By JESSE BEDAYN and SAFIYAH RIDDLE, Associated Press
A House committee released 23,000 documents related to Jeffrey Epstein on Wednesday, many of them emails the convicted sex offender sent to his rich or influential friends, or to reporters, over many years.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee initially released three emails where Epstein mentioned President Donald Trump. Republicans on the committee responded by disclosing the bigger trove of documents and accused the Democrats of cherry-picking a few messages out of context in an effort to make Trump look bad.
Epstein served about a year in jail after pleading guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18 but then went on to renew relationships with many influential figures in business, academics and politics.
Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges.
Here’s some takeaways from the documents released Wednesday.
Epstein said Trump ‘knew about the girls,’ but it’s unclear what he meant
Trump and Epstein were friends for years but at some point had a falling out, even before underage girls started to come forward to accuse Epstein of sexual abuse.
Journalists sometimes reached out to Epstein, perhaps hoping he might have dirt to spill on Trump. One of those writers was Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump. In a 2019 email to Wolff, Epstein mentioned that one of his best-known accusers, Virginia Giuffre, had worked at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
“She was the one who accused Prince Andrew,” Epstein wrote.
Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, had said that Epstein’s longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her from Mar-a-Lago to give sexualized massages to Epstein. And Trump had long claimed that he banned Epstein from coming to Mar-a-Lago.
Epstein said in an email to Wolff that Trump hadn’t asked him to resign from the club, because he hadn’t been a member.
“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” Epstein added.
In July, Trump said he had banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because his one-time friend was “taking people who worked for me,” including Giuffre.
Before her death, Giuffre said that she only met Trump once and that he was not among the people who abused her. She didn’t think Trump knew of Epstein’s misconduct with underage girls.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Democrats had leaked select emails to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”
Mentions of former Prince Andrew
In lawsuits and interviews, Giuffre accused Epstein and Maxwell of pressuring her into sexual encounters with Britain’s former Prince Andrew, starting when she was 17 years old. Those allegations eventually cost Andrew — now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — his official titles and his royal residence near Windsor Castle.
In 2011, Epstein emailed a reporter and attacked Giuffre’s credibility.
“Yes she was on my plane, and yes she had her picture taken with Andrew as many of my employees have,” wrote Epstein, before arguing that “this girl is a total liar.”
Epstein wrote that he’d ask if then-Prince Andrew’s “people” would cooperate with the reporter for a story.
Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied Giuffre’s allegations.
That same year, Epstein, whose writing paid little heed to grammar or spelling, also mentioned Giuffre and Trump in an email that Epstein sent to Maxwell.
“i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. virignia spent hours at my house with him,, he has never once been mentioned,” Epstein wrote.
“I have been thinking about that,” Maxwell responded.
In other emails, Epstein strategized how to respond to Giuffre’s stories, which included an account of meeting former President Bill Clinton on Epstein’s island in the Caribbean.
“Presidents at dinner on caribean islands. ( clinton was never ever there, easy to confirm ). Sharing a bath with a Prince ( bathtub too small even for one adult ). sex slave being paid thousands of dollars. ( while at the exact same time, she was working as a hostess in a burger bar ).”
Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of the women who say Epstein abused them, including Giuffre.
Relationship with the press
Many of the documents were email exchanges between Epstein and journalists he had longstanding relationships with, or who solicited his insights on financial markets and Trump.
He was asked, typically off the record, to weigh in on everything from the president’s relationships with foreign leaders to the impact of oil prices on wealthy families in Saudi Arabia.
Epstein offered to broker introductions between journalists and powerful people numerous times. He also contested the accusations against him.
In a 2016 email to a reporter, Epstein denied ever spending time with former President Bill Clinton or Vice President Al Gore on his island.
“You can also add, fresh politcal juice by stating that Clinton was never on the island,” Epstein wrote. “I never met Al Gore. No diners on the island either, no matter how much detail has been in the press.”
Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C. and Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report.