What do the Epstein emails released by Democrats reveal?

al Jazeera:

What do the emails released by Democrats reveal?

At least three emails were made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

Epstein and Maxwell: One email is an April 2011 exchange between Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence. In the email, Epstein told her that Trump had “spent hours” at his house with one victim.

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Epstein wrote: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [redacted name of victim] spent hours at my house with him .. he has never once been mentioned.”

Maxwell responded, “I have been thinking about that…”

The name of the victim was not released by the Democrats, but in the cache of documents released on Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee, the name is shown as Virginia Giuffre, who sued disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom, before he was stripped of his royal titles last month) for rape and sexual assault before she died by suicide in April this year.

In a statement sent to US media on Wednesday, the White House also confirmed that the victim was Giuffre.

“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 on 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,” she added.

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Epstein and Wolff: Epstein and US journalist Michael Wolff, who has written four books about Trump, also exchanged emails that included details of their strategising against Trump, according to the documents released by the Democrats.

In December 2015, seven years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to his crimes – which included engaging in prostitution with a minor under the age of 18 – Wolff wrote to Epstein: “I hear CNN is planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you – either on air or in scrum afterwards.”

Epstein replied: “If we were to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”

Wolff responded: “I think you should 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. 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.”

In a separate email in October 2016, Wolff tried to persuade Epstein to give an interview, writing: “There’s an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him. Interested?” The email was written just before Trump’s presidential election win in November 2016. It is not clear if Epstein responded.

In another email in 2019, Epstein wrote to Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”, referring to Maxwell.

Responding to the emails released by the Democrats on Wednesday, Wolff told the Daily Beast podcast Inside Trump’s Head late on Wednesday that he was “nice” to Epstein to try to understand him better and get “an entirely different view” of Trump.

Wolff’s books about Trump include the 2018 bestseller Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which revealed backstories of discord within his administration during his first term as president.

“I’m the person who sees this, this elemental story, Donald Trump,” Wolff told The Daily Beast. “I’ve gone through this with Epstein deep into the background. Donald Trump is the best friend of, you know, evil. He is the best friend of a deeply, deeply diabolical person.”