- November 15, 2025
From Trump To Ex-Prince Andrew: Most Striking Revelations In Newly Released Epstein Documents
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The new trove of more than 20,000 pages sheds fresh light on Epstein’s private comments, and the elite networks he continued engaging with despite his criminal past
US President Donald Trump, right, and first lady Melania Trump, left, accompanied by Britain’s former Prince Andrew. (AP file photo)
The US House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released more than 20,000 pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who moved in the highest circles of politics, business and entertainment before his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor, and his 2019 death in jail while facing sex-trafficking charges.
The release came in two stages. Democrats first highlighted three emails they said raised serious questions about US President Donald Trump’s knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Republicans hit back by dumping a far larger batch, accusing Democrats of cherry-picking to damage the president.
Taken together, the emails don’t unveil a new criminal conspiracy. Instead, they offer a raw look at Epstein’s private views, his efforts to manage his reputation, his attempts to influence media narratives, and the way he used his network of powerful contacts from Trump and Prince Andrew to Larry Summers, Michael Wolff, Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, high-profile lawyers and celebrities.
Here are the biggest takeaways.
‘Of course he knew about the girls’: Epstein’s claims about Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell
At the centre of the political fight over these documents are Epstein’s emails about Trump.
In a January 2019 email to journalist and Trump biographer Michael Wolff, Epstein wrote about Trump: “Of course, he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” He was referring to Ghislaine Maxwell, his longtime associate now serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking and recruiting girls for Epstein.
In other messages, Epstein complained to Wolff that Trump had claimed to ban him from Mar-a-Lago, insisting he had never been a club member in the first place. He also described Virginia Giuffre, who said she was recruited from Mar-a-Lago as a teenager and later became Epstein’s most prominent accuser, noting that she had worked there and was “the one who accused Prince Andrew”.
These lines are politically explosive as they suggest Epstein believed Trump understood far more than he has acknowledged. But the emails don’t spell out what exactly Trump knew or when. Giuffre herself, before her suicide earlier this year, said Trump never abused her and she did not think he knew about Epstein’s crimes. White House press secretary has accused Democrats of creating a “fake narrative”.
‘The dog that hasn’t barked’: Trump, Giuffre and Epstein’s frustration
Another email that appears in both Democratic and Republican releases shows Epstein writing to Maxwell in 2011 about Trump and Giuffre: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.. Virginia spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned.”
Maxwell replied: “I have been thinking about that.”
The phrase “dog that hasn’t barked” is generally used to suggest that someone’s silence is itself significant. Epstein seemed puzzled that Trump had never publicly come up in Giuffre’s accounts, even though he believed she had spent extended time around him.
Again, the emails don’t show wrongdoing by Trump, but they reveal how closely Epstein and Maxwell were tracking who did and did not feature in public allegations.
Trump, for his part, has said he cut ties with Epstein because he was “taking people who worked for me”, including Giuffre.
Epstein’s private verdict on Trump: ‘None as bad as Trump’
Beyond tactical talk, the new documents capture Epstein’s personal contempt for Trump in his later years. In a 2017 email, he wrote: “I have met some very bad people. None as bad as Trump. Not one decent cell in his body.”
In other messages, he called Trump a “maniac” and suggested he was showing signs of “early dementia”. This is a striking contrast with photographs and anecdotes from the 1990s, when they appeared socially close. By the time of these emails, their relationship had clearly soured, and Epstein was speaking with open hostility about the man who had become US president.
Trump responded to the latest release on his social-media platform by accusing Democrats of trying to “bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again” to distract from the bruising government shutdown fight in Washington.
Prince Andrew: Emails reinforce questions over his timeline and that infamous photograph
Several emails focus on former Prince Andrew, now formally known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Giuffre accused him of sexually abusing her when she was 17, allegations he denies. He has also claimed he cut ties with Epstein in late 2010 and has cast doubt on the authenticity of the now-famous photograph of him with Giuffre at Maxwell’s London home.
The new documents undercut both points:
- In a 2011 email to a reporter, Epstein wrote: “Yes she was on my plane, and yes she had her photo taken with Andrew as many of my employees have,” effectively affirming that the photograph was real and that Giuffre had flown on his jet.
