Donald Trump has long sought to downplay his relationship with the late child-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The president has claimed he was “not a fan” of the financier and that, in fact, he doesn’t get the “fascination” with this “boring” case—which has included disturbing allegations against some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet.
But newly released Epstein emails have once again undermined Trump’s efforts to distance himself from his old friend, who died in prison in 2019. In messages unveiled by House Democrats on Wednesday, Epstein directly claims that Trump “knew about the girls,” and that the now-president “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims.
Trump is a “dog that hasn’t barked,” Epstein wrote in 2011 to co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, according to a reproduction of the email released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
In another email exchange, the journalist Michael Wolff informs Epstein that Trump may be asked about their relationship during a 2015 Republican primary debate on CNN. Epstein asks, “if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Wolff responds: “I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You could hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”
Soon after Oversight Democrats released the three exchanges Wednesday, the committee’s Republican majority accused them of “cherry-pick[ing]”—then released more than 20,000 other Epstein documents. Trump is mentioned several times in the tranche. Some of those mentions are innocuous, as the New York Times’ David Enrich noted; in one, Epstein describes Trump as “borderline insane.”
The emails are the latest flash point in the Trump-Epstein saga, which was thrust back into the political conversation this summer, when the Justice Department, led by Trump loyalist Pam Bondi, announced that it had no evidence Epstein was murdered, and no evidence implicating others in Epstein’s crimes. The attorney general’s statements came months after she said, shortly after being sworn in, that she had Epstein’s client list sitting on her desk, waiting to be released.
