UNITED STATES House Democrats have released a new batch of emails they say raises fresh questions about former president Donald Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein and what he may have known about the late financier’s sexual abuse of underage girls.
Reuters cited today that the emails, exchanged between Epstein, author Michael Wolff and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell — who is serving a 20-year prison term for sex trafficking — include a 2019 message in which Epstein wrote to Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls”.
The meaning of the remark remains unclear.
Trump, who has long denied any involvement in Epstein’s criminal activities, said he and Epstein — who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 — were once friends before falling out.
The email release coincided with the swearing-in of Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva, whose induction gives Democrats a slim majority to push for a House vote compelling the release of all unclassified Epstein-related records, a move that both House Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump have resisted.
“It’s past time for Congress to restore its role as a check and balance on this administration,” Grijalva said after taking her oath of office.
Johnson’s office later confirmed that the House would vote on the disclosure measure next week.
Among the newly released correspondence was a 2011 email from Epstein to Maxwell in which he described Trump as “that dog that hasn’t barked,” claiming that the former president had “spent hours at my house” with one of his victims, whose name was redacted.
Republicans later countered by releasing 20,000 Epstein-related documents, in which Trump’s name appeared frequently — though mainly in political or social contexts.
In one 1993 exchange, Epstein referred to a 20-year-old girlfriend whom he claimed to have “given to Donald” and mentioned photographs of “donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen,” though it remains unclear whether he was being serious.
Trump dismissed the Democrats’ document release as a distraction from what he described as their failures during the ongoing 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 wrote on his Truth Social platform.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails offered no evidence of wrongdoing. She alleged Democrats had redacted the victim’s name because it referred to Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April and had described Trump as “friendly” but did not accuse him of abuse in her memoir.
“These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong,” Leavitt said.
The controversy has divided even some of Trump’s supporters, many of whom have accused his Justice Department of withholding information about Epstein’s links to powerful figures. An October Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only four in ten Republicans approved of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files — far below the nine in ten who supported his overall performance.
According to reports by Axios and other outlets, Trump and senior officials have been lobbying Republican representatives Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace to withdraw their support for a petition demanding the full release of Epstein records.
Boebert told reporters she faced “no pressure” during a meeting with White House aides on Wednesday and that she continued to back the petition. Mace, a survivor of sexual assault, is also refusing to withdraw her name. “Because of her personal story,” her spokesperson Sydney Long said, “she will not remove her name.” - November 13, 2025
