Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying at Mar-a-Lago in 1992 (NBC News).
House Democrats and the New York Times, at just about the same time on Wednesday, unveiled new emails from the estate of infamous sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, including one that claimed a victim once “spent hours at my house” with Donald Trump.
The president, whose defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over reporting on a “bawdy” 50th birthday letter for Epstein from 2003 is still pending, was described in the email exchange between Epstein and his convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell as the “dog that hasn”t barked.”
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“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein told Maxwell in April 2011, according to estate records handed to Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. “[Redacted victim name] spent hours at my house with him,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75% there.”
Maxwell replied hours later saying, “I have been thinking about that…”
Notably, the email exchange took place eight years after the “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret” Epstein birthday book submission that Trump claims he did not author, draw, or sign.
When Trump first sued, he said the letter described in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting did not exist. Epstein’s estate, pursuant to subpoena, subsequently released the birthday book to Congress, which in turn published the contents.
When Trump’s former criminal defense attorney turned Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Maxwell behind bars in July, she said she “never” saw “gentleman” Trump act inappropriately with anyone. At the same time, Maxwell said it was “true” that she put together the Epstein 50th “birthday book” and claimed she did not remember a Trump letter.
“While we’re on this topic, just — and again, I know we’re jumping around and we’ve been going on it for a while, so I apologize,” Blanche said, “But there’s recently been reports about a birthday book that you assembled for Mr. Epstein, I think, for his 50th birthday in 2003.”
“That’s true,” Maxwell replied.
“What do you know about that?” Blanche asked.
Maxwell explained that she got the idea from her mother, who put together a birthday book for Ghislaine’s father Robert Maxwell’s 60th birthday.
“And when I — Epstein would talk about his 50th, he said, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And I said, well, these are nice things, my mom did this book for my dad. He said, I love that idea. He said, can you help coordinate it? And he organized who — he called a lot of the people himself,” Maxwell said. “I coordinated the putting together of the book. And some — in some instances, I called people that asked them to contribute.”
Maxwell further said that the “ask” of birthday book letter-writers was “say anything you want on a piece of paper.
As Blanche continued probing about whether Maxwell specifically remembered Trump “submitting a letter or a card or a note,” Maxwell said “I don’t” and that she didn’t have any recollection of a “picture of a naked woman or something like that,” as Blanche put it in his question.
At another point during the interview, Blanche asked about the “birthday book” again and Maxwell again said she didn’t remember asking Trump to submit a letter but suggested it was possible Epstein himself asked Trump to do so.
“I did ask some people. I don’t remember Mr. Trump. I don’t remember who I did ask, but Epstein also asked people himself directly,” Maxwell said. “So it could have happened that way, if it happened at all.”
In an another newly released email from 2019, Epstein told author Michael Wolff, who is currently suing First Lady Melania Trump, that “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
This is a developing story.
