*Democrats released an email in which Jeffrey Epstein said Donald Trump had spent hours with one of his victims at his house. *However, the victim in question was Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has said repeatedly that Trump was not involved in Epstein’s abuse of her. *Understanding the timeline of Trump and Epstein’s relationship — they were close from the 1990s until about 2004, when they fell out over a property dispute — is important to assessing new revelations.
On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent the political world into a frenzy by releasing two damning-looking emails Jeffrey Epstein had sent about Donald Trump.
The committee’s Republicans then followed up by releasing thousands more Epstein emails and documents, containing embarrassing revelations about various other public figures. But the GOP and the White House also pushed back, arguing that the revelations about Trump were less than met the eye.
All of this is just an appetizer for the push for public disclosure of the “Epstein files” held by the Justice Department. A months-long effort to get a majority of the House to sign a petition that would force a vote on the matter finally won its 218th signature Wednesday. A House vote on the Epstein files is now expected in December, and if it passes, the matter will advance to the Senate.
President Trump seems highly worried about this possibility. This week, he tried to strong-arm some Republican House members into dropping their signatures from the petition, including by having officials summon Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to the Situation Room.
We don’t know what, if anything, Trump is trying to prevent from getting out through the DOJ’s Epstein files. But as we await their potential release, it’s worth taking a closer look at the newly-released Epstein emails about Trump, to assess what they actually show. Doing this requires some decoding.
“That dog that hasn’t barked is trump”
The email that got the most attention is from Epstein to his companion and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. Dated April 2, 2011, it says (typos included):
*I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. virignia spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there
When House Democrats first released the email, they redacted the name Virginia and replaced it with “VICTIM.” And the release was taken on social media as a bombshell. It appeared to show, well, Epstein saying Trump had spent hours at his house with a victim. And what explanation could there be for that other than a sexual one?
Yet Republicans soon cried foul, revealing the redacted name was Virginia — a reference to Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Epstein’s most prominent public accuser, who died earlier this year.
This changed the email’s meaning significantly because, in years of depositions, litigation, and a memoir published posthumously earlier this year, Giuffre was consistent that Trump was never a participant in Epstein’s sex crimes involving her. She accused Epstein of trafficking her to other prominent men — but said repeatedly that those men did not include Trump. Unless she was lying, this email then does not in fact prove that Trump abused an Epstein victim.
So what could Epstein have meant in the email?
Some important context here is that, according to reporting by Epstein correspondent (and pal) Michael Wolff, Epstein had wondered whether Trump played some part in bringing about his legal woes due to a falling-out they’d had. The emails appear to nod to this idea.
The belief, floated by House Speaker Mike Johnson among others, that Trump helped bring Epstein down by informing the authorities, has been much mocked and lacks any corroboration. However, Wolff did claim that Epstein himself thought this might have been true, though Epstein purportedly believed Trump was motivated by personal pique over a property auction rather than a heroic desire to save abused women.
Trump and Epstein were close pals throughout much of the 1990s and early 2000s — a time when they were frequently photographed together at parties in New York and Florida. This time encompasses Trump’s infamous “birthday book” message to Epstein, and Trump’s similarly infamous quote to a reporter that Epstein was a “terrific guy” who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
But in 2004, this friendship came to an end — reportedly because Trump and Epstein had a bidding war against each other over the same Florida mansion, and things got quite bitter.
Shortly after the auction’s conclusion, the Palm Beach police received a tip that young women had been seen at Epstein’s home, according to a later deposition by the department’s police chief.
The first major law enforcement investigation into Epstein didn’t kick off until the following year, in 2005, when a 14-year-old girl and her parents went to the Palm Beach police, accusing Epstein of molesting her during a massage. But — according to Wolff — Epstein had privately wondered whether it was Trump who was responsible for the initial tip.
Epstein resolved that initial investigation with what was later called a sweetheart plea deal, but his victims soon began suing him civilly. These lawsuits were at first filed from “Jane Does,” but in 2011, one of them — Virginia Roberts Giuffre — came forward to put her name to her accusations, becoming Epstein’s most prominent accuser.
Shortly after that, in 2011, Epstein sent that newly-released email to Maxwell, which I’ll quote again:
*I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. virignia spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there
The email may be an expression of Epstein’s suspicion that Trump is behind his legal woes. He’s asking, why hasn’t Trump’s name been mentioned in the investigation and lawsuits? He’s saying Giuffre, his lead public accuser, had spent time with Trump, so perhaps he was behind her coming forward. And he’s perhaps alluding to how the “police chief” got his tip, perhaps saying he’s “75% there” toward thinking it was Trump.
