Washington: House Democrats announced Wednesday Emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of his victimsamong other messages suggesting that the accused sex offender believed the president knew more about his abuse than he admitted.
Trump has categorically denied any involvement or knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. He said he and Epstein, the disgraced financier who committed suicide in federal prison in 2019, They were once friends, but they drifted apart
But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails, which they selected from thousands of pages of documents their committee received, raise… New questions about the relationship between the two men. In one letter, Epstein flatly claimed that Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom investigators later discovered were minors. In another article, Epstein reflected on how he would handle media questions about their relationship as Trump became a national political figure.
It sure is The letters will ignite debate on Capitol Hill over the handling of the Epstein files By the Trump administration and the decision of senior officials to rescind their promise to release them in full. This was an issue that divided Republicans and alienated some right-wing Trump supporters He faded into the background as well The government shutdown has been prolonged.
But the House of Representatives is scheduled to return on Wednesday to pass legislation ending the government shutdown, and Attention will likely return to the Epstein case.
“These recent emails and correspondence are inflammatory Obvious questions about what the White House is hiding And the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
The three separate emails were released Wednesday following Epstein’s 2008 plea agreement in Florida on state charges of solicitation of prostitution, in which federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges. It occurred years after Trump and Epstein’s alleged estrangement in the early 2000s. One was directed at Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime confidant, while two were to author Michael Wolff.
In an April 2011 email, Epstein told Maxwell, who was later convicted on charges related to facilitating his crimes: “I want you to realize that the dog that didn’t bark is Trump.”. He added that an unknown victim “spent hours with him at my house, and he never told him about it.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Maxwell replied.
In a January 2019 email, Epstein wrote to Wolf about Trump: “Of course he knew about the girls since he asked Ghislaine to stop.” House Democrats, citing an anonymous whistleblower, said this week Maxwell was preparing to formally ask Trump to commute his federal prison sentence.
The emails were presented to the oversight committee along with a larger trove of documents from Epstein’s estate that the committee requested as part of its investigation into the financier and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges.
Committee staff The names of the victims were omitted and any identifying information from emails. Because the full set of documents was not disclosed, it was not clear whether the emails were drawn from longer conversations that could have provided fuller context.
Trump condemned persistent questions about his handling of the case, calling it a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats. He has called Epstein “disgusting” and insisted he was never involved in any wrongdoing with him or Maxwell.
Both Trump and Epstein They divided their time between New York and Palm Beach, Florida, and were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s.. Their relationship seemed to fizzle out around 2004, though Trump and those close to him gave different accounts of why. According to one account, they fell out after trying to outbid each other for a property in Palm Beach.
last summer, Trump said Epstein “hired” employees at Mar-a-Lago, his private club Residence in Palm Beach, one of the women is believed to be Virginia Giuffre, who said Maxwell recruited her into Epstein’s sexual exploitation ring while working at Mar-a-Lago when she was a teenager.
At the time Epstein emailed Maxwell in 2011 calling Trump a “dog that doesn’t bark,” the mogul was a reality TV star and New York tabloid celebrity who was years away from becoming president.
At about the same time, according to documents previously released by the Oversight Commission, Epstein was emailing employees about negative press coverage he had recently received about abuse that had occurred inside his Florida home.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration released a transcript of a courtroom interview with Maxwell, who admitted that Trump and Epstein had a social relationship, but He denied any connection between Trump and the sex trafficking ring.
Epstein’s 2019 email, in which he claimed Trump “knew about the girls” and told Maxwell to “stop,” was sent to Wolff, who recently wrote a tell-all book about the president.
Epstein was months away from arrest and federal charges that would send him to prison, but he was the focus of much attention afterward. Miami Herald He published a series of articles that again drew attention to the secret agreement he signed in 2008.
In his email, Epstein named the victim of his sex trafficking operation. He also mentioned Mar-a-Lago, and then He denied that Trump had asked him to resign from the club. “I was never a member,” Epstein wrote.
Wolf also participated in a third email exchange, which began on December 15, 2015, the night of the Republican presidential primary debate. Wolf emailed Epstein and warned him that CNN “plans to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you, either on air or in the press conference afterward.”
Epstein replied: “If we could formulate an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
Wolf advised against taking any action, suggesting that Trump might try to deny a close relationship with Epstein. “I think you should let him hang himself,” he wrote of Trump. “If he says he wasn’t on the plane or home, that gives you valuable public relations and political currency” that can be used to “hang him” later or “save him, create a debt.”
According to the text, Trump was not asked any questions about this issue in that debate. It was not clear whether he was asked about that separately.
Democrats’ release of the emails came hours before House Speaker Mike Johnson administered the oath of office to Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., whose name he has avoided mentioning for nearly two months since his election victory.
He is expected to provide the final signature needed on a petition to force the House of Representatives to vote on a measure requiring the Trump administration to release all investigative materials related to Epstein. The White House strongly opposed this measure.
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