Many right-wing figures on social media dismissed the entire document release as a hoax because of a single email from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him,” Epstein wrote, before adding that Trump “has never once been mentioned” including by a “police chief.”
Maxwell responded: “I have been thinking about that.”
The victim’s name was redacted in the email initially released by the Democrats on the committee on Wednesday morning, but was unredacted in the wider release by Republicans later on Wednesday. That document shows the name “Virginia” which the White House says refers to Virginia Guiffre, who accused Epstein of abusing her for years before dying by suicide earlier this year.
MAGA figures claimed that because Guiffre herself has said she was not aware of any wrongdoing on Trump’s part, this redaction was evidence of the Democrats trying to falsify smears against the president.
“Today’s Epstein emails showed members of regime media colluding with Jeffrey Epstein to create hoaxes about Trump,” right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich wrote on X, with Posobiec adding: “This release blew up in Dems’ faces.”
Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury, a member of the House Oversight committee, told CNN that the document came to them from the Epstein estate already redacted.
Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News anchor, did talk about the Epstein case on her show on Wednesday. But rather than addressing the Trump allegations, she tried to claim Epstein, according to someone she said was close to the case, was not a pedophile.
“Jeffrey Epstein, in this person’s view, was not a pedophile,” Kelly said. “He was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realized this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I’m just giving you facts, that he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds. But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.”
