Triumph

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump, who once said admiringly that child rapist Jeffrey Epstein liked women “on the younger side,” may need new explanations for his ties to his late friend now that previous ones have been debunked as lies.

Since Epstein’s conviction on a prostitution charge in Florida in 2008, Trump has been claiming he knew nothing about his close friend’s relationships with underage girls, claims that were directly refuted in emails made public Wednesday by Epstein himself to his partner and fellow sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and journalist Michael Wolff.

“These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that Trump did nothing wrong,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday. “This is truly a hoax manufactured by the Democratic Party.”

In emails released by House Oversight Committee Democrats with the victims’ names redacted, which the committee obtained by subpoenaing Epstein’s estate, Epstein and Maxwell expressed concern in 2011 that Trump, who was then talking about running for president in 2012, had not yet mentioned them.

“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote. “[VICTIM] I spent hours at my house with him, they have never mentioned it. police chief. etc I am 75% there”

Maxwell replied: “I’ve been thinking about that…”

In a 2019 email to Wolff, Epstein wrote, “of course he knew about the girls when he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

NIKLAS HALLE’N/News via Getty Images

Leavitt said the victim in the email to Maxwell was Virginia Giuffre, who later said Trump had done nothing wrong with her. Giuffre was recruited by Maxwell at age 16 and committed suicide earlier this year.

Neither Leavitt nor others in his office responded to whether Epstein’s specific claim, made 14 years ago, that Trump had spent “hours” at Epstein’s home with one of the victims, was correct.

On Tuesday, Leavitt’s colleague Abigail Jackson blamed Democrats and News themezone for not doing more to help Epstein’s victims. “Democrats and the media, including the Huffington Post, knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump called for transparency and now delivers with thousands of pages of documents,” he said.

Indeed, the Trump White House and Justice Department have worked aggressively to prevent further information from being released about Epstein, who was found dead in his cell after his second arrest in 2019, or Maxwell, who was transferred to a minimum-security “Club Fed” prison following her meeting with top Justice Department official Todd Blanche. Blanche, before accepting that job after Trump’s return to the White House, worked as one of Trump’s defense attorneys in his various criminal cases.

White House officials referred detailed questions about Maxwell’s transfer to the federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, to the Justice Department and its Bureau of Prisons.

The department never, over a period of months, responded to News themezone’s inquiries about that topic. The Bureau of Prisons did not answer specific questions, but pointed to a bureau manual, a manual that suggests Maxwell’s transfer to Bryan violated the bureau’s own rules due to the nature of his crimes and the remaining length of his 20-year sentence after his conviction in 2021.

Minimum-security prisons like Bryan’s are designed for white-collar criminals who are just months away from their release date and have programs to help them transition back into society, including agreements to work unsupervised in the local community for hours at a time. Maxwell has a release date in 12 years. Despite this, according to a letter written to Trump by Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Bryan has been given extraordinary treatment, including special meals delivered and access to a puppy to play with.

Trump, before Epstein’s first arrest, had nothing but praise for him.

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. He’s a fantastic guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be around. He’s even said to like beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are younger. There’s no doubt about it: Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out pardoning Maxwell (he says he has permission to do so) while providing false and misleading explanations for the events that led to his breakup with Epstein.

This summer, Trump began claiming that he had ended his friendship with Epstein after learning that Epstein was recruiting staff from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach to join what turned out to be Epstein’s underage sex ring.

“He did something that was inappropriate. He hired help. And I told him, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He robbed people who worked for me. I told him, ‘Don’t do that again,'” he told reporters during a golf vacation in Scotland. “He did it again. And I kicked him out of the place. Persona non grata.”

However, that recruiting began no later than 2000, when Maxwell recruited Giuffre in the Mar-a-Lago parking lot. It was a full seven years before Trump finally ended Epstein’s membership at Mar-a-Lago.

When asked by News themezone why it took seven years to break up with Epstein, Trump said, “I don’t understand your question.”