WASHINGTON (AP) — Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 electronic mail that Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s home with a sufferer of intercourse trafficking and mentioned in a separate message years later that Trump “knew in regards to the women,” based on communications launched Wednesday.
The emails made public by Democrats on the Home Oversight Committee add to the questions on Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any information he might have had in what prosecutors name a yearslong effort by Epstein to take advantage of underage women. The Republican president has constantly denied any information of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has mentioned he ended their relationship years in the past.
The messages are a part of a batch of 23,000 paperwork offered by Epstein’s property to the Oversight Committee. The discharge resurfaces a storyline that had shadowed Trump’s presidency in the course of the summer time when the FBI and the Justice Division abruptly introduced that they might not be releasing further paperwork that investigators had spent weeks analyzing, disappointing conspiracy theorists and on-line sleuths who had anticipated to see new revelations.
In an April 2, 2011, electronic mail to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to have interaction in intercourse trafficking, Epstein wrote, “I would like you to appreciate that that canine that hasn’t barked is Trump. (Redacted title) spent hours at my home with him ,, he has by no means as soon as been talked about. police chief. and so on. im 75 % there.”
Maxwell replied the identical day: “I’ve been desirous about that.”
The title of the particular person mentioned to have hung out with Trump was blacked out of the e-mail, however Home Democrats recognized the particular person as a “sufferer.”
In a separate 2019 electronic mail to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “After all he knew in regards to the women as he requested ghislaine to cease.”
White Home spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused the Democrats of getting “selectively leaked emails” to “create a faux narrative to smear President Trump.”
She mentioned in a press release that the unnamed particular person referenced within the emails is Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Britain’s Prince Andrew and different influential males of sexually exploiting her as an adolescent and who died by suicide in April. Andrew has rejected Giuffre’s allegations and mentioned he didn’t recall assembly her.
Leavitt mentioned in a press release that Giuffre had “repeatedly mentioned President Trump was not concerned in any wrongdoing by any means and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her of their restricted interactions.”
“The very fact stays that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his membership a long time in the past for being a creep to his feminine staff, together with Giuffre,” the assertion mentioned. “These tales are nothing greater than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with widespread sense sees proper by means of this hoax and clear distraction from the federal government opening again up once more.”
Giuffre got here ahead publicly after an preliminary investigation led to an 18-month Florida jail time period for Epstein, who made a secret deal to keep away from federal prosecution by pleading responsible as a substitute to comparatively minor state-level expenses of soliciting prostitution. He was launched in 2009.
In subsequent lawsuits, Giuffre mentioned she was a teenage spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Seaside, Florida, membership, when she was approached in 2000 by Maxwell.
Epstein took his personal life in a New York jail in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on federal expenses.
Legal professionals for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she by no means ought to have been tried or convicted for her function in luring teenage women to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year jail time period, although she was moved from a low-security federal jail in Florida to a minimum-security jail camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Lawyer Common Todd Blanche.
