As newly released emails from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein surfaced this week, they pulled President Donald Trump deeper into a scandal he once vowed to expose.
The messages, made public by House Democrats and confirmed by multiple outlets including PBS NewsHour, NPR, The New York Times, and NBC News, show Epstein and his associates referring to Trump by name in conversations about underage girls and political leverage.
The emails, written between 2011 and 2019, contain unredacted references to Trump’s visits to Epstein’s properties and to alleged interactions with victims. In one 2011 exchange, Epstein wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump was “the dog that hasn’t barked” and claimed the future president spent “hours at my house” with a girl who would later be identified as one of Epstein’s victims. In another, Epstein told author Michael Wolff that “of course [Trump] knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”
House Oversight Committee ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said the release is only the beginning.
“The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” Garcia wrote in a statement. “These latest emails raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President.”
Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, pushed back, calling the revelations a “fake narrative to smear President Trump” and alleging that Democrats “selectively leaked” the documents. She told PBS News the emails were designed “to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments” and claimed the unnamed victim referenced in the emails “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing.”
But for a president who once promised transparency, Trump’s actions tell another story. The White House has fought efforts to release Epstein’s full files, with Speaker Mike Johnson blocking votes in the House for weeks while refusing to swear in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.).
Her eventual oath on Wednesday gave Democrats and a handful of Republicans the 218th signature needed to force a vote on the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.”
The bill, authored by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), would compel the Justice Department to disclose all unclassified Epstein-related records. It’s expected to pass the House but faces dim prospects in the Trump-controlled Senate. Massie and Khanna say Trump’s administration has blocked access to materials that could reveal connections between Epstein and powerful figures.
“Republicans are running a pedophile protection program,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who accused the GOP of “intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files.”
The political blowback is intensifying as Trump’s public support continues to slide. A new AP-NORC poll released Tuesday found that only 33% of Americans approve of Trump’s management of the government, down sharply from 43% earlier this year. His overall approval stands at 36%, with growing discontent even among Republicans, just 68% of whom now back his leadership compared with 81% in March.
Even some longtime Trump supporters have begun to waver. Beverly Lucas, a 78-year-old Republican from Florida, told AP News she was “thoroughly disturbed by the government shutdown” and compared Trump’s second term to “having a petulant child in the White House, with unmitigated power.”
Trump’s former campaign trail promise to “release all the Epstein files” has turned into a defiant effort to bury them. On social media, he has dismissed the bipartisan push for transparency as a “Democrat Epstein Hoax.” But the timing of the latest disclosures — coinciding with his administration’s worst approval ratings and a government shutdown now entering record territory — shows how much this controversy has metastasized into a broader crisis of credibility.
Epstein’s shadow continues to haunt the Oval Office. The billionaire sex offender, who died in federal custody in 2019, cultivated a network of political and business elites.
Trump once called Epstein a “terrific guy” before later claiming they had a falling out because Epstein “stole” staff from Mar-a-Lago. Yet Epstein’s own words still linger: “Of course he knew about the girls.”