Trickle of revelations fuels scandal over Trump’s ties to Epstein

WASHINGTON— The slowly emerging revelations detailing President Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, which have troubled the White House all year, turned into a deluge after House lawmakers released troves of documents suggesting the president may have intimate knowledge of his friend’s criminal activities.

The scope of Epstein’s involvement with Trump became clear on Thursday, as media outlets combed through more than 20,000 documents from the convicted sex offender’s estate released by the House Oversight Committee, with a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives (including up to half of Republican lawmakers) pledging support for a measure that would force the Justice Department to release all files related to its investigation of Epstein.

“Trump knew,” he wrote in an email revealed Thursday that he sent to Epstein months before he died by suicide in federal custody. The White House has denied that Trump was aware of or involved in Epstein’s years-long operation against more than 200 women and girls.

The scandal comes at a precarious political moment for Trump, who faces a 36 percent approval rating in the latest Associated Press-NORC poll and whose grip on the Republican Party and MAGA movement is slipping as his final term in office approaches next year’s midterm elections.

The Trump administration’s attempts to defuse the scandal have failed to shake public interest in the case across the political spectrum.

The records paint the broadest picture yet of Trump’s relationship with Epstein; In addition to being the subject of endless attention and conspiracy theories on the Internet, there is increasing bipartisan interest in Congress.

Epstein, a disgraced financier who maintained a close friendship with Trump until a breakup in the mid-2000s, said in several emails that Trump was “aware of girls” involved in his operation and that Trump “spent hours” privately with one of them. Epstein also claimed he could “take her down” with damaging information.

In several meetings, Epstein presented himself as someone who knew Trump well. The emails show Trump’s business practices and how he tracks the evolution of the president’s political efforts.

Other communications show that Epstein closely monitored Trump’s movements at the beginning of his first term in office, at one point attempting to contact the Russian government to share his “insight” into Trump’s tendencies and thoughts.

White House officials tried to block efforts to release the files on Wednesday. Having a tense meeting with a GOP congressman The move, the administration said in the White House Situation Room, showed it was willing to “sit down with members of Congress and address their concerns.”

But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York accused the White House and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of “running a pedophile protection program” for trying to block efforts to release the Epstein files.

A legislative effort in the House does not guarantee a vote in the Senate; let alone that the measure in question was approved by both parties. And the president, who has for months condemned his supporters for their repeated calls for transparency in the case, will almost certainly veto the bill if it reaches his desk.

Epstein died in 2019 in a federal prison in Manhattan while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The New York City medical examiner and the Justice Department inspector general ruled his death a suicide.

Trump’s relationship with Epstein will likely remain under the spotlight as journalists review the documents in the coming days.

In an email sent to him shortly before his imprisonment and death, Epstein wrote that Trump was aware of the financier’s sexual activity at the time he was accused.

“Trump knew this and came to my house many times during that period,” he wrote.

“She never had a massage,” Epstein added. Epstein paid for the girls’ “massages,” which often led to sexual activity.

Trump blamed Democrats for reigniting the problem.

“Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to escape their major failures, especially their most recent failure: SHUTDOWN!” minister He wrote in a social media post on Wednesday: Hours after the recordings were made public.

Trump appeared in public later that day to sign legislation ending the government shutdown, but refused to answer when reporters asked questions about Epstein after the event.

Trump appears in several emails

The newly released cables offer a rare glimpse into how, in his own words, Epstein engaged with Trump in previously unknown ways. In some cases, Epstein’s cables suggest the president knew more about Epstein’s criminal behavior than Trump is letting on.

In the months before Epstein’s arrest on sex-trafficking charges, he mentioned Trump in several emails and implied that Trump had knowledge of the financier’s victims.

In January 2019, Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that Trump “knows girls” while discussing his membership at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club and resort in South Florida.

Trump said he ended his relationship with Epstein because he “hired” one of his female employees at Mar-a-Lago. The White House also said Trump banned Epstein from his club because he was a “bum.”

“Trump said he wanted me to resign, he was never a member,” Epstein wrote in an email to Wolff.

One of the employees was Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s survivors who died by suicide this year. Giuffre he said in a civil lawsuit deposition He said he never witnessed Trump sexually abusing minors at Epstein’s home.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee identified Giuffre as one of the victims whose names were redacted in an email sent in April 2011.

In that email, Epstein wrote to former colleague Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted of conspiring with Epstein and sexually abusing minors, that Trump was a “dog that doesn’t bark.”

“[Victim] Epstein wrote that he spent hours with her at my home. “He wasn’t mentioned even once.”

“I was thinking about it…” Maxwell replied.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday that the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”

Over the summer, news that Trump had penned a suggestive birthday card to Epstein, depicting a silhouette of a naked woman with the words “every day could be another wonderful secret,” sparked panic in the West Wing that Trump might be mentioned extensively in the files.