Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released a set of 2015 emails between the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and author Michael Wolff—correspondence they presented as damaging to President Donald J. Trump. Yet the exchanges, rather than implicating Trump, appear to show Epstein acknowledging that Trump sought to distance himself from him years before Epstein’s arrest.
In one email to Wolff, Epstein wrote that Trump had removed him from his Mar-a-Lago club and explicitly told Maxwell to end contact with him. “Trump said he asked me to resign [from the Mar-a-Lago club], never a member ever,” Epstein wrote, adding, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked [G]hislaine to stop.”
The emails also reveal that Wolff—who has authored several books critical of Trump—advised Epstein on how to manipulate the situation and potentially use the president’s fame for his own benefit. “I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff wrote. “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.”
Wolff added that if Trump defended Epstein, saying “Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness,” it could serve Epstein’s interests under “a Trump regime.” The exchange suggests that Epstein viewed Trump not as an ally but as a potential target for leverage, while Wolff appeared eager to exploit the connection for publicity.
Another portion of the correspondence references a woman whose name was redacted from the released emails, identified only as a “victim” who had spent time at Mar-a-Lago. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the individual was Virginia Giuffre, who has long maintained that Trump never engaged in any misconduct. “Giuffre had 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.
Leavitt also underscored the contrast between Trump’s conduct and that of prominent Democrats. Giuffre has previously claimed to have seen former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore on Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, which became infamous in the media as “Pedo Island.”
“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 said. She characterized the release of the emails as “nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments,” calling the Democrats’ move a “hoax” meant to shift focus from other national issues.
The new emails, intended by Democrats to reignite controversy around Trump’s past association with Epstein, instead highlight that Trump cut ties with the disgraced financier long before others in elite circles did—and that Epstein himself recognized the president as neither friend nor ally.
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