Hours after the White House accused congressional Democrats of selectively leaking Jeffrey Epstein emails Wednesday, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee made public tens of thousands of additional pages of documents, including emails between the late sex trafficker and prominent reporters.
Many of the emails included exchanges between Epstein and the magazine writer turned biographer Michael Wolff.
Wolff had reached out to Epstein repeatedly, in some cases discussing Epstein’s public image and apparently encouraging him to bash Trump as a way to repair it.
“NYT called me about you and Trump,” Wolff wrote to Epstein in February 2016, according to the documents. “Also, Hillary campaign digging deeply. Again, you should consider preempting.”
A month later, they discussed strategy ahead of the release of James Patterson’s “Filthy Rich,” a true-crime book about Epstein, who was the author’s neighbor in Palm Beach. He suggested to Epstein that “becoming an anti-Trump voice gives you a certain political cover which you decidedly don’t have now.”
Wolff, who has a history of publicly disparaging Trump, also took a swipe at the bestselling crime novelist.
Read some of the emails between Epstein and Wolff:
“Patterson can be counted on to produce a bestseller, and while he isn’t regarded as a serious writer, he’ll surely be unloading a lot of tabloid copy,” the emails continue. “Because this will be tied to the election, the Trump-Clinton angle will amp up the attention 10-fold, in fact, possibly, a hundred fold. Possibly more than anything you’ve encountered before.”
When asked by Epstein what he should say about his relationship with Trump, Wolff appeared to tell him to “let him hang himself.”
“If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency,” another email reads. “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. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”
At another point, Wolff asked for introductions to two people, Tom Barrack, a business leader and chair of Trump’s first inaugural committee, and Kathy Ruemmler, a former federal prosecutor, while researching his book about Trump’s first 100 days in office. He said he needed an “off-the-record perspective on White House procedures.”
He also asked whether former President Bill Clinton would confirm he had never been to Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Little St. John.
Clinton has publicly denied ever going there, and Epstein’s longtime companion and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell has also denied seeing him there.
The two planned to meet as recently as May 2019, months before Epstein died in a federal jail cell while awaiting trial.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Wolff’s team for comment.
Some of the new documents included a short video of a dog and what appeared to be chew toys modeled after Trump and 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton. Others appear to be slides from an advisor who was looking to generate positive search engine results about Epstein after his child trafficking conviction.
House Democrats’ earlier release included a short but cryptic email from Epstein to Maxwell, who is in prison for helping him groom and traffic girls. The disgraced financier mentioned Trump by name.
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote in a message dated April 2, 2011. “[VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him…he has never once been mentioned. Police chief. etc. I’m 75% there.”
The released document had a name redacted and replaced by the word “VICTIM” in all capital letters. Officials later revealed the victim to be prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who died of suicide earlier this year.
Giuffre was Epstein’s most outspoken victim but had not accused Trump of wrongdoing. She had previously worked at Mar-a-Lago, where Epstein allegedly poached her before he and Maxwell trafficked her for years.
“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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday. “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.”
Trump weighed in on Truth Social, accusing the Democrats of trying to draw attention away from their role in the standoff over a government shutdown.
“The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk — and they should pay a fair price,” he wrote. “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!”
Epstein got a sweetheart deal in 2008 for child sex crimes but was arrested again in 2019 on more serious trafficking charges. He died before the case went to trial. Maxwell was convicted of grooming and procuring girls and young women for him but is appealing and continues to claim her innocence.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