*“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop”
A second email that is being treated as damning was sent by Epstein to Wolff on January 31, 2019. It reads:
*(REDACTED) worked at mara lago. . she was the one that accused prince andrew. . trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop
Epstein’s claim that “of course” Trump “knew about the girls” has gotten a great deal of attention, but it should also be noted that the sentence concludes “as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
This likely refers to the reports that Epstein and Maxwell were recruiting girls from the Mar-a-Lago spa to become his “masseuses” — Giuffre, for one, had worked there. Trump spoke about this earlier this year when he claimed Epstein had “taken” people from his spa, and said he intervened to stop that.
Indeed, as far as back as 2007, an anonymous source told Page Six, about Epstein: “He would use the spa to try to procure girls. But one of them, a masseuse about 18 years old, he tried to get her to do things…Her father found out about it and went absolutely ape-[bleep]. Epstein’s not allowed back.” (The reader may decide whether that anonymous source sounds like John Barron.)
So on one hand, Epstein’s statement sounds damning: Trump knew about the girls! On the other hand, what Epstein then says is that Trump asked Maxwell “to stop” — presumably, to stop recruiting girls from Mar-a-Lago.
That email, then, also doesn’t really corroborate the idea that Trump was a participant in Epstein’s sex crimes — though in assessing its candor, we should keep in mind that Epstein is writing to a journalist, not a trusted associate like Maxwell.
*It’s important to get the timeline straight
In the frenzy of interest over the newly-released Epstein emails, decontextualized tidbits have been rocketed across social media and been treated as damning. But there have also been a lot of misinterpretations and misreadings. If the DOJ’s Epstein files ever do get released, that will likely continue.
In my view, the most helpful thing to keep in mind when assessing the import of new information about the Trump/Epstein relationship, is that the relationship had two phases:
* 1. From the 1990s to about 2004, Trump and Epstein were friends, frequently seen together, exchanging bawdy messages, etc. * 2. After 2004, they had a falling out, reportedly over that mansion auction; the reporting has been quite consistent that this was a bitter falling-out and their relationship did not continue after that.
Naturally, Trump’s defenders are preferring to focus on the second phase. Indeed, after this week’s release of tens of thousands of Epstein’s emails, many claimed there was surprisingly little about Trump. But those emails were from the 2010s.
It’s more likely that the things Trump’s most worried about in the Epstein files would be about the earlier period, when Trump and Epstein really were close — things like Trump’s birthday book message to Epstein: “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Without an email header any IT guy that is worth anything knows better. I can fake an email that looks like they sent you to them moon.
Was that directed at me? Or the author? Or the original "source" of the emails ? What I posted was a copy-pasta of the article. I only posted because this same stuff is being reported nearly everywhere, and this is the only time I've seen all the bits and pieces sort of consolidated and summarized.
My initial thoughts are pretty much the same as Joe's. Not exactly earth shaking. If anything, it kind of clarifies/backs up what has been said elsewhere. Nothing new - or incriminating.
Besides, they don't have the shutdown to b!tch about any more, so "on to the next 'shiny' thing".
But every time something like this comes up my IT head pops at how much the majority of people have no clue how easy they are deceived. I could recreate that same email thread from our printer that lets me send out emails. Without the header information you wouldn't know where it came from. But if you have access to the header you would see the embedded code, where it came from.
Same thing for when they "bleach" some server. The **** you know they had backups, no way any contract support team isn't going to do backups if they are asked to manage your exchange server. Or am I just fooling myself...
[This message has been edited by Jake_Dragon (edited 11-14-2025).]
Let's apply a little logic here. The Dems tried everything to get Trump from not winning the Presidency again. All failed. The Repubs released 3,000 Epstein e-mails, the Dems ? Three.
Then, there is the issue of the blacked out "witness" who said (wrote a book I think) Trump did nothing wrong. The same woman also had Prince Andrew dropped in the succession to be King of England.
*******************
The Epstein saga is interesting. I am more interested in how he magically killed himself in jail. It has been said the guards who were supposedly to watch him fell asleep. He was under suicide watch, and the cameras mysteriously stopped working.
But every time something like this comes up my IT head pops at how much the majority of people have no clue how easy they are deceived. I could recreate that same email thread from our printer that lets me send out emails. Without the header information you wouldn't know where it came from. But if you have access to the header you would see the embedded code, where it came from.
