Donald Trump “spent hours at my house” and “knew about the girls,” Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier accused of orchestrating sex trafficking of girls and young women, wrote in private emails House Democrats released Wednesday.

“Of course he knew about the girls,” Epstein said of Trump in an email to author and journalist Michael Wolff in early 2019, during Trump’s first term as president — one of three email exchanges released by Democrats that Epstein sent to Wolff and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking after Epstein’s death.

A few hours after Democrats released the small batch of emails mentioning Trump — and urged the Department of Justice to release all Epstein documents to the public — Republicans on the House Oversight Committee suddenly released an additional 20,000 pages of documents received from Epstein’s estate.

The GOP’s massive document dump, portions of which are redacted, show Epstein gathering information and exchanging political gossip and legal opinion on Trump with national figures across the political spectrum. Among the figures he appears to exchange emails with are Larry H. Summers, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser.

Even after Trump won the 2016 election — a time when Trump has said he was no longer friends with Epstein — people wrote to Epstein apparently under the belief that he could pass information along to Trump or people in his orbit.

“You should pass on to DJT brain trust on economy/markets,” then-New York Times journalist Landon Thomas Jr. wrote to Epstein in late November 2016 as he shared an “amusing” piece of research on the global economy under Trump.

In June 2017, months after Trump had moved into the White House, someone whose name has been redacted sent Epstein an email with a link to a YouTube video. “How are u? Send this interview to Donald Trump pls,” the subject line read. “Its going to be everywhere.”

“ok,” Epstein responded.

The trove of documents released Wednesday are sure to revive questions about Epstein’s relationship with Trump and what the president knew about Epstein’s sexual misconduct with girls and young women.

Trump has denied knowing anything about Epstein’s crimes, though in July he told reporters he fell out with Epstein over his recruitment of spa workers at Mar-a-Lago. No investigation has tied Trump to young women.

“The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said in a statement as he released the documents.

“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,” Garcia added.

Even after the GOP shared thousands of Epstein documents, Trump dismissed the focus on the Epstein files as a Democratic attempt to divert attention away from the party’s caving to Republicans on the government shutdown.

“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” Trump posted on TruthSocial. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap ... There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Democrats had “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”

“These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments,” she said in a statement, “and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

In the emails released by Democrats, Epstein argues that Trump had more knowledge of Epstein’s affairs than he admitted.

In the 2019 email to Wolff, which references a "victim" whose name has been redacted, Epstein referred to Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago club: “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” he wrote. “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

The White House, however, pushed back on the idea that Trump was implicated by that email to Wolff: “The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and 'couldn’t have been friendlier' to her in their limited interactions,” 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 Giuffre,” Leavitt added.

In another email dated Dec. 15, 2015, Wolff emailed Epstein ahead of a Republican presidential primary debate: “I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.”

Epstein wrote back: “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”

In a memo released Wednesday, the White House targeted Wolff as a journalist whose record is “riddled with mistakes and inaccuracies.” It cited concerns over his credibility documented in mainstream media outlets, including The Times, The Washington Post and others.

In a third email, sent to Maxwell in 2011, Epstein wrote: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. (Victim) spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”

Maxwell responded: “I have been thinking about that ... ”

The documents released by the GOP indicate that Epstein seemed to have a special interest in Trump, his political career and his legal troubles. Over the years, the president’s name appears again and again in Epstein’s email correspondence as he and his friends exchange articles about Trump. Some of Epstein’s acquaintances shared with him their correspondence with reporters about Trump, while Epstein also discussed Trump directly with reporters.

In a June 2018 email exchange with Bannon, Bannon shared an article critical of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia, suggesting it was tainted from the start by political bias.

“Big deal,” Bannon wrote.

Epstein responded that there were “many open questions” and that it was his belief that “flippers will dictate” the course of the investigation — or that the course of the investigation would be decided by the ability of prosecutors to flip associates of Trump into informants.

In another 2018 exchange, Epstein appeared to email back and forth with Kathy Ruemmler, attorney and former White House counsel under Barack Obama on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s cooperation with prosecutors.

After Ruemmler sent Epstein a link to a New York Times story referencing Cohen pleading guilty to violating campaigning finance laws to pay adult filmmaker Stormy Daniels, Epstein wrote, “you see, i know how dirty donald is. My guess is that non lawyers ny biz people have no idea. What it means to have your fixer flip.”

Before the 2024 presidential election, Trump called for the release of more documents related to Epstein, but his administration appears to have backtracked on its promises to release documents.

Garcia called on the Department of Justice on Wednesday to release all Epstein files to the public immediately. “The Oversight Committee will continue pushing for answers and will not stop until we get justice for the victims,” he said in a statement.

A source in congressional leadership told The Times that Adelita Grijalva, a Democratic representative-elect from Arizona, planned to sign a discharge petition to force a vote on the full release of the Justice Department’s Epstein files immediately upon being sworn in Wednesday afternoon.

That will kick off a countdown of seven legislative days for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to schedule a vote on the matter. After that, the Oversight Committee “will have more from the subpoenas to private parties,” including the Epstein estate, the source said, likely ensuring the story continues to make headlines through the midterms.

Epstein, 66, died by suicide in a New York jail in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested and charged in federal court with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. A watchdog report released last year found that negligence, misconduct and other failures at the jail contributed to his death.

More than a decade earlier, Epstein evaded federal criminal charges when he struck a plea deal in a south Florida case related to accusations that he molested dozens of girls.

As part of the agreement, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, including soliciting prostitution. He registered as a sex offender and served 13 months in jail but was allowed to leave six days a week to work at his office.

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