By Morgan Sweeney
The Center Square

Emails released Wednesday appear to show that President Donald Trump knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement with underaged women, but the White House says the emails “prove nothing.”

Leavitt was asked Wednesday afternoon to respond to the “substance” of the emails and whether Trump spent time with a victim at Epstein’s house, as one of the emails seems to suggest.

“These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at a press briefing Wednesday afternoon.

She maintained that the president has always acknowledged the two had a relationship until they had a falling out and Epstein was banned from Mar-a-Lago.

“What President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep,” Leavitt told reporters.

Trump has said it was because Epstein was trying to poach employees from the country club.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has been conducting an investigation into the federal government’s handling of the Epstein files, released over 20,000 pages of documents Wednesday. Committee Democrats spotlighted three emails to the public where Epstein talks about Trump.

In the first email from April 2011, Epstein refers to Trump as “the dog that hasn’t barked,” despite having spent time with a victim, according to Epstein.

“i want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is trump,” Epstein wrote to his associate, now-convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. “[Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”

“I have been thinking about that,” Maxwell wrote back.

The second email was between journalist Michael Wolff and Epstein in December 2015. Trump was a known contender for the presidency by that time, as he had announced he was running in June of that year. Wolff has since written several books about the first Trump presidency and his subsequent reelection.

“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff wrote to Epstein.

“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. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency,” Wolff later replied. “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 email was also between Wolff and Epstein, this time in January 2019.

“[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,” Epstein wrote to Wolff.

Committee Republicans shot back at Democrats’ claim that the emails “raise serious questions about Donald Trump and his knowledge of Epstein’s horrific crimes” with accusations of their own.

The victim’s name was redacted in the emails Democrats shared, but Republicans reportedly shared unredacted copies of those emails with some news outlets, revealing that the victim was Virginia Giuffre, a known victim of Epstein who had both testified in court and spoken publicly about her abuse. Giuffre committed suicide in April in Australia, where she then lived. Her posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl, was published in October.

“Why did Democrats cover up the name when the Estate didn’t redact it in the redacted documents provided to the committee,” House Republicans wrote on X. “It’s because this victim, Virginia Giuffre, publicly said that she never witnessed wrongdoing by President Trump.”

When responding to reporters Wednesday afternoon, Leavitt doubled down on this response.

“Miss Giuffre maintained, and God rest her soul, that… there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her,” Leavitt said. “And so I think it’s a question worth asking the Democrat party… chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is and is, unfortunately, no longer with us.”

Leavitt said that the administration has been fully committed to transparency, despite the Department of Justice’s seemingly conflicting messages concerning the files earlier this year.