Notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said of President Donald Trump, “I know how dirty the Donald is,” in a 2018 email thread about Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and agreeing to cooperate with a federal investigation into the president.
Mr. Epstein made the remarks about Mr. Trump to Kathryn Lemler, a lawyer who served as White House counsel under former President Barack Obama. Mr. Ruemmler currently serves as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at Goldman Sachs.
The email thread, which CNBC has not independently verified, is among more than 20,000 documents obtained from Epstein’s estate through a subpoena by Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released Wednesday.
On August 23, 2018, Ruemmler emailed Epstein a link to a New York Times op-ed by Bret Stevens with the headline, “Donald Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors: The case for impeachment is clear. What’s missing is courage.”
The article detailed Cohen’s guilty plea and its impact on Trump, who was then in his first term in the White House. Cohen previously pleaded guilty to charges related to hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal before the 2016 presidential election.
“I thought you would be funny,” Ruemmler wrote to Epstein, who was a longtime friend of Trump until they fell out in the early 2000s.
She wrote in the same thread: “It doesn’t matter if it was his money or not. What matters is the failure to disclose. And the fact that he lied about it makes it clear he knew it was illegal.”
Mr. Epstein responded, “You know, I know how dirty Donald is.”
“My guess is that non-lawyer businessmen in New York don’t know what it means to flip a fixer,” Epstein added.
In a series of text messages with an unidentified person in December 2018, the person wrote to Epstein, “Everything is going to blow up! They really just want to take down Trump and are doing everything they can to do that…!”
Epstein replied, “Yes, that’s wild, because I’m the one who can beat him.”
In this thread, it is not clear what the person on the other end was referring to when they wrote that “it” would be “blown away.”
In an April 2019 email released by House Democrats, Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls.”
It is unclear what is meant by “knew about the girls.”
In another newly released email to his convicted co-defendant Ghislaine Maxwell in April 2011, Epstein wrote, “I want you to understand that the dog that didn’t bark is Trump.”
In the same email, Epstein also added a person, whose name is redacted in the email, whom Democrats have identified as the victim who “spent hours at his home” with Trump.
Epstein added that “he was never mentioned” in the message.
It’s unclear what Epstein referred to in the email as “the dog that didn’t bark.”
In an email exchange in December 2015, when Trump was seeking the Republican nomination for the White House, Wolf wrote to Epstein, “I have heard that CNN is going to ask you about your relationship with Mr. Trump tonight, either on air or in a scrum afterwards.”
Mr. Epstein replied, “If we could give him an answer, what do you think it should be?”
Wolff replied, “I think they should hang him. If he says he hasn’t been on a plane or gone home, that gives him valuable PR and political currency.”
“You can hang him in a way that might have a positive payoff for you, or if it really looks like he can win, you can go into debt and bail him out,” Wolff added. “Of course, if asked, he could say that Jeffrey is a wonderful person who has been badly treated and is a victim of political correctness that will be outlawed in the Trump administration.”
President Trump has denied knowing about Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls and women. The president has never been charged with any wrongdoing related to Epstein.
The announcement came two days after Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee issued a statement saying, “Whistleblower information provided to the committee also indicates that Ghislaine Maxwell is working on submitting a ‘pay reduction application’ to the Trump administration.”
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for charges related to the procurement of underage girls to be abused by Epstein.
“Democrats selectively leaked emails to liberal media to create a false narrative to smear President Trump,” White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said in a statement Wednesday.
“The ‘unnamed victim’ referred to in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, and President Trump has not engaged in any wrongdoing and has repeatedly stated that he ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her during their limited interactions,” Levitt said.
“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for making female employees, including Giuffre, uncomfortable,” Levitt said.
“These stories are nothing but a malicious effort to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any sensible American can see through this misinformation and obvious distraction from reopening the government.”
Giuffre died by suicide in April.
CNBC has reached out to Maxwell’s attorney for comment on the email.
Epstein, 66, committed suicide in a Manhattan jail in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
Numerous women have testified that Epstein sexually abused them when they were underage girls or young women.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails they obtained raise “serious questions” about Trump’s involvement with Epstein.
The three emails related to Mr. Trump are among thousands written by Mr. Epstein and obtained by Democrats.
“The more Donald Trump tries to hide the Epstein file, the more we uncover. These latest emails and communications raise obvious questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the president’s relationship with Epstein,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.
“The Department of Justice must immediately and fully release the Epstein file to the public,” Garcia said. “The Oversight Committee will continue to seek answers and will not stop until justice is served for the victims.”
President Trump and the Justice Department have been criticized for months for reneging on promises by Trump administration officials to release criminal investigative files on Epstein.
Trump said in July that he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and cut ties with him several years ago because he “stole people who worked for me.”
President Trump said Epstein poached at least one other Mar-a-Lago employee after he was warned not to do it again.
The president has repeatedly told authorities that demands to release the so-called Epstein files are a “Democratic hoax.”
—CNBC’s Ashlee Trujillo, Caleigh Keating and Laya Neelakandan contributed to this article.
This is developing news. Please check the latest information.
