The Dog That Hasn't Barked: What Did Trump Know About Epstein's Girls?
Twenty-Seven Reasons why Trump Should be Subpoenaed to Testify Regarding His Ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Various Sexual Misconduct Allegations
What the Records Show
In January 2019, five months before his arrest, Jeffrey Epstein sent a private email to author Michael Wolff about Donald Trump. "Of course he knew about the girls," Epstein wrote, "as he asked Ghislaine to stop."
That email is now part of the public record. So is an FBI account of a 2006 phone call in which Trump told the Palm Beach police chief that “people in New York knew that Epstein’s behavior was disgusting” and that “everyone” knew what he had been doing.
So is Virginia Giuffre’s sworn deposition, in which she describes being recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell as a teenage locker-room attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago — something Trump himself acknowledged in 2025.
And, as of March 5, 2026, so are 16 pages of FBI interviews with a woman who claims that around 1983, when she was 13 years old, Epstein introduced her to Trump and that Trump sexually assaulted her. (Thirty-seven additional pages of those interviews remain withheld.)
Of course, Donald Trump has never been asked about any of this under oath—even though there are at least 38,000 references to him in the files that have been released thus far, more than any other person, and even though Trump’s close relationship with Epstein is extraordinarily well-documented, as are scores of sexual assault allegations against the president. (Rep. Jamie Raskin has asserted that Trump’s name appears more than a million times in the complete, unredacted FBI files.)
Unfortunately, given that the Democrats are the minority party, the chances of Trump being subpoenaed are virtually nil. At least that’s generally the case with minority parties that are usually relegated to the sidelines where they issue press releases that no one reads.
But under Ranking Member Robert Garcia, the House Oversight Committee has started doing something wildly unexpected—namely, providing oversight. On March 4, the Committee voted 24-19 to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi, demanding she testify about the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files.
The vote was an extraordinary development for a committee controlled by Republicans: four GOP members — Reps. Tim Burchett, Michael Cloud, Lauren Boebert, and Scott Perry — crossed the aisle to join every Democrat in forcing the subpoena through. It was a rare moment in which the minority, led by Garcia, managed to turn the machinery of oversight against the administration’s own Attorney General, in effect asserting that she had been orchestrating a whitewash to conceal who, in addition to Ghislaine Maxwell, worked with Epstein in overseeing his massive sex trafficking conspiracy.
Garcia has been unsparing in his characterization of what drove the vote. “For months,” he said, “Attorney General Bondi has been instrumental in orchestrating the White House’s cover-up of the Epstein files, and has failed to comply with our bipartisan subpoena for the release of the complete, unredacted files.”
As of this writing, Bondi has not fully complied—and the means for forcing her to testify are, at best, too slow and laborious to address the political moment. But the votes establishes on the record that a bipartisan majority of the committee believes there is a coverup underway.
All of which raises the explosive question of whether Donald Trump will be subpoenaed—something that almost certainly will never happen while the Committee is still run by the Republicans. But The Washington Post reported this week that Democrats are already drawing up plans to subpoena Trump if they win back the House majority in the November 2026 midterms. That’s the most realistic near-term pathway — and it still requires winning the midterms, then surviving what would be years of litigation.
So the chances that Donald Trump will be subpoenaed and compelled to testify about Jeffrey Epstein are remote.
But it is virtually impossible for anything to happen until the midterms, and even after that, the chances are slim. In the end, the case for subpoenaing Trump is strong; but the political will to do it, perhaps even after the midterms, is not.
But the questions don’t go away because the political will vanishes. Trump’s name appears more than 38,000 times in the Epstein files — more than any other person — and he has never been asked a single question about any of it under oath. It is worth remembering that in July 2006, Trump himself called Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter to volunteer that “everyone” knew what Epstein had been doing. If he was willing to say that much to a local detective twenty years ago, the question is what he is now unwilling to say — and why.