Same thing for when they "bleach" some server. The **** you know they had backups, no way any contract support team isn't going to do backups if they are asked to manage your exchange server. Or am I just fooling myself...
I was IT for my entire career. Mostly radio and telecom, but a lot of Windows support, too. Of course emails can be "cobbled together". But if someone releases an email, I would (perhaps foolishly?) hope that the source was verified. It's easy enough to prove or disprove, I would think. (Isn't all that stuff a matter of record, by now?)
Not that I would put it past... certain people - to spoof an email, but there's just nothing "bombshell" - or even "new" - about any of this info. They're clutching at straws.
Originally posted by cliffw: ... I am more interested in how he magically killed himself in jail. It has been said the guards who were supposedly to watch him fell asleep. He was under suicide watch, and the cameras mysteriously stopped working.
I'd like to say that this will all come out. But I doubt it. They have (or will come up with) bigger fish to fry.
They may even release a "scenario". But there will never be anything official. And nobody will be punished for it.
[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 11-14-2025).]
Bondi puts weight of SDNY behind Epstein investigation of Democrats
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday tapped one of the most powerful prosecutors in the country to lead an investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s past involvement with prominent Democrats and institutions.
Jay Clayton, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was selected to lead the probe that President Trump ordered as his administration has been scrutinized for his past relationship with the convicted sex offender.
The president suggested that the investigation could span from former President Clinton to JPMorgan Chase and other institutions, even as his Justice Department said earlier this year a “systematic review” did not uncover any evidence on which charges against “uncharged third parties” could be based.
In a post to the social platform X announcing the pick, Bondi called Clayton “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country.”
“As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people,” the attorney general said.
The Southern District of New York is widely viewed by legal experts as one of the most powerful federal prosecutor’s offices in the country. It has long been conferred a greater degree of independence than the nation’s other 92 U.S. attorneys’ offices, and is known for handling high-profile prosecutions of corruption, national security, sex trafficking and white-collar crime.
Clayton was chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during Trump’s first administration. He previously was a partner at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, specializing in major corporate mergers and acquisitions and returned to the firm in 2021. He had never been a prosecutor before taking over the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.
After Clayton’s 120-day interim term at SDNY ran out, Manhattan’s federal court judges retained him in the role until the Senate could confirm someone to the role.
Clayton’s confirmation has been stalled by Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who invoked the Senate “blue slip” tradition to block the nominee.
Trump announced the investigation Friday on Truth Social, casting it as a response to Democrats’ efforts to use his old ties to Epstein as a weapon against his White House.
He claimed Democrats are using the “Epstein Hoax” to deflect from the government shutdown and that Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York City jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, is more tied to their party.
In addition to Clinton, Trump named Larry Summers, who was Clinton’s former Treasury secretary and Harvard’s former president, and LinkedIn co-founder and top Democratic donor Reid Hoffman as other possible targets.
“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” Trump said. “Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’ Stay tuned!!!”
I was IT for my entire career. Mostly radio and telecom, but a lot of Windows support, too. Of course emails can be "cobbled together". But if someone releases an email, I would (perhaps foolishly?) hope that the source was verified. It's easy enough to prove or disprove, I would think. (Isn't all that stuff a matter of record, by now?)
Not that I would put it past... certain people - to spoof an email, but there's just nothing "bombshell" - or even "new" - about any of this info. They're clutching at straws.
Thats just it they don't need it to be disproved. There is still signs in people's yards out here all about Trump being a Russian asset People believe what they want to believe, if they didn't several laptops would have been investigated. IT consultants would have been subpoenaed for backups and I suspect half of DC would not be in office.
TrishReganChannel ' Is it true that Bill Clinton chased skirts since his teen years ? ' ' Well, duh.. ' Let us build a bear trap, a honeypot sting to snag the President, compromise and extort the mad bugger. Sure enough, sooner or later, Big_Bad_Daddy_Bugger_Biden_Joe will come sniffing around, we'll snare him too ! ' Catch them with their pants down ! ' ~ J.E.Hoover 1928 Yeah, it's a dirty trick, works every time, though. Mitt Romney Concession Speech: 2012 ' Pierre Delecto '
[This message has been edited by Valkrie9 (edited 11-15-2025).]
The Dempartie_Nazi_Hamas_Communist_Klan becoming deranged, whites of the eyes glaring, spittling, foaming at the mouth crazy. . . . Psychosis, induced by BS, Woo Floo Viral infection, the Chinese Virus.
[This message has been edited by Valkrie9 (edited 11-16-2025).]
