The first were three emails made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. Then, more than 20,000 unfiltered documents released by his Republican rivals on that committee. This Wednesday, billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein once again placed himself at the center of Washington news with a new window opened into his dark universe through documents Congress has obtained in waves from his family since August.
one of the three e-mail the opening one of the day is intended for her friend and successful Ghislaine Maxwell, an accomplice in the sex trafficking network with hundreds of minors victims of the financier, acts for which she is serving 20 years in prison. The other two are addressed to journalist Michael Wolff.
In Maxwell’s case, Epstein mentions a 2011 victim whose name is redacted, of whom he says, “he spent several hours with (President Donald) Trump at my house.” Also: “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked yet is Trump,” in reference to the fact that the then-real estate mogul “had not once mentioned” his encounter with that victim.
The White House later said it was Virginia Giuffre, who committed suicide this year, a month after surviving being hit by a bus in Australia, where she lived. In the past, he has said he never saw Trump participate in his attacker’s crimes.
In one of the e-mail in Wolff, from 2019, the financier, who died that year in a maximum security cell while awaiting trial, suggests that the current president of the United States was aware of his behavior. “Of course he knew about the girls, since he told Ghislaine to stop.” The third exchange took place in 2015, during the first campaign that brought the real estate tycoon and reality TV star to the White House. In it, Epstein suggests the reporter use what he knows about the candidate to blackmail him.
Trump and his followers have accused Democrats of cherry-picking some emails to harm the president. In response to his rivals’ actions, Republican James Comer, who heads the House Oversight Committee, decided to release all documents that came into his possession last week, which he linked in a tweet. This link leads to an impractical and frankly difficult to track down archive of documents.
Over the hours, the distillation of that information bore fruit, thanks to the screening work of the American media.
Confidences with an Obama advisor
Trump is mentioned continuously in these more than 20,000 documents, even though there is no email exchange between the two. On one occasion, Epstein referred to the then-president as someone “on the verge of insanity.” In another, he says he was “like a fucking goat” after hearing the news, early in his first presidency, that citizens of seven Muslim countries would be banned from entering the United States.
Although perhaps the most juicy email is the one that the financier sent in 2018 to Kathryn Ruemmler, who was White House advisor during Barack Obama’s presidency: “I know how corrupt Donald is”, she wrote about the possible scandals that could come to light about Trump, after Michael Cohen, a former confidant, pleaded guilty to federal crimes linked to the financing of the presidential campaign lost by Hillary Clinton. As part of a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, Cohen implicated Trump in a 2016 bribery scheme that involved payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged extramarital affair, which Trump denies. In 2023, the then Republican candidate ended up convicted of 34 crimes in that case.
The enormous material also offers new data on relationships with figures close to the financier, old acquaintances emerging from the latter’s network of abuse and influence, and appearances of less familiar characters in that universe, such as the national-populist ideologist Steve Bannon, to whom Epstein offers advice on landing in Europe, or Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and close ally of vice president JD Vance. He receives an invitation to visit the millionaire pedophile’s private island, the place where he committed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of his crimes. Thiel said he does Political who never accepted the offer.
Epstein follows Trump closely (with Wolff)
Wolff wrote to the millionaire pedophile shortly before Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 election, in what appears to be a bid to harm him in the final stretch of the campaign. “This week you have an opportunity to talk about Trump in a way that could earn you a lot of sympathy and contribute to his downfall. Are you interested?” the journalist tells him. It is not the only document in which both fantasize about bringing down the then candidate with allegedly compromising information of which there is no trace in the new documents.
These revelations do not leave the journalist, who at times appears to be an image advisor to Epstein, in a good light. Author of several books on Trump (and another on the financier), Wolff published a video on Instagram this Wednesday in which he states: “I have been trying to talk about this story for a long time. (Epstein and the president of the United States) have maintained a close relationship for more than a decade. Perhaps we are close to irrefutable proof.”
There is also other evidence in these emails that Epstein was closely following his old friend’s developments, such as when an associate passes him information about Trump’s finances or in another email he is interested in the confirmation process of Alex Acosta as Secretary of Labor.
When he was a federal prosecutor in South Florida, Acosta agreed to bury Epstein’s first trial with a lenient deal that allowed the defendant, who had spent just 13 months behind bars, to plead guilty to two state crimes. It also granted him immunity from prosecution under federal law for child sex trafficking, because, Acosta later said, he considered it unlikely that prosecutors would be successful in a hypothetical trial. This is what prevented him from joining Trump’s cabinet.
Advice on women from Larry Summers
If this release of documents has served any purpose, it is to certify the closeness between Epstein and Lawrence Summers, an eminent economist who worked in the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and later served as rector of Harvard University. It was already known that she had had an affair with the financier (a relationship she later publicly regretted), but it was not known that she continued to maintain such regular contact with him between 2017 and 2019, years after Epstein’s first (soft) conviction for a prostitution-related crime and also after Epstein’s conviction. Miami Herald revived the case against him with a series of investigative reports. Its publication led to Epstein’s second indictment, when federal prosecutors in New York charged him in 2019, at the height of the Me Too movement, with sex trafficking for events that occurred between 2002 and 2005 in Miami and New York.
In those exchanges there is a lot of talk about Summers’ relationship with a Londoner about whom Epstein gives him advice. They also concern Trump. In a 2017 email, the economist says he has been to Saudi Arabia and returns with the impression that that country’s officials think “Donald is an increasingly dangerous clown in foreign policy.” In other messages, a donation from Epstein is expected to a project linked to Harvard and the economist’s wife, Elisa F. New.
From those hundreds of emails exchanged between the two it is not possible to conclude that Summers knew anything about Epstein’s crimes.
Prince Andrew: “Say it has NOTHING to do with me.”
Prince Andrew’s relationship with Maxwell and Epstein and Giuffre’s allegations caused a gradual fall from grace that led to the decision by his brother, King Charles III, to remove him last October from public life and his obligations as a member of the royal family.
Included in the lot is a message from 2011 in which the Duke of York responds to an email forwarded to him by Maxwell via Epstein. It is because the British newspaper Mail on Sunday has asked the financier for a response to the sexual abuse allegations that its journalists are about to publish. Prince Andrew replies: “Hello! What is all this? I know nothing about this! Please tell me. This has NOTHING to do with me. I can’t take it anymore.”
On March 6, 2011, the Post Sunday published an article with a photograph of Prince Andrew and Guiffre, the victim who recently committed suicide. The Duke of York claims he has never committed any crime. In her recently published posthumous memoirs, Giuffré describes the three occasions on which she was forced to become the sexual slave of the prince, who she describes as a man “very aware of his privileges”, convinced that he “had a birthright” to have intercourse with her.
