House Republicans released a trove of emails and other documents Wednesday that they had subpoenaed from the Justice Department’s investigation into the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The material was published shortly after Democrats released three selective emails from the disgraced financier that they say incriminate President Trump.
The Republicans’ Epstein document dump isn’t the first. Republicans subpoenaed the Justice Department earlier this year for all information related to Epstein, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been receiving it in batches and posting the material online.
The latest files include pages from books, news articles about various topics and emails related to Epstein’s financial dealings.
Earlier Wednesday, Democrats accused the White House of “a massive cover-up” by refusing to release every file connected to the Justice Department’s Epstein investigation.
They plan to force a House vote on the matter in the coming days.
Democrats on the House committee released three emails Wednesday dating to 2011 in which Epstein appeared to be hunting for ways to link Mr. Trump to his sex trafficking.
By 2011, the two former pals had become enemies.
Mr. Trump had outbid Epstein at the auction of a coveted Palm Beach estate and then kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club for trying to hire away some of his female employees.
In 2011, Epstein was facing lawsuits from women he had victimized and was increasingly ostracized from the wealthy and influential circles he once commanded after his 2008 conviction on charges of engaging in prostitution with a minor.
In an email to his onetime girlfriend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein claimed an alleged female victim, whose name Democrats redacted, “spent hours at my house” with Mr. Trump.
Epstein said Mr. Trump “has never once been mentioned. Police chief, etc. im 75% there.”
Maxwell responded, “I have been thinking about that.”
Republicans quickly attacked the email. They said Democrats purposely redacted the name of the late Virginia Giuffre, who, in her book about Epstein’s sex trafficking, did not accuse Mr. Trump of any wrongdoing and had complimented his behavior.
In her 2025 memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” Giuffre, who committed suicide in April, said she first met Mr. Trump at his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago club, where she was paid $9 an hour to work in the club’s locker room. Her father, a maintenance worker at the Florida club, introduced her to Mr. Trump in the summer of 2000.
She wrote, “Trump couldn’t have been friendlier, telling me it was fantastic that I was there. ‘Do you like kids?’ he asked. ‘Do you babysit at all?’ He explained that he owned several houses next to the resort that he lent to friends, many of whom had children who needed tending.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails released by Democrats are part of a smear campaign against the president and an effort to distract the public from the House vote to reopen the government, which has caused a tremendous divide within the Democratic Party.
“These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong,” Ms. Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing. “You should all go ask them after this briefing why they chose to redact the name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and who is unfortunately no longer with us.”
The top Democrat on the oversight panel, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, responded to Ms. Leavitt.
“If you are concerned about what we released, you can easily fix this. Have your boss release the files today,” he said.
One of the emails released by Democrats dates to 2019, as federal prosecutors closed in on charging Epstein with running a sex trafficking operation. Epstein wrote to Trump biographer Michael Wolff months before his arrest and jailhouse suicide with titillating information about the president: Epstein insisted Mr. Trump was aware of the young women with whom Epstein and Maxwell had surrounded themselves and who had accused them of sexual abuse.
“Of course [Mr. Trump] knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine [sic] to stop,” Epstein wrote to Mr. Wolff, who was working on a book about Mr. Trump at the time.
Epstein called Mr. Trump “that dog that hasn’t barked” in the email and suggested he was working on a way to implicate his former friend.
Maxwell was convicted of serving as Epstein’s accomplice in sex trafficking and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
On Monday, Democrats sent a letter to Mr. Trump outlining the claims of a whistleblower who said Maxwell is receiving lavish treatment at a low-security prison in Texas. Democrats suggested Maxwell’s favorable treatment was the result of an exchange for her August statement to the Justice Department that she never witnessed Mr. Trump engaged in wrongdoing.
According to the whistleblower, Maxwell is applying for a commutation from Mr. Trump.
The president knows nothing about a clemency deal for Maxwell, Ms. Leavitt said.
“It’s not something he’s talking about or even thinking about at this time,” she said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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