WASHINGTON (AP) — Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a victim of sex trafficking and said in a separate message years later that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to communications released Wednesday.
The emails, made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, add to the questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any knowledge he may have had in what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.
In one 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.” He added that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with a person whose name is blacked out of the emails but who House Democrats identified as a “victim.” Epstein wrote that Trump “has never once been mentioned.”
In a separate email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
The White House did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.
Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.