- In March 2011, four months after he later claimed to have ended his relationship with Epstein, the former prince wrote to him and Maxwell, saying, “I can’t take any more of this,” in response to allegations put to him by the Mail on Sunday.
In another set of emails to a publicist, Epstein even tried to craft a media line around “the girl who accused Prince Andrew”, claiming she was “nothing more than a telephone answerer”, insisting she was “never 15″, and saying “the palace would love it” if a reporter ran a story about “false allegations”.
Andrew continues to deny wrongdoing, but the emails make his public timeline and narrative harder to sustain.
Michael Wolff at the centre of the Trump–Epstein media triangle
Michael Wolff, the New York writer whose books Fire and Fury and Siege became defining chronicles of the Trump presidency, appears extensively in the trove.
- Epstein repeatedly sought Wolff’s advice on how Trump might deal with questions about their relationship during the 2016 campaign.
- In a 2015 email, Wolff told Epstein: “I think you should let him hang himself. If [Trump] says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.”
- When Reuters was preparing a story on a lawsuit accusing both Trump and Epstein of a 1994 assault, Wolff wrote: “Well, I guess if there’s anybody who can wave this away, it’s Donald. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Democrats highlighted that Wolff has said he holds hours of taped conversations with Epstein about Trump.
Larry Summers’s emails: Harsh lines on Trump, gender and elite hypocrisy
Former US Treasury Secretary and ex-Harvard president Larry Summers shows up frequently in Epstein’s inbox.
On a 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia, Summers emailed Epstein that the “general view” among Saudi officials was that “Donald is a clown, increasingly dangerous on foreign policy.” In another exchange, he wrote that “half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women” and complained that American elites treated “hit[ting] on a few women 10 years ago” as more disqualifying than “murder your baby by beating and abandonment” for jobs at networks or think tanks — before adding, in capital letters, “DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”
Summers has faced criticism in the past over remarks on women and science.
The elite legal world: Kathryn Ruemmler’s blunt emails about New Jersey and Trump’s fixer
Another recurring name is Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House Counsel in the Obama administration and now chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs.
- In a 2018 exchange, she and Epstein discussed the criminal case against Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen, who had admitted to arranging hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. Epstein wrote that he “knew how dirty Donald is” and that non-lawyers had no idea what it meant when a “fixer” flipped.
- In a separate email about driving to New York, Ruemmler joked she would stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, see people “at least 100 pounds overweight”, have a panic attack and then decide never to eat again out of fear she would “end up like one of these people.”
The emails don’t suggest misconduct on her part, but they underline how comfortably Epstein remained in contact with top-tier legal and corporate figures, and how unguarded those exchanges could be.
Power, foreign policy and access: Thiel, Bannon, Lavrov and the Kremlin channel
The documents also show Epstein presenting himself as a useful conduit to global power.
- In a 2018 email to PayPal founder and tech investor Peter Thiel, he praised Thiel’s “trump exaggerations, not lies,” asked how he was enjoying Los Angeles, and invited him to “visit me [in the] Caribbean” in December. Thiel’s spokesperson later said he never visited Epstein’s island.
- In another 2018 exchange, Epstein told former Trump strategist Steve Bannon that if Bannon could spend eight to 10 days in Europe, Epstein could arrange “many leaders of countries” for one-on-one meetings. “Europe by remote doesn’t work,” he wrote.
- He also wrote to Thorbjørn Jagland, then head of the Council of Europe and a former Norwegian prime minister, suggesting that Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov should seek Epstein’s insights before Putin’s summit with Trump. Epstein claimed he had already spoken to Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin about Trump, saying Churkin “understood Trump after our conversations” and that Trump “must be seen to get something”.
These emails don’t reveal new misconduct, but they illustrate how Epstein remained a node in a dense, overlapping world of politics, media and art, even after serving jail time and being widely known as a convicted sex offender.
Karishma Jain, Chief Sub Editor at News18.com, writes and edits opinion pieces on a variety of subjects, including Indian politics and policy, culture and the arts, technology and social change. Follow her @kar…Read More
Karishma Jain, Chief Sub Editor at News18.com, writes and edits opinion pieces on a variety of subjects, including Indian politics and policy, culture and the arts, technology and social change. Follow her @kar… Read More
November 15, 2025, 08:50 IST
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