News

(WASHINGTON) — Reactions are pouring in from Capitol Hill after House Democrats released correspondence from sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in which he wrote that President Donald Trump “spent hours at my house” with an alleged victim.

The emails, written in 2011 to Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell but made public on Wednesday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have added to a renewed push by some lawmakers to compel the administration to release all files related to Epstein.

“We won’t stop until we end this White House cover-up. Release the files, NOW,” Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking member on the Oversight panel, wrote on X.

Many Democrats issued similar calls.

“It’s clear as day: Trump is in the Epstein files,” New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler wrote on X. “The American people deserve the full truth.”

“The public deserves to know who enabled Epstein, who looked the other way, and who’s still being protected. Survivors have waited long enough. Release the Epstein files NOW,” wrote Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee accused Democrats of “trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump.”

In a social media post, Republicans on the panel claimed in the 2011 email between Epstein and Maxwell, Democrats redacted the name “Virginia” — a likely reference to prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who had made extensive public comments about her exploitation by Epstein, but had never accused Trump of any wrongdoing.

“Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts,” a House Oversight Majority spokesperson said in a statement. “The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials.”

After the release by House Democrats, House Republicans on the Oversight panel released an additional 20,000 pages of documents they received from the Epstein estate.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, one of a handful of Republican women backing the effort to compel the release of all Epstein files, defended Trump and said focus should be on the victims.

“How pathetic that Democrats are using Epstein’s victims to bury headlines on their vote against reopening the government,” Mace wrote on X.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also accused Democrats of “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative.”

“The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions. The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” Leavitt said in a statement to ABC News.

“These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again,” Leavitt added.

In other messages released by House Democrats, Epstein appeared to touch on his relationship with Trump and whether he’d been banned from membership at Mar-a-Lago years earlier.

“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote in a message to author Michael Wolff, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

Trump, who hasn’t yet directly weighed in on the latest development, previously blamed Democrats for creating a “hoax” surrounding the Epstein files.

After Epstein was arrested in 2019, Trump said he hadn’t spoken with him since 2015 because of a falling out. This summer, as momentum picked up in Congress to release all the Epstein files, Trump said Epstein “stole” young women (including Guiffre) from his Mar-a-Lago club, but that he didn’t know why.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna are leading a discharge petition to force a vote on compelling the Justice Department to release all the Epstein files.

Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, set to be sworn in on Wednesday, is expected to become the decisive 218th signature needed for the petition.

“Why did Justice or the FBI not get & release these?” Khanna wrote on X about the Epstein emails made public by House Democrats. “Today, [Massie] & my petition gets 218!”

ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein referred to Donald Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and told his former companion Ghislaine Maxwell that an alleged victim had “spent hours at my house” with Trump, according to email correspondence released Wednesday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump,” Epstein wrote in a typo-riddled message to Maxwell in April 2011. “[Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”

“I have been thinking about that … ” Maxwell replied.

That email exchange — which came just weeks after a British newspaper published a series of stories about Epstein, Maxwell and their powerful associates — was one of three released by the Democrats from a batch of more than 23,000 documents the committee recently received from the Epstein Estate in response to a subpoena. 

The names of alleged victims and other personally identifying information were redacted from the messages.

The other newly released email exchanges are between Epstein and author Michael Wolff, who has written four books chronicling the Trump presidency.  Wolff has said he spoke to Epstein at length about Trump during his reporting for the books.

“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff wrote to Epstein in December 2015, six months after Trump had officially entered the race for the White House.

“If we were to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein replied.

“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff replied the next day. “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 potentially 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.”

The third message — exchanged between Epstein and Wolff while Trump was well into his first presidential term in January 2019 — appears to touch on the topic of whether Trump had banned Epstein from membership at Mar-a-Lago years earlier. 

“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop”

The full context of these email exchanges is not clear from the portions released by the committee Democrats. 

Wolff in a phone interview on Wednesday said of the 2015 exchange that he couldn’t remember “the specific emails or the context, but I was in an in-depth conversation with Epstein at that time about his relationship with Donald Trump. So I think this reflects that.”

