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LAST UPDATE | 14 Nov 2025
THE DEATH OF Jeffrey Epstein while he was awaiting trial in 2019 sparked the beginning of a global clamour for information related to his sex trafficking crimes.
People wanted to know who helped him, who knew about his sex trafficking crimes, and who was complicit in them.
Since then his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell has since been jailed for a term of 20 years for child sex trafficking and other offences.
In the course of her trial, calls abounded from various political factions for the release of a Jeffrey Epstein ‘client list’.
That was chiefly because Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – who has since lost his Prince title over his association with the scandal – had paid an undisclosed settlement to Virginia Giuffre.
Guiffre was one of Epstein’s most well-known and publicly outspoken victims, after she took a civil case against him in the States for sexual assault and emotional distress.
Today in 2025 several of the key players here are gone: Epstein is dead, Maxwell is jailed, Andrew has been firmly ousted from the limelight by his own family, and most tragically, in April this year Guiffre, who campaigned long and hard over the years for justice for her and the women and girls who were Epstein’s other victims, died by suicide in April at the age of 41.
Yet, public interest in Epstein’s sex trafficking and child abuse crimes is at a fever-pitch, because people want to know who exactly was caught up in it, chiefly they want to know how they participated and who knew about it.
Most of all, on both sides of the political divide in America, people want to know to what extent Donald Trump knew about the disgraced financiers’ crimes.
Over the years Trump has kept his story on Epstein tight. They were friends for three decades until they had a falling out. In 2002 Trump said on record that he thought Epstein was a “terrific guy”.
On Wednesday Democrat members of the United States Committee on Oversight and Reform released three emails that shed new light at least on Epstein’s view of Trump, and their relationship.
The emails suggest that Epstein continued to follow Trump’s career and movements closely after their reported falling out around 2004 over the President outbidding the financier for a mansion in Palm Beach.
Those three emails are to Maxwell and a columnist – and Trump’s autobiographer Michael Wolff.
Epstein emailed Maxwell in 2011 and said: “I want you to realise that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump… [Victim] spent hours at my house with him… he has never once been mentioned. Police chief etc, I’m 75% there”.
Maxwell replied: “I have been thinking about that…”.
(That victim has now been revealed to be Guiffre, who said that Trump was never involved in wrongdoing in relation to her and that he couldn’t have “been friendlier”.)
In January 2019 Epstein emailed Michael Wolff and said: “[Victim ] mara lago. [Redacted]. Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
In 2015 Wolff emailed Epstein and said: “I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you – either on air or in scrum afterwards”.
Epstein replied, “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
Wolff replied: “I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime”.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted following the release of the emails and said that the Democrats “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media” to create a “fake narrative to smear President Trump”.
She named the victim as Guiffre and repeated the late campaigner’s previous comments about Trump. Leavitt said that Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a “creep to his female employees, including Guiffre”.
Hours later Republicans lawmakers on the same committee released 20,000 documents from the Epstein estate, including more that mentioned Trump.
No. These are documents that the committee got access to via subpoena as part of a probe into the federal investigation of Epstein.
The House of Representatives is about to vote on releasing further files related to the sex trafficking investigation against Epstein.
Republican representatives have tried to resist that for months but now they have no choice but to consider the Epstein Files Transparency Act after a petition to do so reached 218 signatures.
Four Republicans crossed the aisle to support that petition, including Marjorie Taylor Greene – a once staunch MAGA loyalist to Trump who has become increasingly critical of him, in what many think may be a first step towards a rebrand before a bid for the presidency in the next election.
Democrats have said that what the Republicans have released this week is mostly “recycled material”.
They want to see the release of the full Epstein files held by the US Department of Justice, with limited redactions that serve to protect victims.
It’s been reported that amongst what is unreleased there is video material that shows minors, and that is subject to court-ordered sealing. It also contains audio files and text files.
One email from 2011 mentions Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
He responded to an email from Maxwell that was forwarded by Epstein to him about alleged sexual activity with an employee of Epstein’s.
