From left: Donald Trump and his then-girlfriend Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, on February 12, 2000. Davidoff Studios Photography/Archive Photos/Getty Images
The Jeffrey Epstein saga has a dastardly quality: The more anyone drawn into the morass tries to dig themselves out, the deeper they dig themselves in.
The White House proved the rule yet again on Wednesday, on a shocking day of revelations in Washington over Epstein emails that mentioned Donald Trump multiple times and darkened a broadening shadow over his presidency.
The question at the heart of a political drama that grew out of the profound tragedy of scores of young women trafficked and abused by Epstein is now becoming impossible for the president to suppress.
Why is he so adamant that Americans must not see files related to a onetime friend he later denounced, even though there’s been no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on his own part?
A dizzying day of political intrigue Wednesday crushed Republican hopes of claiming the end of the longest government shutdown on record as an eye-catching win. It opened when House Oversight Committee Democrats released three emails newly acquired from Epstein’s estate that mention Trump. This was soon followed by a torrent of other emails, some referencing the president, from the GOP-led panel.
It did not immediately appear that the trove of material created any new legal issues for Trump. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it proved “absolutely nothing, other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
But the explosive content — which included Epstein and his now-jailed accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell discussing Trump — was the kind of gossipy jet fuel that can ensure scandals defy all attempts at containment and significantly worsened Trump’s political predicament on the issue. It was also the latest twist in a story with an extraordinary capacity to tarnish reputations, which, unlike its main protagonist, will not die.
Political earthquakes are now rumbling on both sides of the Atlantic. Washington is on scandal alert. In the UK, the aftershocks just led to the defenestration of a prince — Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — and the dismissal of a lord as ambassador to Washington — Peter Mandelson — both over their past friendships with Epstein.
Most seriously for the president, Wednesday’s disclosures raised questions over whether he’s been fully transparent about what he knew about Epstein — a former fellow New York and Florida resident, who killed himself in prison in 2019. At the least, the emails implied Trump knew more than he’s been prepared to let on about a wealthy convicted pedophile who moved in the highest society circles alongside powerful men in New York and London.
In one email on April 2, 2011, which CNN has independently reviewed, Epstein emailed Maxwell: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. (REDACTED) spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.” Maxwell responded: “I have been thinking about that…”
GOP members of the House Oversight Committee identified the person as Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent survivors, who died by suicide in April. They accused Democrats of hiding her name because she did not allege Trump did something wrong.
Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in an interview this year that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” and that she didn’t recall ever seeing Trump at Epstein’s house. She said she did witness the two men together in social settings. “The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” Maxwell said. “In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
Other material was embarrassing for Trump. Epstein called him “borderline insane” in a 2018 email exchange with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. In another email to a New York Times reporter on January 28, 2017, a week after Trump signed an executive order banning the entry of foreign nationals from Muslim majority countries for 90 days, Epstein said, “Donald is f**king crazy.”
CNN
A year later, Epstein wrote, “I know how dirty Donald is,” referring to potential scandals that might come out about him, in an August 2018 email to Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama. Epstein also emailed about Trump’s mental state with his personal attorney and Ruemmler in March 2018.
An overbearing White House response makes the political drama worse
The Epstein saga has dogged Trump for months. He’s tried and failed to shut it down, for instance when he lashed out in a Cabinet meeting in July, telling a reporter he didn’t know why people were still talking “about this guy, this creep.”
Ironically, the latest focus on the Epstein affair has underscored why the Justice Department makes it a practice not to release investigative files when prosecutions are not deemed appropriate. Disclosures can harm the reputations of those involved when they are not charged or accused of wrongdoing, or are merely witnesses who provided testimony or were mentioned in evidence.
But incredibly, the latest political ramifications of the Epstein affair were triggered by administration officials themselves, with Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi pledging to release files before going back on their word. That has created the frenzy of speculation over what is contained in the full record of the case.
And it’s left Trump accused of a classic Washington cover-up. As Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw put it in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett. “It would make a lot more sense for him to just say, ‘Let’s release the full files and get it all out there and get it all over with.’”
Walkinshaw went on: “Why doesn’t he want to do that? What’s in those files that he wants to allow this drip, drip, drip of bad news to continue?”