“I was trying at that time to get Epstein to talk about his relationship with Trump, and actually, he proved to be an enormously valuable source to me,” Wolff said. “Part of the context of this is that I was pushing Epstein at that point to go public with what he knew about Trump.”

None of the documents previously made public as part of civil lawsuits or Maxwell’s trial contain allegations of wrongdoing by Trump. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump in July posted a lengthy social media post that in part blamed Democrats for creating a controversy about files related to Epstein, which he called a “scam” and “hoax.”

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘b——–,’ hook, line, and sinker,” he wrote at the time.

Republicans on Wednesday claimed Democrats were selectively choosing documents to “generate click-bait” and that they’re withholding other documents that name Democrat officials. Republicans said they’re still reviewing the documents related to Epstein to protect potential victims. They called on Democrats to stop politicizing the investigation.

“Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts,” a House Oversight Majority spokesperson told ABC News.

The spokesperson added, “The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials. The Committee is actively reviewing the documents and will release them publicly once all victim-identifying information has been appropriately redacted. Democrats should stop politicizing this investigation and focus on delivering transparency, accountability, and justice for the survivors.”

Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused their Democratic counterparts of “trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump.”

In a social media post, the Republicans claim that in the 2011 email between Epstein and Maxwell, the Democrats redacted the name “Virginia,” a likely reference to prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who had made extensive public comments about her exploitation by Epstein, but had never accused Trump of any wrong-doing.  The Republicans said that the Epstein Estate had not redacted Virginia’s name when providing the records to the committee.

“Why did Democrats cover up the name when the Estate didn’t redact it in the redacted documents provided to the committee?” the Republicans’ posted on X. “It’s because this victim, Virginia Giuffre, publicly said that she never witnessed wrongdoing by President Trump. Democrats are trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump. Shame on them.”

Giuffre died by apparent suicide earlier this year. Her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” was published posthumously last month. 

The email with Virginia’s name unredacted was provided to ABC News by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.

The publication of the emails comes on the same day that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is scheduled to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who won a special election last month.

Once sworn in, Grijalva is expected to provide the final signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on a House bill that would compel the Department of Justice to release the government’s full investigative files on Epstein. 

The earliest that vote could happen is the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.

“The Department of Justice must fully release the Epstein files to the public immediately,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the Oversight committee, which is conducting an investigation into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein.

“The more Donald Trump tries to cover-up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President,” Garcia said.

The Trump administration has been dogged by controversy over the Epstein files since the DOJ — in an unsigned statement earlier this year — announced that the department would not be making its files public, despite earlier promises by members of the Trump administration for transparency.

The statement said that the government had not turned up evidence of a “client list” or credible evidence that “Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”

The Oversight committee issued a bipartisan subpoena to the DOJ in August for all records related to Epstein and Maxwell.

The DOJ has so far produced only a small fraction of the documents and other evidence gathered by federal investigators over the course of multiple investigations into Epstein’s alleged international sex-trafficking operation. 

It’s not clear if the email messages the estate provided to the committee are also in the possession of the DOJ.

After Epstein’s arrest in 2019, President Trump said he hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years. Earlier this year, Trump claimed he ended his association with Epstein in the early 2000s after discovering that Epstein and Maxwell were allegedly poaching employees from Mar-a-Lago.

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women.

Maxwell, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Texas for child sex trafficking and other offenses in connection with Epstein.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The House will be in session on Wednesday for the first time in 54 days, with all eyes on a vote to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The House is expected to hold first votes shortly after 5 p.m. ET on Senate-passed legislation to reopen the government with a final vote after 7 p.m.

Wednesday marks the 43rd day of the shutdown, shattering the previous 35-day record.

Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the “national nightmare” of the shutdown will soon come to an end. He issued an apology to Americans who are dealing with flight delays, food insecurity and those who have missed paychecks as a result of the weekslong impasse — for which he blamed Democrats.

“And I just want to say that we’re very optimistic about the vote tally tonight, and we think this is going to happen, and we’re sorry that it took this long. So Republicans are going to deliver for the people,” Johnson said. 

The Senate on Monday night passed the deal to fund the government through Jan. 30, 2026, plus provide full-year funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and WIC, its program for women, infants and children; veterans programs and military construction. It also includes language to reverse Trump administration firings during the shutdown and to ensure furloughed workers receive backpay.

