House Democrats released select emails from Jeffrey Epstein mentioning President Trump on Nov. 12,, kicking off a new series of responses from the President and the GOP that reignited tensions over the late sex trafficker.
While members of the Trump Administration have suggested releasing files related to Epstein, they have since walked back on the promise as the president’s alleged ties to the disgraced financier have been brought into the public eye.
The key piece of information was the Wall Street Journal’s publishing of a birthday letter sent by Trump to Epstein, in which the president said the two had “certain things in common” and that “enigmas never age,” signing his name inside the drawn outline of a woman’s torso.
The recently released emails were part of a larger selection obtained from the financier’s estate, which was released by GOP lawmakers after the fact. The documents include exchanges between Epstein and his alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and are part of a broader spotlight on the president’s ties to Epstein.
Exchanges were also released between Epstein and Michael Wolff, author of multiple books about Trump.
In one email from 2011 between Epstein and Maxwell, Epstein writes “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump… [Victim] spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned.”
Another email from 2015 between Wolff and Epstein notes Trump’s – at the time – possible responses to CNN planning to ask about his relationship with Epstein.
Wolff wrote: “I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. 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.”
These emails were leveraged by the Democrats to highlight “the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president.” In response to the select emails released by House Democrats, Republicans on the Oversight Committee made public an additional 20,000 pages of documents, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accusing Democrats of only making public “selectively released emails” as a “smear” against the president.
After the GOP released the files obtained from the estate, President Trump suddenly reversed his months-long opposition to releasing information about Epstein.
On Sunday Nov. 16, Trump wrote that “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”
The vote the President is referring to is the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Introduced as a petition in July, it would require all records relating to Epstein to be unclassified and made public.
After Democrat Adelita Grijalva of Arizona was sworn in, the petition reached a majority in Congress, forcing Speaker Mike Johnson to expedite a vote on the bill.
While the bill will most likely pass the House with a majority vote, whether it will be passed in the Senate is uncertain, as Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.
It remains to be seen whether Trump will stick to his new claim that the bill should be passed and sign the bill if it passes both chambers.