This is, in other words, precisely why it is essential to have a free press. When the oversight mechanisms of government fail — when subpoenas go unenforced, when the Justice Department withholds the files, when the committee chairman won’t call the most obvious witness — the job of establishing what the record actually shows falls to journalists. What follows is my attempt to do that by weaving together what is known about Trump’s ties to Epstein with the documented record of sexual abuse allegations against Trump himself.
The Late 1970s: Jessica Leeds
Jessica Leeds told The New York Times that, on a commercial flight to New York in the late 1970s, Trump reached his hand up her skirt and grabbed her breasts. She described him as “like an octopus — his hands were everywhere.” She fled to the back of the plane.
Leeds later testified in the 2023 federal civil trial brought by E. Jean Carroll, providing firsthand sworn testimony. A federal judge allowed her testimony as evidence of a pattern of behavior under Federal Rules of Evidence 413 and 415. Trump denied the allegation.
c. 1983: The Missing FBI Files
On Thursday, March 5, the Justice Department released 16 pages culled from interviews the FBI conducted in 2019 with an unnamed woman who claims that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted her in the 1980’s. She asserted that sometime around 1983, when she was 13 years old, she met Epstein, who was then living in Hilton Head, South Carolina. At an unspecified time over the next two years or so, Epstein flew her to New York or New Jersey and introduced her to Trump, “who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out.”
The missing files were first reported by d, an independent journalist, on February 15. The story has since been pursued in depth by The Post and Courier in South Carolina. The release of the 16 pages came in response to reports that 53 pages of specific files regarding Trump were missing from the public record—meaning that an additional 37 pages have yet to be made public.
1987–2004: Trump and Epstein — The Social Relationship
In 2002, Trump told New York magazine that he had known Jeffrey Epstein for fifteen years, which suggests that their friendship began around 1987. Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985, and Epstein purchased a Palm Beach mansion two miles away in 1990. They traveled in overlapping social circles in both New York and Palm Beach, and their frequent socializing was well-documented into the early 2000s.
1989: Ivana Trump
In a deposition taken during their 1990 divorce proceedings, Ivana Trump, the president’s first wife, accused him of raping her in a fit of rage. The deposition was sealed as part of the divorce settlement. The account was first made public in the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump by Harry Hurt III, and was later written about in The New Yorker and The Daily Beast.
In a statement added to later editions of the book, Ivana softened her account, saying she did not want the word “rape” to be interpreted in “a literal or criminal sense.” She later denied the story publicly in 2015, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, but the existence of her deposition is not disputed.
1990–1994: The Plaza Hotel Parties
During the years Trump owned the Plaza Hotel (1988–1995), he became known for hosting parties in hotel suites where, according to a fashion photographer quoted by journalist Michael Gross in The Daily Beast, older wealthy men were introduced to young women and girls, some of whom were as young as fifteen. The photographer described the gatherings as built on “power and dominating girls who can’t push back and can be discarded.”
“It was guys with younger girls, sex, a lot of sex, a lot of cocaine, top-shelf liquor,” the photographer told Gross. According to Gross’s reporting, Trump would “go from room to room.” Trump has not been accused of criminal activity in connection with these gatherings.
1992: Trump to Epstein: “She’s Hot!”
In November 1992, NBC cameras filming a segment for Faith Daniels’ talk show A Closer Look captured Trump and Epstein together at a Mar-a-Lago party attended by Buffalo Bills cheerleaders. On the footage, Trump and Epstein are seen laughing and gesturing toward women on the dance floor; Trump can be heard saying of one woman, “Look at her, back there… She’s hot,” to which Epstein smiles and nods. The footage, which remained in NBC’s archive, was first published by NBC News and the Washington Post in July 2019.
1992–1993: Jill Harth
Businesswoman Jill Harth filed a civil lawsuit in 1997 alleging that Trump repeatedly groped and harassed her between 1992 and 1993, and once pinned her against a wall in a bedroom at Mar-a-Lago in what she described as an attempted rape. She alleged he pushed her against the door, had his hands all over her, tried to kiss her, pull down her underwear, and would not stop until she threatened to scream.
