Trickle of revelations fuels scandal over Trump’s ties to Epstein
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- House lawmakers this week released reams of documents that imply President Trump may have intimate knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s activities.
- Trump’s 36% approval rating in a new poll compounds the political peril amid revelations about the convicted sex offender.
WASHINGTON — A slow drip of revelations detailing President Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein that have burdened the White House all year has turned into a deluge after House lawmakers released reams of documents that imply the president may have intimate knowledge of his friend’s criminal activity.
The scope of Epstein’s interest in Trump became clear Thursday as media organizations combed through more than 20,000 documents from the convicted sex offender’s estate released by the House Oversight Committee, prompting a bipartisan majority in the House — including up to half of Republican lawmakers — to pledge support for a measure to compel the Justice Department to release all files related to its investigation of Epstein.
In one email discovered Thursday, sent by Epstein to himself months before he died by suicide in federal custody, he wrote: “Trump knew.” The White House has denied that Trump knew about or was involved in Epstein’s years-long operation that abused over 200 women and girls.
The scandal comes at a precarious political moment for Trump, who faces a 36% approval rating, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC survey, and whose grip on the Republican Party and MAGA movement has begun to slip as his final term in office begins winding down leading up to next year’s midterm elections.
Attempts by the Trump administration to quash the scandal have failed to shake interest in the case from the public across the political spectrum.
Donald Trump, a longtime friend of Epstein’s, has said he fell out with the convicted sex offender before he was elected president and has denied any involvement in wrongdoing.
The records paint the most expansive picture yet of Trump’s relationship with Epstein, the subject of unending fascination and conspiracy theories online, as well as growing bipartisan interest in Congress.
In several emails, Epstein, a disgraced financier who maintained a close friendship with Trump until a falling-out in the mid-2000s, said that the latter “knew about the girls” involved in his operation and that Trump “spent hours” with one in private. Epstein also alleged that he could “take him down” with damaging information.
In several exchanges, Epstein portrayed himself as someone who knew Trump well. Emails show how he tracked Trump’s business practices and the evolution of the president’s political endeavors.
Other communications show Epstein closely monitoring Trump’s movements at the beginning of his first term in office, at one point attempting to communicate with the Russian government to share his “insight” into Trump’s proclivities and thinking.
White House officials attempted to thwart the effort to release the files Wednesday, holding a tense meeting with a GOP congresswoman in the White House Situation Room, a move the administration said demonstrated its willingness “to sit down with members of Congress to address their concerns.”
But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York accused the White House and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of “running a pedophile protection program” for trying to block efforts to release the Epstein files.
The legislative effort in the House does not guarantee a vote in the Senate, much less bipartisan approval of the measure there. And the president — who has for months condemned his supporters for their repeated calls for transparency in the case — would almost certainly veto the bill if it makes it to his desk.
Epstein died in a federal prison in Manhattan awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by the New York City medical examiner and the Justice Department’s inspector general.
As reporters sift through the documents in the coming days, Trump’s relationship with Epstein is likely to remain in the spotlight.
In one email Epstein sent to himself shortly before his imprisonment and death, he wrote that Trump knew of the financier’s sexual activity during a period where he was accused of wrongdoing.
“Trump knew of it,” he wrote, “and came to my house many times during that period.”
“He never got a massage,” Epstein added. Epstein paid for “massages” from girls that often led to sexual activity.
The House Oversight Committee has publicly posted the files it has received from the Justice Department on the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump has blamed Democrats for the issue bubbling up again.
“Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one — THE SHUTDOWN!” the president wrote Wednesday in a social media post, hours after the records were made public.
Trump made a public appearance later that day to sign legislation ending the government shutdown but declined to answer as reporters shouted questions about Epstein after the event.
Trump comes up in several emails
The newly released correspondence gives a rare look at how Epstein, in his own words, related to Trump in ways that were not previously known. In some cases, Epstein’s correspondence suggests the president knew more about Epstein’s criminal conduct than Trump has let on.
In the months leading up to Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges, he mentioned Trump in a few emails that imply the latter knew about the financier’s victims.
In January 2019, Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls,” as he discussed his membership at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s South Florida private club and resort.
Trump has said that he ended his relationship with Epstein because he had “hired away” one of his female employees at Mar-a-Lago. The White House has also said Trump banned Epstein from his club because he was “being a creep.”
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote in the email to Wolff.
One of the employees was Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s survivors who died by suicide this year. Giuffre said in a civil case deposition that she never witnessed Trump sexually abuse minors in Epstein’s home.
Republicans in the House Oversight Committee identified Giuffre as one of the victims whose names are redacted in an April 2011 email.
In that email, Epstein wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell, a former associate who was later sentenced for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors, that Trump was “the dog that hasn’t barked.”
“[Victim] spent hours at my house with him,” Epstein wrote. “He has never once been mentioned.”
“I have been thinking about that...,” Maxwell replied.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
News over the summer that Trump had penned a lewd birthday card to Epstein, drawing the silhouette of a naked woman with a note reading, “may every day be another wonderful secret,” had sparked panic in the West Wing that the files could have prolific mentions of Trump.
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