US lawmakers have released more than 20,000 pages of documents from the estate of the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including some that mention President Donald Trump.
Early on Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published three email exchanges, including correspondence between Epstein, who died in 2019 in prison, and his long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.
They also released emails between Epstein and the author Michael Wolff, who has written numerous books about Trump.
Within hours, House Republicans then released a massive tranche of documents to counter what they said was a Democratic effort to “cherry-pick” documents. They also said it was an attempt to “create a fake narrative to slander President Trump”.
Trump was a friend of Epstein’s for years, but the president has said they fell out in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein was first arrested. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.
The BBC is still reading through the cache of documents and will provide updates as we get them. Here is what we know so far and how the White House has responded.
‘Dog that hasn’t barked is Trump’
The first email released by Democrats is from 2011 and is between Epstein and Maxwell.
In it, Epstein writes to Maxwell: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him”.
Epstein goes on to write that Trump “has never once been mentioned”, including by a “police chief”.
Maxwell responded: “I have been thinking about that…”
The victim’s name was redacted in the email the Democrats released, although the unredacted version is in the tranche released by the committee. That shows the name “virignia”.
The White House said it refers to the late Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser who died by suicide earlier this year. In a statement, the White House said Giuffre “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions”.
Asked why the name was originally redacted, Representative Robert Garcia – the leading Democrat on the US House Oversight Committee – said the party will never release names of victims in line with the wishes of the families.
![Image shows an email exchange released as part of the files, with a highlighted line reading: "that dog that hasn't barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him".](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/cf24/live/bae649c0-c001-11f0-8456-eff94716b162.jpg.webp "What we know about new Epstein emails that mention Trump")
Epstein seeks guidance from Wolff
In exchanges with Wolff, Epstein discusses his connection to Trump, who was campaigning for the presidency ahead of his first term in office.
In a second email exchange released by Democrats, Wolff writes to Epstein in 2015 to notify him that CNN is planning to ask Trump about their relationship, “either on air or in scrum afterwards”.
Epstein responds: “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
Wolff writes: “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 can 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.”
He adds, “of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”
In a separate email from October 2016, days before the US presidential election, Wolff offers Epstein a chance to sit for an interview that could “finish” Trump.
“There’s an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him. Interested?”, Wolff writes to Epstein.
A third email released by Democrats is dated January 2019, during Trump’s first term in office.
In it, Epstein tells Wolff: “Trump said he asked me to resign” apparently referring to his membership at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club, adding, he was “never a member ever”.
Epstein adds that “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”.
Responding to the release in a video he posted to Instagram, Wolff said: in a video posted on his Instagram: “Some of those emails are between Epstein and me, with Epstein discussing his relationship with Donald Trump.”
“I have been trying to talk about this story for a very long time now,” he added.
Emails an effort to ‘smear’ Trump, White House says
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails were “selectively leaked” by House Democrats to “liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump”.
“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” she said.
“These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”
When asked at the press briefing about the wider release of documents by the House Oversight Committee, Leavitt said they proved “absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong”.
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