According to The Guardian, Harth dropped the lawsuit after reaching a settlement on a separate breach of contract case. In 2016, when Trump was seeking the presidency, she reaffirmed those allegations publicly.
1993: Stacey Williams
Sports Illustrated swimwear model Stacey Williams, who dated Epstein for about two months in 1992, was on a walk with Epstein in the late winter or early spring of 1993, when Epstein suggested they visit Trump at Trump Tower. But just after they arrived, she alleges, Trump pulled her toward him and started putting his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and her buttocks. As The Guardian reported, at the time, she said she saw the two men smiling at each other in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.
Williams said nothing publicly about the episode for three decades, but CNN spoke to three separate friends to whom she had described the incident — in 2006, 2015, and 2018, respectively — all of whom confirmed her account and found her credible. She also produced a postcard from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, handwritten on the back: “Stacey, your home away from home, Love Donald.” The postcard is not dated but was consistent with his practice of sending notes to models he met.
The Trump campaign denied the allegation, noting Williams came forward on a “Survivors for Kamala” Zoom call two weeks before the 2024 election. Williams acknowledged her political preferences, but said her account was first recorded in a documentary interview in 2022, before the political context arose.
1993: The Lolita Express
Flight records released by the Justice Department place Trump on Epstein’s private jet at least eight times between 1993 and 1996—far more than reported earlier. On at least four of those flights, Ghislaine Maxwell was present. On one 1993 flight, Trump and Epstein were the only two passengers. On another, three passengers were listed: Epstein, Trump, and a 20-year-old woman whose name was redacted—all of which raises questions about what Trump observed, heard, and knew during that period. The source is a January 7, 2020 internal email from the U.S. Department of Justice that was released in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
1994: The Katie Johnson Case
On April 26, 2016, a woman using the pseudonym “Katie Johnson” filed a federal civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Central California alleging that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had sexually abused and raped her over a four-month period in 1994 when she was thirteen years old.
According to the lawsuit, Trump sexually assaulted Johnson on multiple occasions, demanded oral sex, and raped her. After one assault, the lawsuit alleged, Trump “pushed both minors away while angrily berating them for the ‘poor’ quality of their sexual performance.” The complaint also alleged that Epstein, upon learning Trump had taken Johnson’s virginity, “attempted to strike her about the head with his closed fists” because he had not been first. Both men, she alleged, threatened her life and her family’s safety.
Trump’s attorney Alan Garten called the allegations “unequivocally false.” The California filing was dismissed on procedural grounds.
In June 2016, “Katie Johnson” refiled in the Southern District of New York under the name “Jane Doe,” suing Trump and Epstein for sex crimes, assault and battery, false imprisonment, and defamation. This suit also alleged that she had been lured to a series of “underage sex parties” at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse at 9 East 71st Street after being recruited at the Port Authority Bus Terminal by a woman who introduced herself as “Tiffany,” who had been hired by Epstein in 1990 “to attract adolescent women” to parties at his Upper East Side mansion.
The refiled suit included two sworn supporting declarations. “Tiffany Doe” filed a formal affidavit stating that she had been hired by Epstein as a party planner, but part of her real job was to procure young girls from the Port Authority and elsewhere.
In the summer of 1994, she recruited a minor who expressed interest in modeling. Tiffany’s affidavit said that both “Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein were advised that she(the recruit) was 13 years old. I personally witnessed four sexual encounters” between Trump and the 13-year-old.
In one of the alleged incidents, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly victimized, and in another, Trump continued assaulting the 13-year-old “despite her pleas to stop.” Tiffany said that Epstein likewise attempted to rape the 13-year-old on two occasions that she witnessed or learned of. Tiffany added that she personally witnessed both Trump and Epstein threaten to kill the 13-year-old if she were to tell anyone what had happened and that Trump further warned the victim that he was “capable of having her whole family killed.”
