Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three emails from a larger batch of 23,000 documents on Wednesday. In one 2011 email to confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein claimed that Donald Trump “spent hours” at his home with a sex-trafficking victim. In another, sent to journalist Michael Wolff in 2019, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls.”
Donald Trump claimed in a social media post that Democrats are using the so-called Epstein “hoax” as a distraction from the government shutdown that ended hours ago. Meanwhile, House Republicans have argued that the emails released by House Democrats provide minimal new information.
What did the emails say?
In the spring of 2011, Jeffrey Epstein was getting out of legal trouble and trying to avoid further fallout. The tabloids recently spotted him trying to rejoin his former social circles. Concerned about his reputation, he sent an email to staff about the negative media coverage. At the same time, Trump, then the star of The Apprentice, was publicly discussing a presidential run, according to The New York Times.
House Oversight Committee Republicans said on X Wednesday that the victim mentioned in the email exchange was Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was 16 when Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her while working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000.
This photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein, March 28, 2017. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, file)
When Epstein sent the email in April 2011, Giuffre had just gone public for the first time, telling a British tabloid that he abused and trafficked her and shared a now-famous photo of himself, Prince Andrew and Maxwell.
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Shortly before Trump’s 2016 election victory, Wolff sent an email to Epstein with the subject line “Now might be the time,” suggesting that he might damage Trump’s campaign by speaking out. It is unclear what Michael Wolff expected Epstein to reveal or whether Epstein responded.
The emails suggest Wolff acted as an adviser and urged Epstein to speak out publicly against Trump. In another exchange in 2016, Wolff recommended that Epstein take an “anti-Trump stance” to get ahead of Filthy Rich’s upcoming book about his life and crimes.
After Trump announced in February 2017 that he would nominate Acosta to be Secretary of Labor, Epstein emailed his attorney, Roy Black, asking, “Who will represent Acosta at the hearings?
Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney in South Florida when Epstein secured a lenient plea deal in 2008 to avoid federal sex-trafficking charges, was expected to appear alone, Black said, “perhaps with the Trump administration assisting him and accompanying him.”
Read also | Epstein emails spark uproar – Democrats say Trump ‘knew’, White House says ‘hoax’
The deal came up again during Acosta’s confirmation hearing, where he defended it as appropriate based on the evidence available at the time. He was confirmed but resigned in 2019 after Epstein was indicted in New York, prompting renewed scrutiny of his role in the 2008 deal.
Shortly before Epstein’s July 2019 arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges, his adviser Richard Kahn wrote him an email about Trump. Kahn said he reviewed Trump’s federal financial disclosure form and shared nine observations about his loans, income and foundation, calling the document “100 pages of nonsense.”
It is not known why Kahn investigated Trump’s finances or whether Epstein responded. The email was one of several in which Epstein’s associates shared information about Trump with him.
(With contributions from The New York Times)
