White House deflects after new Epstein emails saying Trump "knew about the girls" - National & International News - WED 12Nov2025 -

White House deflects after new Epstein emails saying Trump “knew about the girls”. Trump officials push GOP Reps to withdraw support for releasing Epstein files, reports say.

Breaking: House passes bill to end government shutdown, sending bill to Trump.

White House deflects after new Epstein emails saying Trump “knew about the girls”

Today, the House Oversight Committee released a new tranche of 20,000 documents from the Epstein files. The committee’s Democrats separately released three e-mails sent from Epstein’s correspondence which mention Donald Trump. Trump was at one time a close friend of the disgraced financier who sexually abused and trafficked underage girls. One of the emails, sent to Epstein’s convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in 2011, mentions that Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s female victims, whose name was redacted.

The other two emails were from correspondence between Epstein and author Michael Wolff, who published the controversial book Fire and Fury in 2018 about Trump’s political career and presidency. In a 2015 email, Wolff advised Epstein to let Trump “hang himself” by denying their past association in a way that would put him in Epstein’s debt.

In 2019, Epstein wrote to Wolff that, “of course he [Trump] knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine [sic] to stop”. It wasn’t exactly clear what this was referring to. Back in July, Trump said that he had told Epstein to stop recruiting teenaged girls from the spa at Mar-a-lago.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was dismissive of the revelations. She told reporters, “These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong”.

Trump reportedly pushes Republican congresswomen to change vote on releasing Epstein files

With the House now back in session to debate and vote on a bill to end the shutdown, Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) has now been seated more than 7 weeks after winning a special election. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had previously refused to swear her in during the shutdown. Grijalva would be the last signature needed on a discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.Res.581). The resolution calls for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files within 30 days.

The resolution would be unlikely to pass in the Senate, nor would Trump be likely to sign it. However, Trump has sought to prevent the resolution’s advancement. If Senate Republicans block the bill, or if Trump vetoes it, it would only further inflame public fury and suspicion about Trump’s connections with Epstein.

In order to avoid this, Trump and his team are reportedly pushing Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert (CO) and Nancy Mace (SC) to withdraw their signatures from the discharge position. Boebert reportedly met with top Trump administration officials in the Situation Room at the White House, a highly-secure area where officials usually convene to discuss urgent national security matters.

Sources also told Axios that Trump has been attempting to reach out to Mace personally over the phone.