In her affidavit, Tiffany swore she personally witnessed Johnson being forced to perform sex acts with both Trump and Epstein, and that she witnessed both men rape Johnson. A third woman, “Joan Doe,” filed a separate declaration stating that during the “1994–95 school year,” Jane Doe had told her about the abuse. Attorney Lisa Bloom, representing Johnson, said that Johnson also gave a recorded interview to CNN that the network never aired.
On November 2, 2016 — six days before the presidential election — Bloom scheduled a press conference at which Johnson was to break her silence publicly. The conference was abruptly canceled hours before it was to begin. “Jane Doe has received numerous threats today as have all Trump accusers I have represented,” Bloom told reporters. “She is living in fear.” The lawsuit was subsequently withdrawn. Johnson never appeared publicly or gave her real name. The case was never adjudicated, and no court made any finding on the merits.
The existence of sworn declarations from Tiffany Doe and Joan Doe, combined with the contemporaneous NBC footage and the documented pattern of underage-girl recruitment at Epstein’s parties, sets this case apart from allegations excluded from this record for lack of corroboration — though the core allegations have never been tested in court.
Mid-1990s: E. Jean Carroll
This is the most consequential entry in this record because it is the only one that has been fully tested in federal court and resulted in a jury finding of liability.
E. Jean Carroll, a longtime columnist for Elle magazine, alleged that in late 1995 or early 1996, Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Carroll published the account in June 2019.
After years of litigation, a federal civil trial took place in April 2023 before Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The jury — six men and three women — deliberated for fewer than three hours before finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages: $2 million for sexual assault, $2.7 million for defamation, and $300,000 in punitive damages.
Though the jury did not find Trump liable under the specific New York legal definition of “rape” (which at the time required penile penetration), Judge Kaplan later wrote in a ruling that the jury’s finding was consistent with rape “as the word is commonly understood,” and that Carroll’s accusation was “substantially true.”
Trump appealed. In December 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the verdict in full. As of this writing, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the judgment. That request is pending.
In a separate defamation trial in January 2024, a jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million after Trump continued to publicly call her claims a “hoax” and a “con job” following the first verdict.
November 1996: Moscow — The Beverly Hills Casino Opening
As I reported in my 2021 book American Kompromat, in November 1996, Trump traveled to Moscow on a three-day real estate scouting trip with Howard Lorber, president of the Vector Group; Leon Black, founder of Apollo Global Management (and a name found later in Epstein’s “black book”); Matthew Calamari; Bennett LeBow; and others. The stated purpose was scouting locations for a possible Trump Tower Moscow, a deal that never materialized. Among the events on the trip: the group attended the grand opening of the Beverly Hills Casino—formerly the Firebird—in which action star Chuck Norris held a 50 percent stake and which also served as a casino/strip club. Footage from the opening shows women filling out casting forms and dancing at the venue. Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones was also among the attendees.
In subsequent Senate Intelligence Committee testimony, Leon Black recalled attending a concert with Trump during the trip, followed by what he described as a “discotheque,” and acknowledged that he and Trump “might have been in a strip club together.” The Moscow nightclub scene of the mid-1990s was well-documented as a KGB hunting ground: international businessmen were routinely taken to clubs and parties where prostitutes were present, and Russian intelligence sought to exploit the resulting leverage. No specific misconduct by Trump on the 1996 trip has been established.
1997: Amy Dorris
In September 2020, Amy Dorris, a former model, told The Guardian that Trump forcibly kissed and groped her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York in 1997, while she was the guest of her then-boyfriend, a friend of Trump’s. She said he “just shoved his tongue down my throat” and grabbed her buttocks and would not let go.
The Guardian reported that it had reviewed photographs of Dorris at the event, consistent with her account of being there, and had spoken to a friend and family member to whom she had described the incident at the time. Trump denied the allegation.
