Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said Donald Trump knew about the girls that Epstein was accused of victimizing, according to emails released on Wednesday by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Democrats cite exchanges with author Michael Wolff and Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite and Epstein's former girlfriend who is serving a 20-year prison sentence on charges including sex trafficking of a minor.
Among the exchanges is a 2019 email to Wolff in which Epstein said that Trump "knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop," and a 2011 message to Maxwell from Epstein asserting that Trump had "spent hours at my house" with one of his victims, whose name is redacted.
Trump has vehemently and consistently denied knowing about Epstein's sex trafficking. He has said that he and Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019, were once friends before having a falling out.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the emails released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
The release came on the day that House Speaker Mike Johnson is scheduled to swear in Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva to succeed her late father in Congress.
Grijalva is expected to provide the final signature needed for a petition to force a House vote to release all unclassified records related to Epstein, something Johnson and Trump have resisted up to now.
The Epstein case has dogged Trump and his Justice Department for months, creating upset among Trump's political base, which has been unusually critical of the administration for not releasing more information about Epstein's alleged crimes.
The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Representative Robert Garcia, called on the Justice Department to fully release the Epstein files to the public.
"The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. 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," he said in a statement.
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