns.”
But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York accused the White House and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of “running a pedophile protection agenda” for trying to block efforts to release Epstein's files.
Legislative efforts in the House do not guarantee a vote in the Senate, much less bipartisan approval of the measure. And the president, who has spent months condemning his supporters for their repeated calls for transparency in the matter, will almost certainly veto the bill if it reaches his desk.
Epstein died in federal prison in Manhattan awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. The New York City medical examiner and the Justice Department's inspector general ruled his death a suicide.
As reporters sift through the documents in the coming days, Trump's relationship with Epstein will likely remain in the spotlight.
In one email Epstein sent to himself shortly before his imprisonment and death, he wrote that Trump knew about the financier's sexual activity while he was accused of wrongdoing.
“Trump knew about this,” he wrote, “and came to my house many times during this time.”
“He never had a massage,” Epstein added. Epstein paid girls for “massages,” which often resulted in sexual activity.
Trump blamed Democrats for the issue's resurgence.
“Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein hoax to try to distract from their massive failures, particularly their most recent – THE OUTLET!” president wrote on Wednesday in a social media post, hours after the recordings were made public.
Trump spoke publicly later that day sign legislation ending the government shutdown, but refused to respond as reporters shouted questions about Epstein after the event.
Trump appears in several emails
Newly released correspondence provides a rare glimpse into how Epstein says he communicated with Trump in ways that were not previously known. In some cases, Epstein's correspondence suggests the president knew more about Epstein's criminal behavior than Trump has revealed.
In the months before Epstein's arrest on sex trafficking charges, he mentioned Trump in several emails that suggested the latter knew about the financier's victims.
In January 2019, Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about girls” while discussing his membership at Mar-a-Lago, the president's private club and resort in South Florida.
Trump said he ended his relationship with Epstein because he “hired” one of his employees at Mar-a-Lago. The White House also said Trump banned Epstein from his club because he was “being a jerk.”
“Trump said he asked me to resign even though I was never a party member,” Epstein wrote in an email to Wolf.
One of the employees was Virginia Giuffre. one of the Epstein survivors who committed suicide this year. Giuffre stated in testimony in a civil case that she never witnessed Trump sexually assaulting minors in Epstein's home.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee named Giuffre as one of the victims whose names were redacted in the April 2011 email.
In this email, Epstein wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell, a former employee who was later sentenced for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minorsthat Trump was “the dog that didn’t bark.”
“[Victim] spent hours with him at my home,” Epstein wrote. “He was never mentioned.”
“I thought about it…” Maxwell replied.
White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday that the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
News over the summer that Trump wrote a lewd birthday card to Epstein, drawing a silhouette of a naked woman with a note reading, “Every day could be another wonderful secret,” sparked panic in the West Wing that there might be numerous references to Trump in the files.