1997: The Miss Teen USA Dressing Room
In 2016, BuzzFeed News published accounts from four women who competed in the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant — some as young as 15 — alleging that Trump walked into their dressing room unannounced while they were changing. Former Miss Vermont Teen USA Mariah Billado recalled Trump saying, “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.” A fifth contestant later came forward with the same account. Billado said she told Ivanka Trump, who reportedly responded, “Yeah, he does that.”
Eleven other contestants from the same pageant told BuzzFeed they did not recall the incident.
Trump owned the Miss Universe franchise, which included Miss Teen USA, from 1996 to 2015. He made similar statements on a 2005 Howard Stern broadcast describing his practice of entering beauty pageant dressing rooms unannounced — though that specific comment referred to adult contestants, not teen competitors.
2000: Epstein Recruits Virginia Giuffre, his most prominent victim, from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago
Virginia Giuffre, whose sworn deposition is part of the public record, was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell while she was a 16 or 17-year-old locker room attendant at the Mar-a-Lago spa where her father worked as a maintenance employee. Trump himself has acknowledged this, telling reporters in 2025: “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone.”
But two questions remain unclear: What Trump did know about Maxwell’s and Epstein’s activities at his own club? And when Trump referred to “people” who were hired away from the spa by Epstein, was he referring to other young women in addition to Giuffre?
2001: Tasha Dixon, Miss Arizona USA
Former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon told CBS in 2016 that Trump entered the Miss USA dressing room in 2001 when contestants were in various states of undress. “He just came strolling right in,” she said. “There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Others girls were naked.” She said employees encouraged contestants to give Trump attention when he came in.
2002: Fun, Fun, Fun
In a 2002 New York magazine profile—three years before Palm Beach police began investigating Epstein—Trump said of his friend: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Trump has never clarified exactly what he meant when he said “on the younger side.”
2003: The Epstein Birthday Album
In 2003, a message attributed to Trump appeared in the Epstein birthday album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell—written inside a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman. The message, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and later released by House Democrats on the Oversight Committee itself, reads in part: “may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump has denied authorship and filed a $10 billion lawsuit. The text of the alleged message takes the form of a dialogue between “Donald” and “Jeffrey,” in which they agree they have “certain things in common,” that “enigmas never age,” and concludes: “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret. Donald J. Trump.”
The Journal moved to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit, arguing there is “nothing defamatory about a person sending a bawdy note to a friend.”
The lawsuit was still pending as of early 2026. Congress has the authority to resolve that dispute through sworn testimony and document requests that courts have not yet compelled.
2005: The Access Hollywood Tape
On September 16, 2005, during filming for a guest appearance on the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives, Trump was recorded in a private conversation with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. The recording, obtained by The Washington Post and published on October 7, 2016, captured Trump saying, in part: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab ‘em by the pussy.”
Trump initially issued an apology, calling it “locker room talk.” He later told associates he believed the voice on the tape wasn’t his—a claim Billy Bush explicitly rebutted in a New York Times op-ed: “Of course he said it.” The tape is authenticated. It was played at trial in the Carroll civil case and admitted as evidence of a pattern of conduct.
2005: Natasha Stoynoff
Natasha Stoynoff, a staff writer for People magazine, wrote a first-person account in 2016 alleging that Trump pushed her against a wall and attempted to kiss her during an interview at Mar-a-Lago in 2005—the same year the Access Hollywood tape was recorded. She said the encounter was interrupted when Trump’s butler entered the room. People subsequently published a statement from six colleagues who said Stoynoff had told them about the incident at the time. Stoynoff later testified in the Carroll federal trial, providing sworn testimony admitted as pattern evidence. Trump denied the allegation.
