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The White House on Wednesday dismissed as a “fake narrative” the release of emails in which late financier Jeffrey Epstein claimed US President Donald Trump was aware of Epstein’s exploitation of underage victims.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Democrats had “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media” and accused them of attempting to distract from Trump’s accomplishments.
“These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again,” she said.
The three emails, made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, pointed to the possibility that Trump was aware of Epstein’s crimes, according to facsimiles released on Wednesday.
In one 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend and close associate now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with a person whose name is blacked out of the emails but who House Democrats identified as a “victim”.
In a separate email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”
On Wednesday, the White House slammed the email release as an attempt by Democrats to push a “fake narrative”.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Democrats had “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media.”
“These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again,” she said.
The House Oversight Committee, led by Republicans, also released 20,000 pages of documents on Wednesday received from Epstein’s estate.
The US president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago. Meanwhile, Democrats have persistently accused Republicans and the White House of obscuring Trump’s involvement.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.
Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.
She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Additional sources • AP