It passed in a 60-40 vote, after eight Democrats broke ranks with the party and joined Republicans to bring the weekslong impasse to a close.

Johnson, earlier this week, had advised members to begin making their way back to Washington as travel delays persist across the country. The House has been out of session since Sept. 19.

Once Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva is sworn in, Johnson can only afford to lose two Republican votes if all members are present and voting. There could also be a handful of moderate Democrats who support the legislation, though Democratic leadership is whipping against it.

Despite the fact that it reverses some of his administration’s actions during the shutdown, President Donald Trump signaled he would sign the deal.

“I’ll abide by the deal. The deal is very good,” Trump said on Monday.

Democrats are now dealing with infighting as the shutdown ends without any of the Democratic demands on health care, but sources told ABC News that Senate Republican leadership promised to allow a vote on a bill of Democrats’ choosing related to the Affordable Care Act in December.

Though Johnson notably would not commit to holding a vote in the House on the Affordable Care Act subsidies.

“I do not guarantee the outcome of legislation or dates or deadlines or anything,” he said on Monday.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who opposed the Senate deal, said House Democrats are considering a discharge petition related to the ACA subsidies, but declined to provide specifics on the plan.

“We’ll continue that fight today, tomorrow, this week, next week, this month, next month, this year, next year. We’re going to continue that fight to fix our broken health care system and lower the high cost of living for the American people and the American people know that we’re on the right side of this fight,” Jeffries said on Monday.

Such a move would require 218 signatures to force a vote in the House. There are several House Republicans who have advocated for a one-year extension of the ACA tax credits, though it’s unlikely Johnson would support this effort.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Mike Johnson will swear in Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva — who won a special election seven weeks ago — before the House government funding vote set for Wednesday.

Johnson has previously said he’ll swear in Grijalva — who won her special election on Sept. 23 — when the House returns for legislative session. Johnson’s office confirmed to ABC News that the swearing-in will occur before the House takes votes on Wednesday, the first time in 54 days.

The House will hold first votes as early as 4 p.m. ET on Senate-passed legislation to reopen the government, according to a notice from House Republican Whip Tom Emmer.

Grijalva’s win was four days after Johnson dismissed lawmakers following House passage of the clean continuing resolution to fund the government.

While the question has followed the speaker throughout the shutdown, Johnson has shrugged off the delay in Grijalva’s swearing-in, arguing that his decision is not about Grijalva’s intent to become the decisive signature on a discharge petition that would force a floor vote on compelling the Department of Justice to release the complete files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

The state of Arizona sued the House of Representatives over the speaker’s decision to not swear in Grijalva during the government shutdown and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have expressed their opposition to Johnson’s decision.

Grijalva said in a statement on Monday that she is traveling back to Washington, D.C., for her swearing in and the shutdown vote.

“While I am eager to get to work, I am disappointed that one of my first votes will be on a bill that does nothing to protect working people from skyrocketing premiums, loss of health coverage, or do anything significant to rein in Trump’s abuse of power,” she said, referring to the Senate funding bill.

When could a vote on the Epstein files discharge petition occur?

Once Grijalva signs the discharge petition, a procedural maneuver to bypass House leadership on forcing floor votes on legislation, it will have reached the necessary threshold for a vote to be forced in the lower chamber. The magic number is 218 votes — a majority of the House’s 435 members. 

Grijalva is expected to sign the petition after she is sworn in.

The petition, led by Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, would then need to “ripen” — meaning it would receive floor consideration after seven legislative days, according to House Rules. After that, any member who signed the petition could call up the measure and notify of an intention to offer a discharge motion on the floor. 

So the earliest the House will hold a vote on the discharge petition is in early December after the chamber’s Thanksgiving recess.

Speaker Johnson has been opposed to this effort, pointing to the work being done by the House Oversight Committee on Epstein.

The committee has released thousands of records related to Epstein, provided by the Department of Justice. Some of documents released by the committee include public court filings and transcripts from his associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial, previously released flight logs from Epstein’s plane, already-public Bureau of Prisons communications the night of Epstein’s death and various other public court papers from Epstein’s criminal case in Florida. Maxwell has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.