The latest revelations from the files provide intriguing insights, though they fall short of revealing any definitive evidence of misconduct by Trump. However, they hint that Epstein possessed potentially damaging information about Trump.

In a 2018 email exchange, Epstein commented on the discussions surrounding Trump’s impeachment, stating, “you see, I know how dirty Donald is. my guess is that non lawyers ny biz people have no idea. What it means to have your fixer flip.” This appears to allude to Michael Cohen’s decision to turn on Trump.

Following Trump’s victory in the New Hampshire primary in 2016, an email correspondent speculated with Epstein about “the stories you could tell,” as indicated in the email threads.

When the correspondent suggested that such revelations might not harm Trump, Epstein seemingly implied that Trump was merely “a phony rich person.”

After Trump won the New Hampshire primary in 2016, a correspondent wondered to Epstein about “the stories you could tell,” according to one of the released email exchanges.

After the correspondent wagered that such information might not actually damage Trump, Epstein seemed to reference how Trump was “a phony rich person.”

Epstein told the same person months earlier that he could produce photos “of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen.”

He also told the person that he at one point “gave” his 20-year-old girlfriend to Trump, in the mid-1990s.

At other points in Epstein’s correspondence, author Michael Wolff seems to try and convince Epstein to come forward and say something about Trump.

“There’s an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner your great sympathy and help finish him,” Wolff told Epstein days before the 2016 election. “Interested?”

Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein case and has denied involvement in Epstein’s crimes. The White House this morning said the emails “prove absolutely nothing, other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”

Emails reignite questions about what Trump knew and when

There have remained huge unanswered questions about what Trump knew and when about Epstein’s proclivities. That’s especially given Trump’s explanations have often proved evasive or false.

The White House responded to the initial three emails mentioning Trump by arguing Democrats had “selectively leaked” the emails to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”

But these emails certainly deepen the intrigue about what Trump knew.

The president and his aides have also repeatedly said Trump distanced himself from Epstein because Epstein was a “creep” – but without elaborating on why, precisely, Trump viewed him as such.

Beyond that, Trump this summer acknowledged being aware of Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell recruiting employees, including the former Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre, at Mar-a-Lago – but he seemed to be quite reluctant to go into detail.

The question from there was whether Trump had an inkling about what Giuffre was being recruited for.

Trump said he didn’t “know really why” Epstein Maxwell was recruiting people. (Maxwell has denied recruiting people.) But Giuffre was a minor. To the extent Trump was aware of the particulars of the situation – and was aware of Epstein’s taste for young females – that would seem to raise red flags.

The 2019 Epstein email released by the committee says of Trump: “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

That doesn’t prove Trump knew what Maxwell and Epstein were recruiting the girls for. But it suggests that Trump was involved in telling Maxwell to knock it off and was seemingly familiar with the details of the situation.

The 2011 Epstein email that suggests Giuffre “spent hours” at his house with Trump also adds to the relevant facts here.

When Trump was acknowledging his awareness of Maxwell’s recruiting at Mar-a-Lago, he initially said he didn’t know if it was Giuffre who had been recruited. But then he quickly said that it was indeed her.

If Trump actually spent time with Giuffre, as Epstein’s email seems to say, it would not only raise questions about why. It would also make Trump’s handling of the situation appear even more bizarre.

And it’s clear from Giuffre’s own memoir that they knew each other and had had conversations about her working for his friends.

“Trump couldn’t have been friendlier, telling me it was fantastic that I was there,” Giuffre writes about the time that her father took her to meet Trump in his office. She goes on to recount that Trump asked her if she liked children and explained that he had friends in houses “next to the resort” who needed babysitting for their kids.

Giuffre did not accuse Trump of any wrongdoing in her recent posthumously-published memoir.

The emails undercut Maxwell’s attempts to distance Trump from Epstein

The Trump Justice Department decided to interview Maxwell, a convicted sex offender, this summer while her appeals were ongoing. It did so despite her established credibility problems and motivations to say what the administration wanted.

(Trump at the time hadn’t ruled out the possibility of pardoning Maxwell. And around this time, we also learned Maxwell had been moved to a lower-security prison camp for which she didn’t appear eligible as a sex offender. The administration still hasn’t explained how this happened, months later.)

And sure enough, Maxwell said things that were helpful to the president. She basically said she had no knowledge of any Trump wrongdoing and downplayed his relationship with Epstein.

But the new emails call her claims into question.

Speaking of Trump’s and Epstein’s relationship, Maxwell said in her testimony, the transcript of which was released in August: “I don’t think they were close friends, or I certainly never witnessed the president in any of – I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance.”

But the newly released emails suggest Maxwell was aware of Trump being at Epstein’s house, at least as of 2011.

After Epstein in the email referenced someone spending “hours at my house” with Trump, Maxwell responds, “I have been thinking about that.”

Maxwell’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is not the first Maxwell claim from that interview that has been called into question.

Epstein and Maxwell seemed to think this information about Trump was significant

We surely need to learn more about the context of these emails. But one of the biggest takeaways is that they suggest Epstein and Maxwell seemed to feel this information about Trump was significant. There’s even a hint they suggested that information could be used as leverage.

The timelines are important here.

The 2011 email came as news was blowing up about Epstein’s ties to Prince Andrew, as he was then known. (He was recently stripped of his noble title.) As CNN has reported, around this time Epstein seemed to be going into legal attack mode.

Prince Andrew’s most prominent accuser was Giuffre.

It was in this context that Epstein and Maxwell conversed about Trump having spent time at Epstein’s house with someone who, according to Republicans, is identified in the email as Giuffre.

Which leads to the obvious question: Why might Epstein and Maxwell have expected news about Trump to have come out?

The timeline of the 2019 email is also relevant. That’s because it came during Trump’s first term as his administration was weighing significant action vis-à-vis Epstein.

The Miami Herald had in late 2018 run a major exposé on the sweetheart deal Epstein received from US Attorney Alexander Acosta, who later became Trump’s labor secretary. By early 2019, a major question was whether the Justice Department would probe that deal.

The DOJ’s inspector general said on January 30 of that year that he didn’t have the power to examine the situation. But by February 6 the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility signaled that it had opened an investigation.

CNN reported at the time that multiple authorities were reviewing allegations about Epstein and minors as of early that year.

It was in this context, on January 31, that Epstein emailed Wolff about Trump “of course” being aware of Maxwell’s recruitment at Mar-a-Lago.

The newly released emails also include a 2015 Epstein exchange with Wolff in which the two of them strategise about how then-candidate Trump should handle questions about his ties to Epstein. Wolff said he had heard CNN was going to ask Trump about it at the debate, either on air or after. (There is no mention of Epstein in the transcript of the debate.)

In that email, Wolff suggests the best course would be to “let him hang himself” by denying being on Epstein’s plane or his house.