Reporting from Washington<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nov. 13, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a>\u9605\u8bfb\u7b80\u4f53\u4e2d\u6587\u7248<\/a>\u95b1\u8b80\u7e41\u9ad4\u4e2d\u6587\u7248<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump had \u201cspent hours at my house\u201d with one of Mr. Epstein\u2019s victims, among other messages that suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Mr. Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Trump has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Mr. Epstein\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails<\/a>, 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 \u201cknew about the girls,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Committee Republicans on Wednesday\u00a0released the rest of the newly obtained material<\/a>, condemning Democrats for choosing three that referred to Mr. Trump. They also\u00a0identified the unnamed victim<\/a>\u00a0mentioned 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\u2019s home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, cited Ms. Giuffre\u2019s past remarks about Mr. Trump, denouncing \u201cselectively released emails\u201d that she said were meant to \u201csmear\u201d the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,\u201d Ms. Leavitt said. \u201cThese stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump\u2019s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n READ THE EMAILS<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the messages<\/a> raised new questions about the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and President Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The messages are certain to inflame the debate on Capitol Hill over the Trump administration\u2019s handling of the Epstein files<\/a>, and top officials\u2019 decision to backtrack on a promise to fully release all of its investigative material in the case. That issue, which has split Republicans and alienated some of Mr. Trump\u2019s right-wing supporters, had faded to the background as the government shutdown dragged on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the\u00a0House return<\/a>ed on Wednesday to clear legislation to end the shutdown, and attention quickly turned back to the Epstein matter. A bipartisan bid to bring up a measure demanding that the Justice Department release all of its investigative material in the case gathered enough supporters to force a vote within weeks, and Speaker Mike Johnson, who has opposed considering the measure, said he would relent and bring it to a vote next week. Mr. Trump\u00a0had lobbied furiously to head it off<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese 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,\u201d Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The emails were turned over to the committee in response to a set of subpoenas Democrats effectively forced Republicans to issue<\/a> for files related to Mr. Epstein. So far, the Justice Department has provided the panel with little that was not already public<\/a>. Democrats and a few Republicans have been pressing for a far broader set of disclosures from the administration\u2019s Epstein investigation, a move that Mr. Trump and G.O.P. leaders in Congress vehemently oppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The three separate email exchanges released on Wednesday were all from after Mr. Epstein\u2019s 2008 plea deal in Florida on state charges of soliciting prostitution, in which federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges. They came years after Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein had a reported falling out in the early 2000s. One was addressed to Mr. Epstein\u2019s longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, while two were with the author Michael Wolff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one email from April 2011, Mr. Epstein told Ms. Maxwell, who was later convicted on charges related to facilitating his crimes, \u201cI want you to realize that that dog that hasn\u2019t barked is Trump.\u201d He added that an unnamed victim \u201cspent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have been thinking about that,\u201d Ms. Maxwell wrote back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an email from January 2019, Mr. Epstein wrote to Mr. Wolff of Mr. Trump: \u201cOf course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.\u201d House Democrats, citing an unnamed whistle-blower, said this week that Ms. Maxwell was preparing to formally<\/a>ask Mr. Trump to commute her federal prison sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The emails were provided to the Oversight Committee along with a larger tranche of documents from Mr. Epstein\u2019s estate that the panel requested as part of its investigation into Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The committee\u2019s staff redacted victims\u2019 names and any identifying information from the emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused Democrats of politicizing the investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDemocrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click bait that is not grounded in the facts,\u201d a committee spokeswoman said. \u201cThe Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n They sought to play down Mr. Epstein\u2019s assertion that Mr. Trump had spent extensive time with one of the victims by publicly naming Ms. Giuffre, whose name was redacted in the emails. Ms. Giuffre had said that Ms. Maxwell recruited her into Mr. Epstein\u2019s sex ring while she was working at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump\u2019s private club and residence in Palm Beach, as a teenager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a 2016 deposition for a civil case, Ms. Giuffre was asked if she believed Mr. Trump had witnessed the sexual abuse of minors in Mr. Epstein\u2019s home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think Donald Trump participated in anything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI never saw or witnessed Donald Trump participate in those acts, but was he in the house of Jeffrey Epstein,\u201d Ms. Giuffre added. \u201cI\u2019ve heard he has been, but I haven\u2019t seen him myself so I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Trump has called Mr. Epstein a \u201ccreep\u201d and has insisted he never engaged in any wrongdoing with him or Ms. Maxwell. He has condemned the continued questions about his handling of the case as a \u201choax\u201d perpetrated by Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein split their time between New York and Palm Beach, Fla., and they were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s. Their relationship appeared to fizzle out around 2004, though Mr. Trump and those close to him<\/a> have offered different accounts of why. By one account, they fell out<\/a> after trying to outbid each other on a piece of Palm Beach real estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last summer, Mr. Trump\u00a0said that Mr. Epstein had \u201chired\u201d away spa attendants<\/a>\u00a0at Mar-a-Lago. He said that he had kicked Mr. Epstein out of his club, and that he believed one of the women was Ms. Giuffre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time Mr. Epstein emailed Ms. Maxwell in 2011 calling Mr. Trump the \u201cdog that didn\u2019t bark,\u201d Mr. Trump was a reality television star and New York tabloid celebrity who was years away from becoming president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Around the same time, according to documents previously released by the Oversight Committee, Mr. Epstein was emailing staff members about negative press coverage he had recently received about the abuse that took place inside his home in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this year, the Trump administration released the transcript of a courthouse interview with Ms. Maxwell<\/a>, who acknowledged that Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein had once had a social relationship, but denied any connection between Mr. Trump and the sex-trafficking ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Epstein\u2019s email from 2019, which claims Mr. Trump \u201cknew about the girls\u201d and asked Ms. Maxwell \u201cto stop,\u201d was sent to Mr. Wolff, who had recently written a tell-all book<\/a> about the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Epstein was months away from the\u00a0arrest and federal charges<\/a>that would send him to prison, but he was the focus of significant attention after\u00a0The Miami Herald had published<\/a>\u00a0a series of articles drawing renewed attention to the secret agreement he had signed in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. \u201cNever a member ever,\u201d Mr. Epstein wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cplanning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you \u2014 either on air or in scrum afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Epstein wrote back, \u201cIf we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Wolff advised inaction, suggesting that Mr. Trump might try to deny a close association with Mr. Epstein. \u201cI think you should let him hang himself,\u201d he wrote of Mr. Trump. \u201cIf he says he hasn\u2019t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable P.R. and political currency\u201d that could be used to \u201chang him\u201d later or \u201csave him, generating a debt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Trump\u00a0never received a question about the matter in that debate<\/a>, according to a transcript. It was unclear if he was asked about it separately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Democrats\u2019 release of the emails came hours before Speaker Mike Johnson swore in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, whom he had avoided seating for nearly two months<\/a> since she won her election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
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