WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Epstein referenced President Donald Trump in emails to his associate Ghislaine Maxwell and a journalist, claiming in one that Trump "knew about the girls," according to emails released by House Democrats.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three email chains, sent between 2011 and 2019, saying the documents came from the late convicted sex offender's estate as part of the committee's investigation into the Epstein case.
Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His death has sparked conspiracy theories, including some claiming that Epstein's powerful friends were involved in his crimes.
The administration faced intense backlash and bipartisan calls for transparency after the Justice Department and FBI released an unsigned memo saying they had reviewed the case against Epstein and Maxwell and that no other people would be charged in connection with their cases and that no additional material or evidence would be released.
NBC News has not independently verified the emails.
In a statement to NBC News, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of "selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump."
She added, "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.”
NBC News reached out to the Justice Department for comment. NBC News also reached out to lawyers for Maxwell and for Michael Wolff, the journalist to whom some of the emails were addressed.
In a 2019 email released by the committee on Wednesday, Epstein wrote to Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls.”
“[REDACTED] mara lago. [REDACTED],” the email, sent several months before Epstein’s death, reads. “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
The email was apparently referencing Trump and Epstein's soured relationship. The two were friends for years, but the White House said earlier this year that Trump booted Epstein “out of his club for being a creep.”
“He took people that worked for me. And I told him, ‘Don’t do it anymore.’ And he did it,” Trump told reporters in July, adding, “I said, ‘Stay the hell out of here.’”
The emails contain multiple references to a victim, whose name is redacted in the release. But the White House and Republicans on the committee said that the redacted name was Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein survivor who died in April.
Trump has said that Giuffre worked for him at Mar-a-Lago before Epstein "stole her." Giuffre had never accused Trump of wrongdoing and in her memoir, published posthumously this year, she said that “Trump couldn’t have been friendlier" when she first met him while working at Mar-a-Lago.
NBC News reached out to Giuffre's family for comment.
The top Democrat on the House committee, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, said in a statement that the released emails “raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers this summer pushed to force a vote on the House floor to try to make the Justice Department release all files related to Epstein. The lawmakers are expected to have enough supporters by Wednesday afternoon, when Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva is sworn into office. She has said she would be the necessary 218th signature on the petition, which compels the House to take further action.
A spokesperson for the Republican-led committee accused Democrats in a statement of aiming to "carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts.”
Republicans on the committee later Wednesday released what they say are 20,000 additional pages from Epstein's estate. Trump is referenced repeatedly in those documents, which NBC News is reviewing.
In another email released by Democrats that Epstein allegedly sent to Maxwell in 2011, Epstein says Trump "spent hours" with someone the committee says was a victim. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in connection with Epstein’s crimes.
"I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. Police chief. etc. im 75 % there," the email said.
The larger set of documents released by Republicans on the committee contained an Aug. 2018 email exchange between former Obama White House lawyer Kathy Ruemmler and Epstein. Ruemmler had sent Epstein a link to a New York Times op-ed that referenced former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who had just pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws related to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
In one email from the exchange, Epstein wrote, “you see, I know how dirty donald is. My guess is that non lawyers ny biz people have no idea. What it means to have your fixer flip.”
In a 2019 email released by the Democrats, Wolff informed Epstein that he heard CNN intended to ask Trump about his relationship with Epstein. Epstein responded by asking, “if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responded. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.”
Wolff told ABC News on Wednesday he "was in an in-depth conversation with Epstein at that time about his relationship with Donald Trump."
“I was trying at that time to get Epstein to talk about his relationship with Trump, and actually, he proved to be an enormously valuable source to me,” Wolff told ABC News. “Part of the context of this is that I was pushing Epstein at that point to go public with what he knew about Trump.”
Wolff is enmired in a legal battle with first lady Melania Trump, who Wolff said threatened to sue him to prevent his reporting on her alleged ties to Epstein. Wolff responded with a lawsuit of his own, claiming that the first lady’s threat was “made for the sole purpose of harassing, intimidating, punishing or otherwise maliciously inhibiting Mr. Wolff’s free exercise of speech.”
