House Democrats release new Epstein emails referencing Trump
One of the emails is a 2011 message between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein referred to Donald Trump as the "dog that hasn't barked" and told his former companion Ghislaine Maxwell that an alleged victim had "spent hours at my house" with Trump, according to email correspondence released Wednesday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"I want you to realize that that dog that hasn't barked is trump," Epstein wrote in a typo-riddled message to Maxwell in April 2011. "[Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned."
"I have been thinking about that ... " Maxwell replied.
That email exchange -- which came just weeks after a British newspaper published a series of stories about Epstein, Maxwell and their powerful associates -- was one of three released by the Democrats from a batch of more than 23,000 documents the committee recently received from the Epstein Estate in response to a subpoena.
The names of alleged victims and other personally identifying information were redacted from the messages.
The other newly released email exchanges are between Epstein and author Michael Wolff, who has written four books chronicling the Trump presidency. Wolff has said he spoke to Epstein at length about Trump during his reporting for the books.
"I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you--either on air or in scrum afterwards," Wolff wrote to Epstein in December 2015, six months after Trump had officially entered the race for the White House.
"If we were to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?" Epstein replied.
"I think you should let him hang himself," Wolff replied the next day. "If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to 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 third message -- exchanged between Epstein and Wolff while Trump was well into his first presidential term in January 2019 -- appears to touch on the topic of whether Trump had banned Epstein from membership at Mar-a-Lago years earlier.
"Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever," Epstein wrote, "Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop"
The full context of these email exchanges is not clear from the portions released by the committee Democrats.
Wolff in a phone interview on Wednesday said of the 2015 exchange that he couldn't remember "the specific emails or the context, but I was in an in-depth conversation with Epstein at that time about his relationship with Donald Trump. So I think this reflects that."
"I was trying at that time to get Epstein to talk about his relationship with Trump, and actually, he proved to be an enormously valuable source to me," Wolff said. "Part of the context of this is that I was pushing Epstein at that point to go public with what he knew about Trump."
None of the documents previously made public as part of civil lawsuits or Maxwell's trial contain allegations of wrongdoing by Trump.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump in July posted a lengthy social media post that in part blamed Democrats for creating a controversy about files related to Epstein, which he called a "scam" and "hoax."
"Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this 'b--------,' hook, line, and sinker," he wrote at the time.
Republicans on Wednesday claimed Democrats were selectively choosing documents to "generate click-bait" and that they’re withholding other documents that name Democrat officials. Republicans said they’re still reviewing the documents related to Epstein to protect potential victims. They called on Democrats to stop politicizing the investigation.
"Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts," a House Oversight Majority spokesperson told ABC News.
The spokesperson added, "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. The Committee is actively reviewing the documents and will release them publicly once all victim-identifying information has been appropriately redacted. Democrats should stop politicizing this investigation and focus on delivering transparency, accountability, and justice for the survivors."
Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused their Democratic counterparts of “trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump.”
In a social media post, the Republicans claim that in the 2011 email between Epstein and Maxwell, the Democrats redacted the name "Virginia," a likely reference to prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who had made extensive public comments about her exploitation by Epstein, but had never accused Trump of any wrong-doing. The Republicans said that the Epstein Estate had not redacted Virginia's name when providing the records to the committee.
"Why did Democrats cover up the name when the Estate didn't redact it in the redacted documents provided to the committee?" the Republicans' posted on X. "It's because this victim, Virginia Giuffre, publicly said that she never witnessed wrongdoing by President Trump. Democrats are trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump. Shame on them."
Giuffre died by apparent suicide earlier this year. Her memoir, "Nobody's Girl," was published posthumously last month.
The email with Virginia’s name unredacted was provided to ABC News by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.
The publication of the emails comes on the same day that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is scheduled to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who won a special election last month.
Once sworn in, Grijalva is expected to provide the final signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on a House bill that would compel the Department of Justice to release the government's full investigative files on Epstein.
The earliest that vote could happen is the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.
"The Department of Justice must fully release the Epstein files to the public immediately," said Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the Oversight committee, which is conducting an investigation into the federal government's handling of investigations into Epstein.
"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," Garcia said.
The Trump administration has been dogged by controversy over the Epstein files since the DOJ -- in an unsigned statement earlier this year -- announced that the department would not be making its files public, despite earlier promises by members of the Trump administration for transparency.
The statement said that the government had not turned up evidence of a "client list" or credible evidence that "Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions."
The Oversight committee issued a bipartisan subpoena to the DOJ in August for all records related to Epstein and Maxwell.
The DOJ has so far produced only a small fraction of the documents and other evidence gathered by federal investigators over the course of multiple investigations into Epstein's alleged international sex-trafficking operation.
It's not clear if the email messages the estate provided to the committee are also in the possession of the DOJ.
After Epstein's arrest in 2019, President Trump said he hadn't spoken to him in 15 years. Earlier this year, Trump claimed he ended his association with Epstein in the early 2000s after discovering that Epstein and Maxwell were allegedly poaching employees from Mar-a-Lago.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women.
Maxwell, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Texas for child sex trafficking and other offenses in connection with Epstein.
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