This morning, House Democrats released emails from the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that claim, among other things, that Donald Trump spent hours at Epstein’s home with one of his victims. Later in the day, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt if this was true—that Trump had spent hours at Epstein’s place with a sex-trafficking victim.
“These emails,” she replied, “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
That is not a no.
Of all of Trump’s scandals, his relationship with Epstein—if you ignore the stomach-churning human toll involved—may be the richest source of black comedy. Some of Trump’s most devoted worshippers chose the very issue of Epstein’s misdeeds and supposed cabal of elite backers as the fantasy onto which they projected a valiant role for their hero. Trump was meant to courageously release all of the available evidence for public scrutiny. Instead, this scandal has turned out to implicate him personally. (This is a risk inherent in building a personality cult around one of the worst human beings in the United States—almost any moral violation you pick will, statistically, have a high likelihood of appearing somewhere on his résumé.)
Trump’s defense in the matter has been that the Epstein files are a hoax, concocted to smear him by “Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.” But he has also decided to let the matter drop because this conspiracy involving the CIA, the FBI, and two presidents to falsely connect him to a criminal millionaire who died suspiciously is simply too boring for anybody to care about. “I don’t understand it, why they would be so interested. He’s dead for a long time,” Trump said of Epstein in July.
The latest revelations have prompted Trump and his allies to update their defense. Their response makes as much sense as what came before.
The first round of rebuttals centered on the allegedly suspicious timing of the email release, so soon after some Democrats decided to help end the shutdown—a move that has earned some derision from their base. “The libs are almost finished destroying the American government for no discernible reason so naturally they’re shifting focus to a dead pedophile,” the conservative strategist Josh Holmes said on X. “PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE DEMOCRATS CAVING,” Erick Erickson chimed in sarcastically.
It is not wrong to say that the timing of the release is related to the shutdown, in the sense that when the House returns to session, members who support releasing the Epstein files will have a majority. Democrats are clearly trying to pressure the handful of supportive House Republicans to maintain their support. Trump is lobbying them to abandon the petition, both privately and on his social-media channel.
But the revelations are a bit too damning to be dismissed as a news-cycle gambit, so the White House took a different tack a few hours later. It released a statement noting that the unnamed victim in the Epstein email who “spent hours” with Trump at Epstein’s house was Virginia Giuffre, who “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever.”
Rapid Response 47, an official White House X account, fired off a message noting that in her new posthumous memoir about surviving Epstein’s abuse, Giuffre says that Trump was friendly and that he offered to help her find babysitting work. The account later added, “Democrats redacted the victim’s name because the victim said Trump ‘couldn’t have been friendlier,’ was a ‘gentleman,’ and that she didn’t witness any wrongdoing.”
The encounter was perfectly innocent—just several hours of Trump brainstorming ideas for babysitting clients, a familiar act of generosity from a man known for his passion for mentoring young people. (Giuffre cannot be subpoenaed, because she killed herself in April.)
The White House’s response raises several questions. First, the conversation Giuffre recalled having with Trump took place at Mar-a-Lago. The email in question described an encounter at Epstein’s home, where the interaction may have included more than babysitting tips. Further, contextualizing this email by noting which girl it involved is a strange way to respond to a “fake” document
Epstein’s emails also imply that Trump was aware of his sex-trafficking scheme. “Of course he knew about the girls,” Epstein wrote in an email. If I met a teenager who I knew to be a likely victim of a sex-trafficking ring, I’d like to think that I’d try to help them contact law enforcement or get away. Also, if I discovered that a close friend was running a sex-trafficking ring, maybe I’d reconsider our friendship, rather than engaging in long, pleasant chats with his victims.
The White House’s responses fit a pattern of suspicious behavior from the president on this matter. Trump has said of Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, “I wish her well”—a strange thing to say about a convicted felon who systematically abused young girls. His administration has granted her a cushy upgrade for her stint in prison, including a transfer to a minimum-security camp and puppy visits. This has the appearance of a quid pro quo. Asked today if Trump is going to pardon Maxwell, Leavitt replied, “It’s not something he’s talking about or even thinking about at this moment in time.”
At this moment in time doesn’t exactly slam the door on that possibility.
Are the Epstein files suddenly real? Or are some of them real (and vindicating) and some of them fake (and incriminating)? All we know is that Trump wants us to stop talking about the subject. That’s usually what you want when the subject includes evidence that you have behaved in a manner beyond reproach.
