Trump Named in Epstein Emails Released by Democrats and Republicans Messages in which Jeffrey Epstein discussed President Trump were among 20,000 documents posted online. President Trump called the release a distraction engineered by Democrats.

 

Trump Named in Epstein Emails Released by Democrats and Republicans

Messages in which Jeffrey Epstein discussed President Trump were among 20,000 documents posted online. President Trump called the release a distraction engineered by Democrats.

 

Published Nov. 12, 2025

Updated Nov. 13, 2025, 3:01 a.m. ET

 

Glenn Thrush Annie Karni and Devlin Barrett

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/11/12/us/epstein-files-trump

 

Here’s the latest.

The mocking and accusatory voice of Jeffrey Epstein emerged from a trove of more than 20,000 emails made public by lawmakers on Wednesday, including his claim that President Trump once “spent hours at my house” with a young woman who later accused Mr. Epstein of sexually abusing and trafficking her when she was a teenager.

 

In a series of emails with friends and associates — surfacing first in a few messages selected by House Democrats and then in full by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee — Mr. Epstein described Mr. Trump as a “dirty” businessman who was “borderline insane,” untrustworthy and worse in “real life and upclose” than the image he sought to portray to the public.

 

Mr. Trump, White House officials and administration allies dismissed the disclosures as the utterances of a discredited sexual predator who had fallen out with Mr. Trump long before his crimes became publicly known. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, called the emails a “clear distraction.” The president labeled them a “hoax.”

 

Wednesday’s document dump was the latest act in the rapidly unfolding political drama engulfing Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican majority. They shuttered the House for the past two months, in part, to forestall a bipartisan effort to force a floor vote on a bill to force the Justice Department and F.B.I. to release a separate set of documents, this one involving their investigation into Mr. Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

 

That bid gathered enough supporters to force a vote within weeks, and Mr. Johnson, who has opposed considering the measure, said he would relent and bring it to a vote next week. Congress’s newest member, Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat of Arizona who was sworn in on Wednesday, provided the final signature necessary on the resolution.

 

House Republicans are seeking to protect Mr. Trump while trying to assuage those in the party who view the Epstein case as an issue that transcends loyalty to the president.

 

Democrats claimed that the sheer volume of the release was intended to distract attention from their revelations about Mr. Trump’s actions during the time he and Mr. Epstein were close.

 

Mr. Trump urged Republicans to reject any effort to revive a discussion of his relationship with Mr. Epstein, blaming Democrats for the release of the documents in a post on social media and writing that they were “trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown.”

 

Here’s what else to know:

Trump connections: The thousands of documents include numerous references to Mr. Trump, including some in which Mr. Epstein discusses their relationship. Others are innocuous. In one exchange, Mr. Epstein is apparently pitched on a transaction related to his Boeing 727 by someone who says they previously worked for Mr. Trump.

 

Pressure campaign ramps up: Top administration officials summoned Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado for a meeting in the White House Situation Room, escalating their pressure campaign against Republican lawmakers who have demanded a full release of files related to Mr. Epstein. Mr. Trump also reached out to Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of three Republican women in the House who signed a petition that calls for a vote demanding that the Justice Department within 30 days release all of its investigative files on Mr. Epstein, but she refused his pleas on the petition.

 

A de facto adviser: A recurring presence in the messages is the author Michael Wolff, who acted as an adviser to Mr. Epstein. “I believe Trump offers an ideal opportunity,” Mr. Wolff wrote to Mr. Epstein in March 2016, according to the emails, suggesting that “becoming an anti-Trump voice gives you a certain political cover which you decidedly don’t have now.”