WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said Donald Trump knew about the girls that Epstein was accused of victimizing, according to emails released on Wednesday by U.S. House of Representatives Democrats, which the White House blasted as a “fake narrative.”
The Democrats cite exchanges between Epstein and author Michael Wolff and Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who is serving a 20-year prison sentence on charges related to her role in facilitating Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls.
The release came on the day a new Democratic member is scheduled to be sworn into the House, a move expected to be a tipping point in a campaign to force a vote on releasing all non-classified files related to Epstein, reigniting interest in a case that has been a major political headache for the president.
Among the exchanges is a 2019 email to Wolff in which Epstein said that Trump “knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” and a 2011 message to Maxwell from Epstein asserting that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of his victims, whose name is redacted.
Trump has vehemently and consistently denied knowing about Epstein’s sex trafficking. He has said that he and Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019, were once friends before having a falling out.
“The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that the redacted victim in the emails was the late Virginia Giuffre, “who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever.”
TRUMP’S OWN SUPPORTERS DIVIDED
The Epstein case has dogged Trump for months, upsetting even his own political supporters, who believe the government has been covering up Epstein’s ties to the rich and powerful, and have been unusually critical of his Justice Department for not releasing more information about Epstein’s alleged crimes.
Just four in 10 Republicans told an October Reuters/Ipsos poll that they approved of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files — well below the nine in 10 who approve of his overall performance in the White House.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is scheduled to swear in Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva on Wednesday to succeed her late father in Congress. Grijalva is expected to provide the final signature needed for a petition to force a House vote to release all unclassified records related to Epstein, something Johnson and Trump have resisted up to now.
The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Representative Robert Garcia, called on the Justice Department to fully release the Epstein files to the public.
“The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President,” he said in a statement.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Nathan Layne, additional reporting by Andrea Shalal, Steve Holland, Kat Jackson; Editing by Franklin Paul and Nick Zieminski)
