A trickle of revelations detailing President Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which has plagued the White House all year, became a deluge after members of Congress released a trove of documents suggesting the president may have knowledge of his friend’s criminal activities.
On Thursday, a media review of more than 20,000 documents from the convicted sex offender’s estate released by the House Oversight Committee revealed the extent of Epstein’s interest in Trump, and a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives, including up to half of Republicans, pledged support for legislation that would force the Justice Department to release all files related to the Epstein investigation.
One email discovered Thursday, written by Epstein to himself months before his suicide in federal custody, said, “Trump knew.” The White House was known to Trump or was involved in Epstein’s years-long operation that abused more than 200 women and girls.
The scandal comes at a politically unstable time for President Trump, whose approval rating has reached 36% according to the latest Associated Press-NORC poll, and whose grip on the Republican Party and the MAGA movement is beginning to decline as his final term begins to end ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
This is an attempt by the Trump administration to sway the public’s interest in this incident, transcending political stances.
The records paint the broadest picture yet of Trump’s relationship with Epstein, a topic of growing bipartisan interest in Congress.
Epstein, the disgraced financier who maintained a close friendship with Trump until they fell out in the mid-2000s, said in multiple emails that Epstein “knew the girls” involved in his operation and that Trump “spent many hours” with them in private. Epstein also claimed that damaging information could “bring him down.”
In several interactions, Mr. Epstein portrayed himself as someone who knew Mr. Trump well. The emails show how he tracked changes in Trump’s business practices and the president’s political efforts.
Other communications show that Mr. Epstein closely monitored Mr. Trump’s movements at the beginning of his first term in office, and at one point attempted to contact the Russian government to share “insights” about Mr. Trump’s proclivities and thinking.
White House officials on Wednesday tried to block the attempt to release the files in the White House Situation Room, saying the action showed the administration was willing to “speak with members of Congress and address their concerns.”
But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York accused the White House and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) of “running a pedophile protection program” in an effort to thwart efforts to release the Epstein files.
Legislative efforts in the House do not guarantee a vote in the Senate, much less bipartisan approval of the bill. And the president, who has spent months decrying repeated demands from advocates for transparency in the case, will almost certainly veto the bill if it reaches his desk.
He is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by the New York City Medical Examiner and the Department of Justice Inspector General.
The relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein is likely to remain in the spotlight as reporters scrutinize the documents in the coming days.
In an email sent to him shortly before Epstein’s death in prison, Trump wrote that he was aware of Epstein’s sexual conduct during the time he was accused of misconduct.
“Trump knows it and has come to my house many times during that time,” he wrote.
“He never got a massage,” Epstein added. Epstein paid for “massages” from the girls, which often led to sex acts.
President Trump blamed Democrats for the renewed controversy.
“Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein hoax to distract from their own debacle, especially their most recent one: the government shutdown!” the president said hours after the recording was released.
President Trump was scheduled to sign the bill ending the government shutdown, but refused to answer questions about Epstein from reporters after the event.
Trump appears in several emails
Newly released letters provide a rare glimpse into how Mr. Epstein, in his own words, was connected to Mr. Trump in previously unknown ways. In some cases, Mr. Epstein’s communications suggest that the president knew more about Mr. Epstein’s criminal activities than Mr. Trump revealed.
In the months leading up to Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges, he mentioned Trump in several emails and implied that Trump knew about the financier’s victims.
In January 2019, Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls” when they discussed their membership in Mar-a-Lago, a private club and resort in South Florida.
President Trump said he ended his relationship with Epstein because Epstein “fired” one of his female employees at Mar-a-Lago. The White House also said Trump was banned from the club because Epstein was “disgusting.”
“Mr. Trump stated that he asked me to resign from Congress,” Mr. Epstein wrote in an email to Mr. Wolf.
One of this year’s employees was Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre claimed she never witnessed Trump sexually abusing minors at Epstein’s home.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee identified Giuffre as one of the victims whose names were redacted in an April 2011 email.
In that email, Epstein wrote to former colleague Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump was “a dog that didn’t bark.”
“(The victim) spent many hours with me at my home,” Epstein wrote. “He was never mentioned.”
“I’ve been thinking about that…” Maxwell replied.
White House press secretary Caroline Levitt told reporters Wednesday that the emails “prove absolutely nothing, other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
News broke over the summer that Mr. Trump had written Mr. Epstein a lewd birthday card depicting the silhouette of a naked woman and reading, “Every day could be another great secret,” sparking panic in the West Wing over the possibility that the file contained numerous references to Mr. Trump.
