FT: Trump ‘spent hours’ at Epstein’s house with victim of sex trafficking, email alleges

Key topics:Emails suggest Trump spent time with Epstein-linked sex trafficking victim.Democrats allege Trump knew more about Epstein’s crimes than admitted.Republicans call leaks selective, White House denies any wrongdoing..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Lauren Fedor in Washington and Chris Cook in London.Jeffrey Epstein said Donald Trump “spent hours at my house” with a woman later identified as a victim of sex trafficking, according to emails that raise fresh questions about the US president’s relationship with the disgraced financier.Democrats on the House oversight committee on Wednesday published three email exchanges containing allegations that Trump was more aware of Epstein’s illicit activities than the president has said.In one 2011 email addressed to Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, the late sex offender wrote Trump was the “dog that hasn’t barked” and had “spent hours at my house” with a victim whose name was redacted.Democrats on the committee also published emails between Epstein and the author Michael Wolff. In one 2019 message, Epstein said of Trump: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”.Read more:.Epstein Scandal: The case against Bondi - she’s been failing paedophile’s victims for years.Trump responded to the disclosures in a series of Truth Social posts, accusing Democrats of “using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures”.The emails were part of a tranche of more than 20,000 documents Epstein’s estate turned over to Congress in response to a subpoena from lawmakers.House Republicans accused their Democratic counterparts of “cherry picking” and later on Wednesday published the entire collection of new material.The document dump included a 2015 email between Epstein and a New York Times reporter, in which the late financier asked the reporter if he would “like photso [sic] of Donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen”.In another 2019 email, sent from Epstein to himself, the sex offender referenced Trump and said he “came to my house many times” during an unspecified time period, adding: “The testimony of the houseman John allessi confiremed [sic] it. He never got a massage.”The fresh disclosures threaten to reignite a bipartisan furore over the president’s links to Epstein.Robert Garcia, the senior Democrat on the committee, on Wednesday said: “These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president.”Trump has said he was friends with Epstein for 15 years, but that they fell out more than two decades ago. He has vehemently denied any involvement in the disgraced financier’s crimes.The White House and House Republicans dismissed the emails on Wednesday, saying the unnamed victim in the 2011 email was Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers, who died by suicide earlier this year.Giuffre described meeting the president once in her posthumous memoir, but did not accuse him of wrongdoing.House Republicans said Democrats had redacted Giuffre’s name from the published emails because they were “trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump”.A spokesperson for Democrats on the House oversight committee said the lawmakers’ “official stance” was to neither confirm nor deny the names of victims.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement the Democrats had “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump”.“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.She later said the emails proved “absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong”.The newly unearthed material will pile pressure on Trump as he seeks to quell the uproar over his administration’s handling of the so-called Epstein files.The House of Representatives is expected to vote in the coming weeks on compelling the White House to release the federal government’s files on the Epstein case.CNN first reported on Wednesday that top administration officials — including US attorney-general Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel — would meet Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert at the White House to discuss the Epstein case. Boebert is among the Republican lawmakers who has called for the Epstein files to be made public..Read more:.Trump is trapped in the Epstein web he helped spin: Timothy L. O'Brien.Leavitt did not dispute the report on Wednesday afternoon, saying it demonstrated “transparency” that the White House was “willing to brief members of Congress”.The Department of Justice and the FBI declined to comment.In September, the Democrats on the House oversight committee published a lewd birthday message that Trump allegedly sent to Epstein more than 20 years ago.The White House swiftly denied the letter came from Trump, saying the signature did not match that of the president..© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd.

FT: Trump ‘spent hours’ at Epstein’s house with victim of sex trafficking, email alleges

Related Stories

Banker who sold ABSA back to SA faces Capitol Hill reckoning over Epstein ties

Why Musk’s brilliant corporate playbook has stalled in politics

Mark Oppenheimer: Joburg Bar's undeniable race-based admissions

Epstein files trigger sweeping police probe into (former) Prince Andrew