Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein accused President Donald Trump of spending “hours” at his estate with a person identified as one of Epstein’s victims in a set of emails released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The victim’s name was redacted. In messages sent to his co-conspirator and confidante Ghislaine Maxwell and author Michael Wolff, Epstein suggested that Trump “knew about the girls.”
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump,” Epstein wrote to Maxwell in 2011. “[Victim] spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned.”
It is unclear what Epstein meant in saying that Trump “knew about the girls,” or in describing him as a “dog that hasn’t barked.”
The private correspondence, which was provided to the Oversight Committee after it subpoenaed the Epstein estate for a broad array of documents related to Epstein’s sex crimes, provides new details about the extent of Trump’s relationship with Epstein, who died by suicide in a federal prison in 2019, and undercuts the president’s attempts to distance himself from Epstein, with whom Trump said he had a falling out long before his 2019 arrest. MSNBC has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the emails or the allegations therein.
Trump has attempted to distance himself from Epstein over the last several years, particularly as conspiracy theories over Epstein’s death and a rumored “black book” of celebrities that benefited from Epstein’s sex crimes gained traction. Trump has denied ever traveling on Epstein’s private jet, despite flight logs that suggest otherwise, and said earlier this year that he barred Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club after he “stole” employees from him, including Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent abuse survivors. Giuffre died by suicide in April.
In a private message sent to Wolff in 2019, including one that makes mention of “mara lago,” Epstein appears to dispute Trump’s claim that he was unaware of his conduct.
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote. “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”
In a 2015 exchange with Wolff, centered on a CNN interview during Trump’s first presidential campaign, Wolff suggested that Epstein could gain “valuable PR and political currency” should Trump deny visiting the disgraced financier’s house or traveling on his plane.
“You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt,” Wolff wrote to Epstein.
In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on the disclosures. “The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump,” Leavitt said. “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including [Virginia] Giuffre. These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”