It was a right of reply email from the Mail on Sunday that contained reference to those accusations.
The email from the Mail stated that a woman was introduced to Andrew by Epstein, at Maxwell’s house in London, and that she had sex with him there.
(This is doubtlessly in reference to the Mail on Sunday story published in 2011 that made the disputed photo of Giuffre and Andrew public for the first time – he’s questioned the authenticity of that photo and denied any wrongdoing).
Andrew said in reply: “Hey there! What’s all this? I don’t know anything about this! You must SAY so please. This has NOTHING to do with me. I can’t take any more of this”.
A 2011 email from Epstein also appears to comment on the authenticity of the photo of Giuffre and Andrew.
“Yes, she was on my plane and yes, she had her photo taken with Andrew, as many of my employees have.”
The release also sheds more light on the role of Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the US who got the sack over emailing Epstein expressing support after he was released from prison for child sex offences in 2010.
This newly released email from November 2016 shows Epstein emailed Mandelson shortly after his birthday and said: “63 years old. You made it”.
Mandelson replied over an hour later and said: “Just, I have decided to extend my life by spending more of it in the US.”
Epstein replied: “In the Donald Trump White House”, and then: “You were right about staying away from Andrew. I was right in your staying with Rinaldo” (in an apparent reference to Mandelson’s now husband).
We also got more of an insight into Epstein’s view of Trump. In 2017 he wrote in an email: “I have met some very bad people. None as bad as Trump. Not one decent cell in his body.”
In 2018 he wrote that he thought the President was “borderline insane” in an exchange with former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
In an email sent the same year to a former White House counsel under Barack Obama, Kathryn Ruemmler, Epstein said: “I know how dirty Donald is”.
We also saw emails that showed how Epstein and Maxwell co-ordinated their response to a lawsuit from Giuffre, which alleged that they both groomed and sexually abused her between 1998 and 2002.
In emails from 2015 Epstein wrote to Maxwell: “Initial response, too many unanswered questions [redacted] raised, relationship with jeffrey/.. I am writing to [redacted] to respond to allegation [redacted] that have been made which [redacted] are categorically untrue”.
Maxwell responded by telling him “I have to distance myself from you in a statement too. And they need me to say I was not aware of massage w/andrew in my house. These things they have to stay along w/meeting [redacted] and rebutting those allegations. I needs it asap”.
They went back and forth about her need to get a lawyer and he eventually wrote to her to say: “Call me”.
These emails contradict claims that Maxwell made in an interview with the US department of Justice in which she said that her relationship with Epstein was “almost nonexistent” between 2010 and 2019.
One of Epstein’s accusers Annie Farmer – who was a witness in Maxwell’s trial – said: “The more information that comes out about Jeffrey Epstein, the more questions we’re left with. Survivors deserve more than a trickle of information”.
Farmer called for the full release of the rest of the files.
It’s not clear how many Epstein files actually exist. We know that files are held by the US DOJ, the FBI and various courts.
The reaction has been pretty muted from the MAGA camp in response to this latest release of documents.
Elon Musk, who lambasted Trump over his resistance to all files being released during their breakup, has had nothing to say about these latest revelations online, and Steve Bannon chose not to talk about it on his podcast, even though he majorly covered the topic over the summer.
Analysts of MAGA social media platforms and accounts have noted that it is typical that once an issue becomes a focal point for ‘mainstream media’, MAGA tends to stop caring about it as much, as it has lost its ‘conspiracy’ factor.
Democrat members of Congress said in August that the majority of the files related to Epstein remain unreleased.
The swearing in of Rep. Adelita Garijalva, who proposed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, will take place on Wednesday, and that will allow a vote to be forced on the matter.
Even if the bill passes that house vote, it’s not expected that it will pass in the senate where Republicans hold the majority, but it could see more Republican representatives go against Trump, and it will certainly keep pressure up for more documents to be released.
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