Democrats release documents accusing Trump of spending hours with an Epstein sex victim
An email also suggests that the president was aware of the sexual assaults perpetrated by his old friend
WashingtonThe ghost of Epstein is haunting Donald Trump once again. Just when the US president thought he had defused the last ticking time bomb related to the pedophile –the publication of the birthday greetingAnd having put behind him the only scandal that truly discredited him among his base, new emails were released this Wednesday that further complicate matters. Specifically, the communications indicate that the president spent "hours" with one of the victims and suggest that he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring, although the president has repeatedly denied it.
The emails were released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and are a series of correspondence between Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, his partner and associate, and the writer Michael Wolff. “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. [The victim’s name is crossed out with “victim”] spent hours at my house with him [Trump]. He has never mentioned it,” reads an email from Epstein to Maxwell in February 2011. ~BK_SLT_L, arrested and imprisoned, the billionaire cited Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach mansion. “Trump said he asked me to back down,” and adds, “Of course he knew about the girls, since he asked Ghislaine to stop.” In another communication, this one written by Wolff, the journalist recommended that Epstein adopt an “anti-Trump” stance as a way to generate sympathy amid the accusations against him. “I think Trump offers an ideal opportunity,” Wolff wrote to Epstein in March 2016, in the midst of the election campaign. "It's an opportunity for the story to focus on something other than you, while at the same time allowing you to tell your own version. Also, becoming an anti-Trump voice gives you a certain political cover that you definitely don't have now."
The documents released this Wednesday confirm the information published in July by the New York Times, which claimed that US Attorney General Pam Bondi had informed Trump that his name appeared in the case files.
The new emails cast even more shadows and doubts. on Trump's relationship with EpsteinThe tycoon has already admitted to a close relationship with the sex offender for 15 years, until they parted ways in 2004. In September, the publication of a birthday greeting from the Republican to Epstein in 2003 already set the political pot boiling in Washington. The cryptic messages in the greeting—framed by the silhouette of a woman's body with Trump's alleged signature at pubic level—only fueled the far-right conspiracy theories of his base, theories he himself had nurtured. Epstein died in 2019, hanging in his cell while awaiting trial for sex trafficking, but many Trump supporters believe it was not suicide. During the election campaign, Trump said that an Epstein list existed containing the names of powerful figures, including Democrats, and that if he returned to the White House, he would release it. The disappointment among Trump supporters was immense when the administration said in the summer that no such list would be published because it didn't exist. But instead of burying the speculation, this only fueled it.
"A trap" set by the Democrats
The White House has dismissed the emails as "bad faith attempts" to attack the president. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated that Trump "kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a predator of his employees, including [Virginia Roberts] Giuffre." In the recent posthumous memoirs of Epstein's most well-known victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, A footnote on page 222 exonerates Trump, stating that he publicly broke with the pedophile in October 2007, after Epstein assaulted the teenage daughter of a member of the current US president's Mar-a-Lago club. According to the book, the events occurred eight months before Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Five hours after the emails were released, Trump spoke out via Truth Social, saying the publication was a political maneuver by the Democrats. "The Democrats are trying to bring up the 'Jeffrey Epstein Hoax' again because they will do anything to deflect attention from how badly they handled the government shutdown and other issues. Only a very bad or stupid Republican would fall for this," the president wrote. Shortly before, sources familiar with the matter told CNN that an emergency meeting had been called at the White House to address the release of the emails. A clear symptom of how dangerous information is for the president.
Before Trump spoke out, Republicans were trying to bury the emails under a mountain of information and also released 23,000 pages of documents that Epstein's heirs had given to the committee. This move, beyond saturating the news media, was also a way to silence Democratic accusations of withholding information. Since August, these documents had been in the hands of Republican James Comer, who had delayed their release for months. It is still unclear whether they contain information relevant to the case.
The return of Epstein's ghost coincides with two significant moments in the country's political arena: the emergence of Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York, which has restored hope to the Democratic base and shown a new way of opposing Trump; and, on the other hand, the emergence of health subsidies as a key issue in public opinion in the lead-up to next year's legislative elections, and on which Trump has no concrete proposals.
