President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Democrats are reintroducing the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax” to distract from their government shutdown and other issues they are performing poorly on.
Trump issued a response via Truth Social shortly after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pressed reporters to ask Democrat lawmakers why they redacted the name of Virginia Giuffre in one of several Epstein emails released Wednesday. She noted that Giuffre, who committed suicide in April and once worked at Mar-a-Lago, stated that Trump “couldn’t have been friendlier” to her in her recently released book Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice.
“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”
“The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk — and they should pay a fair price,” he added.
Trump urged against feeding Epstein deflections.
“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!” he concluded.
He followed up with another post shortly after.
“In other words, the Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one — THE SHUTDOWN!” he wrote.
Moments earlier, Leavitt responded to a question about the emails during the briefing.
“These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong, and what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein,” Leavitt said.
In an April 2011 email from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, the late disgraced financier wrote, “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump… [redacted] spent hours at my house with him… he has never once been mentioned.”
Guiffre worked at the Mar-a-Lago spa before, and as she stated in her book, Maxwell hired her as a “masseuse,” per CBS News. Leavitt noted Wednesday that Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because Epstein “was a pedophile” and “creep.”
“It was CBS’s own reporting that recently wrote that Ms. Guiffre maintained, and God rest her soul, that she maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her,” Leavitt added.
She challenged reporters in the room to ask Democrats why Giuffre’s name was redacted when she is on record with statements against Epstein.
“I think it’s a question worth asking the Democrat party, and you should all go ask them after this briefing, of why they chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and is unfortunately no longer with us,” she said.
