Newly released emails suggest Donald Trump was aware of Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking activities, including one in which Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls” procured for his ring. The messages, published by Democrats on the House oversight committee, are likely to intensify pressure on the White House to release the full Epstein files.
In a 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein noted that Trump had spent hours with one victim at his house, adding that the victim “has never once been mentioned”. Maxwell replied, “I have been thinking about that.” Another email from Epstein to Trump biographer Michael Wolff in 2019 states that Trump asked him to leave Mar-a-Lago but that “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”.
Republicans on the committee countered by releasing 23,000 documents, accusing Democrats of “cherry picking” the memos “to generate clickbait”. Trump dismissed the emails as part of a “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax” on Truth Social, urging lawmakers to focus on reopening the government.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the release a “manufactured hoax” and noted that the redacted victim, Virginia Giuffre, never publicly accused Trump. Giuffre, who died by suicide in April aged 41, said in her memoir that she was recruited from Mar-a-Lago but witnessed nothing inappropriate involving Trump.
