Listen to this article
Estimated 2 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.
Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said Donald Trump “knew about the girls,” according to emails released on Wednesday by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Democrats on the oversight committee of the House of Representatives cited exchanges between Epstein and author Michael Wolff and Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite and Epstein’s former girlfriend, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence on charges including sex trafficking of a minor.
In an email to Maxwell in 2011, Epstein is said to have to written that an unidentified person “spent hours at my house with” Trump and that “he has never once been mentioned.”
It’s not clear if Epstein is referring to media coverage or what the reference to “mentioned” entails.
Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and into the early 2000s, but has denied any wrongdoing, pointing instead to others who were known to have associated with Epstein, including former president Bill Clinton.
The Democrats cited a separate email with Wolff in early 2019, in which Epstein is said to have emailed Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”
Epstein was subsequently indicted that summer, but soon after died in a New York City prison cell, in a death ruled to be a suicide.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the emails.
In a recent interview with the Justice Department, the imprisoned Maxwell said she never saw Trump “in any inappropriate setting,” according to a released transcript.