2006: Trump Calls Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter
Around July 2006, as details of the Palm Beach Police Department’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein became public, Trump telephoned the department’s chief, Michael Reiter, to express support. According to Reiter’s account—as recorded in an FBI 302 form in an October 2019 interview and released as part of the DOJ’s January 2026 Epstein disclosures—Trump told him: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
According to the FBI document:
DONALD TRUMP told that he threw EPSTEIN out of his club. TRUMP called the PBPD to tell him "thank goodness you' re stopping him, everyone has known he's been doing this". TRUMP told him people in New York knew EPSTEIN was disgusting. TRUMP said MAXWELL was EPSTEIN's operative, "she is evil and to focus on her". TRUMP told that he was around EPSTEIN once when teenagers were present and TRUMP "got the hell out of there". TRUMP was one of the very first people to call when people found out that they were investigating EPSTEIN.
Trump’s call has been cited as evidence that he cooperated with investigators and kept his distance from Epstein’s crimes, but it simultaneously confirms that Trump had direct personal knowledge of Epstein’s predatory conduct toward minors—a fact that sits uneasily alongside the documented social closeness between the two men throughout the late 1980s and 1990s.
Moreover, Trump’s characterization of Maxwell as “evil” is particularly interesting in terms of more recent accounts—after her arrest— in which he says “I wish her well.” The discrepancy raises questions about whether Ghislaine may have compromising information about Trump.
2006–2007: Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal — Hush Money / Federal Conviction
These cases differ from the others in a critical way: the underlying conduct—paying hush money to conceal sexual encounters—resulted in a federal guilty plea by Trump’s attorney and a criminal conviction of Trump himself.
Karen McDougal alleged she had a consensual ten-month affair with Trump beginning in June 2006. American Media Inc. (publisher of the National Enquirer) paid her $150,000 for the exclusive rights to her story and then never published it—a practice known as “catch and kill.” Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford), an adult film actress, alleged she had a sexual encounter with Trump in July 2006 at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. In October 2016, twelve days before the election, Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 through a shell company in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement. Cohen later pleaded guilty in August 2018 to eight charges including campaign finance violations, stating in federal court that he made the payment “at the direction of” Trump.
On May 30, 2024, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records—the first criminal conviction of a former American president. Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge.
2007: Summer Zervos
In 2007, Summer Zervos, a California resident who was a contestant on Season 5 of The Apprentice, met with Trump at his New York office, where he allegedly kissed her twice on the lips. Trump then invited her to the Beverly Hills Hotel for dinner. When she arrived, she was escorted not to a restaurant but to his bungalow. After fifteen minutes, Trump emerged from his bedroom, kissed her “open mouthed,” and pulled her toward him. He “grabbed her shoulder, again kissing her very aggressively, and placed his hand on her breast.” After she pulled back, he took her hand, led her into the bedroom, and began to “press his genitals against her, trying to kiss her again.” Only after she insisted she had come for dinner did he stop; he “paced around the room and seemed angry.”
The following day, Trump introduced Zervos to the general manager of his golf course, who then offered her a job at half the salary she had been seeking. She called Trump and told him she “was upset, because it felt like she was being penalized for not sleeping with him.” On January 17, 2017, Zervos filed a defamation lawsuit in New York Supreme Court after Trump publicly called her and other accusers liars. After years of litigation, Zervos withdrew the suit in 2021, accepting no financial compensation but retaining the right to speak publicly. She stands by the allegations.
2011: The Case of the Dog That Didn’t Bark
Much of Epstein’s private correspondence that was released by House Democrats on the Oversight Committee in November 2025 shows that Epstein believed Trump was aware of the trafficking and was staying silent about it. Consequently, in a 2011 email to Maxwell, Epstein called Trump “the dog that hasn’t barked”—noting that despite a victim having spent hours at his house with Trump, Trump “has never once been mentioned.”
This email, along with emails Epstein sent to Michael Wolff in December 2015 and January 2019 (see below), shows that Epstein may have regarded Trump’s knowledge and his silence as potential leverage to be used against the president.
