White House says Virginia Giuffre is the unnamed ‘victim’ in Epstein emails about Trump
Newly-released emails between Jeffrey Epstein and a US political commentator have claimed Donald Trump “spent hours” with a victim, which the White House identified as Virginia Giuffre.
Democrats have thrust Donald Trump’s relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein back into the spotlight, releasing old emails alleging he “knew about the girls” because he asked Ghislaine Maxwell to stop recruiting staff from his Mar-a-Lago spa.
Democratic members of the bipartisan House Oversight Committee, the group designated with overseeing effectiveness and accountability of the US federal government, released three never-before-seen emails linking the President to convicted pedophile Epstein and his right-hand woman Maxwell.
President Trump hit back at the timing of the release which comes as politicians prepare to vote on reopening the federal government after the longest shutdown in history.
“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,” he said.
“Only a very bad, or stupid, republican would fall into that trap.”
He said the shutdown had cost the country $1.5 trillion and put lives at risk.
“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”
Mr Trump has emphatically denied any knowledge or involvement in Epstein’s long-running sex trafficking operation and said the two had a falling out long before he became President.
In an email purportedly sent in 2011, Epstein wrote to Maxwell: “I want you to realise that the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump … (victim) spent hours at my house with him … he has never once been mentioned. Police chief. Etc. I’m 75% there.”
Maxwell responded “I have been thinking about that…”.
High-profile Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre wrote in her posthumous memoir she was recruited at 16 from Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago by “apex predator” Maxwell who is serving prison time for child sex trafficking.
In July, Mr Trump told reporters that Epstein had “stolen” Ms Giuffre and other young women who worked at his resort spa in Florida.
“People were taken out of the spa, hired by him,” he said.
“And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, ‘listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa.’ I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again and I said, ‘out of here’.”
In a 2019 email to author Michael Wolff, and released by House Democrats this week, Epstein said Mr Trump told others he had asked him to resign from the club but he was “never a member ever … of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”
In another email in 2015, Mr Wolff told Epstein to let Mr Trump “hang himself” by denying he had been on his plane or to his house, saying he could use information to generate a debt if he won the election.
The disclosure prompted Republicans on the committee to release a trove of documents from Epstein’s estate. More than 23,000 pages obtained in August were made public hours after Democrats disclosed the three emails relating to Mr Trump.
The White House blasted the Democrats’ selective release of emails, and the redaction of information including the name of an Epstein victim who Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt identified as Virginia Giuffre who died in April.
“The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump,” Ms Leavitt said in a statement.
“The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions.”
Ms Leavitt, who is also due to address the media later today, said the email release was a cynical move by his political opponents.
“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,” Ms Leavitt said.
“These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”
The US Justice Department has been under intense pressure to release a trove of documents related to the Epstein case.
In a press release issued along with the emails, Ranking Member and Democrat Robert Garcia accused the President of a cover up in relation to the so-called “Epstein files”.
“These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President,” he said.
“The Department of Justice must fully release the Epstein files to the public immediately. The Oversight Committee will continue pushing for answers and will not stop until we get justice for the victims.”
Mr Garcia also last week wrote to disgraced royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, calling for him to give evidence about his knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
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Originally published as White House says Virginia Giuffre is the unnamed ‘victim’ in Epstein emails about Trump