Despite new denials of wrongdoing by Trump and his aides, Wednesday’s releases set off the latest overbearing, and frankly strange, effort by officials to quell the drama. In an extraordinary meeting exclusively reported by CNN, top officials met a single lawmaker, Rep. Lauren Boebert, in the White House Situation Room, a venue fabled for its use in national security crises. Multiple sources said before the meeting that a heavyweight line-up of Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Blanche, the deputy attorney general, was expected.
The meeting raised the question of whether the White House hoped to get the Colorado lawmaker to pull her name from a petition that will force GOP House leaders to allow a vote on releasing investigative files from the Epstein case.
Boebert later told CNN’s Manu Raju that Trump did not pressure her to take her name off of the discharge petition and that while Epstein came up in the White House meeting, other topics were also covered.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, right, speaks with CNN’s Manu Raju on Wednesday. CNN
It was another stunning twist in a saga that makes the White House look not just clumsy but as if it is trying to orchestrate a cover-up, even as Trump’s aides insist there is nothing to hide.
The Situation Room meeting was just the latest bizarre intervention by Trump’s aides in the Epstein case. In July, Blanche traveled to interview Maxwell, and the Justice Department later released the transcript and tape of her saying that the president had never at any time behaved inappropriately. Shortly afterward, Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence, was moved to a far less draconian prison.
Underlining the failure of the latest White House damage-control effort, GOP Rep. Nancy Mace confirmed to CNN’s Jake Tapper that she did not intend to try to remove her name from the discharge petition. “I will never turn my back on other survivors,” she wrote in a text message. “The work is too important. No one believes us. And we never get justice.” The petition got its pivotal signature on Wednesday with the swearing-in of a newly elected Democratic lawmaker, which had been delayed for weeks by Speaker Mike Johnson.
Rep. Nancy Mace speaks to reporters on Wednesday. CNN
How can Trump tamp down the controversy?
Wednesday’s drama was precipitated by the return of the House for the first time since mid-September. The immediate focus on Epstein seemed to reinforce a claim by Johnson’s critics that one of his aims in keeping lawmakers at home during the shutdown was to tamp down the Epstein storm. If that was the case, he only made it worse. The speaker had no choice but to announce that the House next week will vote, against the wishes of the White House, on a resolution requiring the Department of Justice to release files from the Epstein case.
One question now is how on earth does Trump — whose approval ratings are already dipping fast, and who is struggling to empathize with a wave of economic anxiety rippling across the country — ever make all of this go away?
Time and again, the president’s achievements have been overshadowed by the return of the Epstein case. While it is not clear that this is an issue that will decide many votes in the 2026 midterm elections, it’s a constant distraction for the White House. Questions about Trump’s character and past did not stop him twice winning the presidency. But the Epstein issue is a rare controversy that has caused a backlash with his base, even though there’s no sign yet that it will sever his almost mythical bond with his most loyal supporters.
But on this question, at least, he’s failed to pull the GOP into line. He made increasingly frantic efforts on social media to portray the email releases as all part of a Democratic plot. His efforts failed. Now, the number of Republican lawmakers who back the release of the documents will be closely watched.
Any large-scale Republican revolt against the president in the House vote could be latest sign that his impregnable support from the GOP on Capitol Hill is beginning to crumble, following the failure of his demands on Republican senators to remove the filibuster rule in their chamber, which frustrated him during the shutdown.
And a strong vote from Republicans to release the files might also heap more pressure on Republicans in the Senate to vote for disclosure. “I’ve already had a couple Republicans tell my office privately that they’re going to vote for it, and I think that could snowball,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has braved fierce pressure from the White House, told CNN’s Manu Raju.
In another sign of growing tensions in the House, another Republican, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee launched an unsuccessful bid to force the release of all the Epstein files immediately. “Just get it to the daggum floor and let the people decide,” Burchett said.
This was the latest indication, that, in Epstein’s words, the “dog that hasn’t barked” over his association with Trump is barking now. Everyone in Washington and around the globe can hear it. And ominously for Trump, the White House seems to have no idea how it can be silenced.