June 2013: Trump and the Agalarovs at “The Act,” Las Vegas
On June 15, 2013, Trump was in Las Vegas for the Miss USA pageant when he met Aras Agalarov—the Russian real estate billionaire—and his son Emin for the first time. After dinner, the party was taken by the Agalarovs to a nightclub called “The Act” at The Venetian, known for performances featuring semi-nude performers in acts involving simulated sex acts and sadomasochism. A Nevada state judge later issued an injunction barring its “lewd” and “offensive” performances. Michael Cohen wrote in his memoir Disloyal (2020) that Trump watched the spectacle “with incredulity and delight.” The following day, Trump and the Agalarovs announced that the Miss Universe pageant would be held in Moscow that November—the beginning of the Trump-Agalarov relationship that would eventually produce the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting at which Emin Agalarov’s publicist, Rob Goldstone, offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
December 2015: The Wolff-Epstein Exchange—Trump as “Political Currency”
In December 2015, as Trump’s first presidential campaign was gaining momentum, author Michael Wolff wrote to Jeffrey Epstein noting that CNN was planning to ask Trump about his relationship with Epstein. Epstein replied by asking whether they could “craft an answer for him.” Wolff responded: “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.”
The exchange, released by House Democrats on the Oversight Committee on November 12, 2025, is the most explicit documentary evidence that Epstein regarded Trump’s potential exposure as leverage he could use. Wolff later stated that his purpose was to persuade Epstein to go public about the Trump-Epstein relationship, and that Epstein “proved to be an enormously valuable source.”
January 2019: Epstein’s Email — “Of Course He Knew About the Girls”
On January 31, 2019—five months before his arrest and subsequent death in federal custody—Jeffrey Epstein sent an email to author Michael Wolff in which he wrote: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” The email was released as part of the Justice Department’s Epstein document productions and confirmed by House Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. Wolff, who said he had approximately 100 hours of conversations with Epstein about Trump, described the email in The Daily Beast and the Yale Review.
Taken together, this email, along with others to Wolff and Ghislaine Maxwell, document not just Epstein’s claim that Trump was aware of his crimes, but Epstein’s own recognition that he held potentially valuable leverage over the man who would become president. Trump has since denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has threatened legal action against Wolff.
Conclusion
The House Oversight Committee is investigating a criminal sex-trafficking network that produced more than a thousand victims. The committee has already compelled testimony from associates, attorneys, and enablers with far thinner documented connections to Epstein than Trump’s. The documentary record—flight logs, authenticated footage, sworn depositions, DOJ files, the subject’s own public statements—establishes a relationship of unusual duration, proximity, and intimacy between Trump and the man at the center of this investigation. The public record provides more than sufficient basis to question him under oath.
For the complete story on how Trump became a Russian asset, buy House of Trump, House of Putin, and/or American Kompromat.
And don’t miss my latest book, Den of Spies!
House of Trump, House of Putin
The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia
American Kompromat
How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery
Den of Spies
Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House
You're right and I don't think this gets nearly enough attention. Epstein wasn't covering for Trump out of friendship. He was filing him. "The dog that hasn't barked" is an accountant's note, not a loyalist's. It means: this man's silence has value and I know where it lives.
And then Trump called the Palm Beach police chief in 2006 and told him Maxwell was evil and to focus on her. He handed her over. Whatever arrangement existed between them, he ended it the moment it became a liability, which means Maxwell has known for twenty years exactly what he did.
She is sitting somewhere right now with that knowledge. The idea that she has no interest in what happens next, that she is simply serving her time with no moves left, does not hold up. Trump burned her and Epstein both and then spent years saying he barely knew them. If there is anyone on earth who understands exactly what those 37 withheld pages contain, it is her.
The revenge tour framing is the right one. The only question is what form it takes and whether she gets to choose the timing or someone chooses it for her.
Many thanks to reporter/author Unger for his important revelations of the corruption in American politics and the worldwide extensions in his 2021 "American Kompromat". It's one of the few books among the many I peruse that I cannot put down. And, thanks for this Trump-Epstein expose'!