US President Donald Trump is alleged to have “spent hours” with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, according to newly released emails.
Trump was named multiple times in private emails sent by convicted paedophile Epstein to sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and to US journalist Michael Wolff.
The emails were released on Wednesday as part of a batch of 23,000 documents published by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee after Epstein’s estate was subpoenaed earlier this year.
The White House quickly accused Democrats of selectively leaking the emails to smear the president.
An email from Epstein to Maxwell in April 2011 reads: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [Victim – name redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. Police chief. etc. im 75 % there (sic)."
Maxwell responded: “I have been thinking about that…”
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday that the unnamed person mentioned in the released emails is Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and other powerful men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager.
Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied her allegations and said he does not recall meeting her.
Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, had long insisted that Trump was not among the men who had victimised her.
Leavitt added that Giuffre had “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions".
Giuffre did not accuse Trump of any misconduct in her posthumous autobiography, Nobody’s Girl.
In the book, she described meeting Trump only once, when she worked as a spa attendant at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, and did not accuse him of wrongdoing.
Giuffre wrote that she was introduced to Trump by her father, who also worked at the club.
Trump "couldn’t have been friendlier," Giuffre wrote.
Furthermore, in a court deposition, Giuffre said under oath that she didn’t believe Trump had any knowledge of Epstein’s misconduct with underage girls.
