House Democrats release Epstein email that claimed Trump ‘spent hours’ with victim
House Democrats released an email from Jeffrey Epstein on Wednesday that claimed President Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with one of his sex trafficking victims.
In the 2011 email released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, Epstein wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell, his partner who was later convicted of sex trafficking, that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims and that encounter “has never once been mentioned” by police. Epstein called Trump a “dog that hasn’t barked.”
Trump has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein case and has urged members of Congress to stop investigating the financier, who died in his jail cell in 2019.
Epstein and President Donald Trump were once friends, but Trump has said he ended the relationship.
After Epstein was arrested again in 2019, Trump, then in his first term as president, said: “I had a falling-out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What do the emails say?
The documents appear to show Epstein mentioning US President Donald Trump several times in correspondence with long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and in separate correspondence with writer Michael Wolff.
An email from Epstein to Maxwell in April 2011 alleges Trump “spent hours” with one of the victims, calling the US president the “dog that hasn’t barked”.
In a January 2019 email to Wolff, Epstein alleged Trump “knew about the girls because he asked Ghislaine to stop”.
What has Trump said?
The US president hasn’t commented on these newly released emails, but has consistently denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein. Trump has previously said allegations against him are a “hoax” orchestrated by the Democratic party.
The pair had been friendly for years, but Trump says they fell out in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein was first arrested.
An exchange in the newly released emails by House Democrats are alleged correspondence between Epstein and the author Michael Wolff, who has written four books on Donald Trump and interviewed Epstein.
“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff allegedly says in an email to Epstein dated 15 December 2015, six months after Trump had declared he was running for the 2016 US presidential election.
Epstein replied to Wolff: “If we were to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff wrote the following 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.”
At the time, Epstein had already pleaded guilty to sex offences in Florida as part of a deal with prosecutors.
In an email from 31 January 2019, Epstein denies the US president’s claims that he had banished him from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate.
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein told Wolff. “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” he added, an apparent reference to Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a 20 year sentence for trafficking girls to Epstein.
Trump said earlier this year that he fell out with Epstein after he “stole” young women who worked at his Mar-a-Lago beach club spa.
By Agencies