"The dog that hasn't barked' Ties to sex offender back in the spotlight

The release of previously unseen emails sent by the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has thrust Donald Trump back into the centre of the long-running Epstein controversy that has plagued his administration for months, inflamed parts of his own political base, and offered Democrats an ongoing line of political attack.

- Anna Betts New York

Yesterday, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released email exchanges from 2011, 2015 and 2019 that they say were provided by the estate of the late Epstein, who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors.

In the three released exchanges, the disgraced financier Epstein describes the US president as the “dog that hasn’t barked”, alleges that Trump had “spent hours” at his home with one of Epstein’s victims - whose name is redacted - and claims that “of course” Trump “knew about the girls as he had asked Ghislaine to stop” referring to Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell was Epstein’s longtime associate who was jailed in 2022 for helping Epstein abuse girls and is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking crimes.

Democrats on the committee said that the emails were part of more than 23,000 documents turned over by Epstein’s estate as part of their ongoing investigation into Epstein, and that they are still reviewing the documents.

Shortly after Democrats released the emails, House Republicans on the committee released an additional 23,000 pages of documents from the estate.

While the full context of the emails is unclear, their release has, once again, reignited public scrutiny of Trump’s past ties to Epstein and Maxwell. Yesterday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Democrats had “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear” Trump.