Jeffrey Epstein on Trump: ‘I know how dirty donald is’
Notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said of President Donald Trump, “I know how dirty donald is,” in a 2018 email thread about Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen having pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and agreed to cooperate in a federal investigation of the president.
Epstein made that remark about Trump to Kathryn Ruemmler, a lawyer who served as White House counsel under former President Barack Obama. Ruemmler is currently chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs.
The email thread, which CNBC has not independently verified, is among more than 20,000 documents obtained from Epstein’s estate through a subpoena by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which released them Wednesday.
Ruemmler on Aug. 23, 2018, emailed Epstein a link to a New York Times op-ed by Bret Stephens, which had the headline, “Donald Trump’s High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The principled case for impeachment is clear. What’s missing is the courage.”
The article detailed Cohen’s guilty plea and its implications for Trump, who was then in his first term in the White House. Cohen had pleaded guilty to crimes related to making and facilitating hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal before the 2016 presidential election.
“I thought you’d find interesting,” Ruemmler wrote to Epstein, who had been friends with Trump for years before they had a falling-out in the early 2000s.
She wrote in the same thread, “It makes no difference whether it was his money. Issue is failure to disclose. Plus, fact that he lied his ass off about it makes it clear that he knew it was illegal.”
Epstein replied, “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,” Epstein added.
In a text message chain with an unidentified person in December 2018, that person wrote to Epstein, “It will all blow over! They’re really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can do to do that …!”
Epstein replied: “yes thx. its wild. because I am the one able to take him down.”
The thread did not reveal what the other person was referring to when they wrote that “it” will “blow over.”
In an April 2019 email released by House Democrats, Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to a copy of that message purportedly between the two men.
It is unclear what the phrase “knew about the girls” meant.
In another newly released email that Epstein wrote to his now-convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in April 2011, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is trump.”
Epstein added in that same email that a person whose name was redacted in the email but whom the Democrats identified as a victim of his “spent hours at my house with” Trump.
“He has never once been mentioned,” Epstein added in that message.
It is not clear what Epstein was referring to in the email that said “the dog that hasn’t barked.”
In an email exchange in December 2015, when Trump was seeking the Republican nomination for the White House, Wolff wrote to Epstein, “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 answered: “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 potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt,” Wolff added. “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.”
Trump has denied that he knew about Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls and women. The president has never been charged with wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
The release came two days after Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee issued a statement saying, “Whistleblower information provided to the Committee also indicates that Ghislaine Maxwell is working on filing a ‘Commutation Application’ with the Trump Administration.”
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for crimes related to procuring underage girls to be abused by Epstein.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement Wednesday, said, “The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”
“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,” Leavitt said.
“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.
“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.”
Giuffre died by suicide in April.
CNBC has requested comment from Maxwell’s attorney about the emails.
Epstein, 66, killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
Scores of women have said Epstein sexually abused them when they were underage girls or young women.
Democrats on the House oversight committee said the emails that they obtained raise “serious questions” about Trump’s involvement with Epstein.
The three emails related to Trump are among thousands written by Epstein and obtained by the Democrats.
“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,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat who is the ranking member of the House oversight committee.
“The Department of Justice must fully release the Epstein files to the public immediately,” Garcia said. “The Oversight Committee will continue pushing for answers and will not stop until we get justice for the victims.”
Trump and the DOJ have been criticized for months for reneging on promises by Trump administration officials to release criminal investigative files about Epstein.
Trump said in July that he threw Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and cut ties with him years ago because “he stole people who worked for me.”
Trump said that Epstein had poached at least one more Mar-a-Lago worker from him after being warned not to do that again.
The president has repeatedly called demands that officials release the so-called Epstein files “a Democratic hoax.”
— CNBC’s Ashlee Trujillo, Caleigh Keating and Laya Neelakandan contributed to this story.
This is developing news. Check back for updates.
