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Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday, the fourteenth of November. I'm Sam Kazlowski.
I'm Lucy Tussel.
More than twenty thousand pages of documents have been released by US politicians revealing emails to and from Jeffrey Epstein himself that suggest President Donald Trump knew about his abuse of young women. It has led to Trump, as well as other members of his administration, facing growing criticism about how the White House has handled the Epstein files, with some of Trump's own Republican supporters and members now calling
for more transparency. On today's podcast, Lucy and I are going to break down what these emails actually say, why they're causing division within the Republican Party, and what this all means for Trump going forward.
Sam, before we get into the new emails, the new data, take me back to the start. Who is Jeffrey Epstein and why are we still talking about him?
So?
Jeffrey Epstein was a wealthy businessman who was arrested in twenty nineteen on federal sex trafficking charges. Investigators found that he had been paying teenage girls money to perform sex acts, and that he'd been doing so for many years. His former girlfriend, Glene Maxwell, was charged with helping him abuse
these girls. Epstein died by suicide in his cell out of federal jail in New York about a month after he was arrested in twenty nineteen, and Maxwell, the former girlfriend, was later convicted and is currently serving a twenty year prison sentence for sex trafficking. But the reason this case has never really gone away is because of who Epstein surrounded himself with. So he was friends with presidents, with royals or now former royals, billionaires, celebrities, really powerful people
from all around the world world. And there's always been this one question surrounding Jeffrey Epstein. Did any of these other powerful people know about or participate in his crimes?
And we believe current US President Donald Trump was one of these connections, one of these powerful people in Epstein's orbit.
Right. Yeah, it's one of those news stories that has followed Trump around almost since he kind of went down that escalator and started his aim at being president way back in I think it was twenty fourteen. So Trump said that he and Epstein were friends for about fifteen years, starting in the eighties. There are many photographs of them together at parties in New York throughout the nineties and
early two thousands. Trump even told New York Magazine in two thousand and two that Epstein was quote a terrific guy who quote likes beautiful women as much as I do, many of them on the younger side.
Yeah, And that's a direct quote from Donald Trump.
Yes, and so Trump then says though that he had a falling out with Epstein around two thousand and four because Epstein was hiring spa attendance from his Marra A Lago golf club. Trump has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein's sex trafficking operation.
So what has happened to bring all this back into the headlines.
So there's a committee of politicians called the House Oversight Committee, which is basically a little investigative body made up of Democrats and Republicans into the connections between Jeffrey Epstein and any members of the US political establishment. And on Wednesday, that committee released three emails from Epstein or to Epstein that they say raise more serious questions about what Trump new. So These emails were selected from thousands of documents obtained
by the committee from Epstein's state. It's commonly referred to as the Epstein Files. I want to walk through each of these emails because the details really matter here. So the first email is from April of twenty eleven. So Epstein wrote to Glen Maxwell and said, quote, I want you to really that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump. He then wrote that an unnamed victim quote spent hours at my house with him, being Trump, he has never once been mentioned.
Wow.
Republicans on the committee quickly identified this victim as Virginia Giffrey, so the name was originally redacted, and then through kind of politicians releasing other documents, it was Virginia Geffrey, who died by suicide in April this year. Now, importantly, Geoffrey has previously said in a twenty sixteen deposition that she didn't think Trump participated in anything illegal and that she had never seen Trump participate in sexual abuse at Epstein's home.
Okay, so this twenty eleven email from Epstein says Trump spent time at his house with a victim. The victim in question has separately said I never saw Trump do anything wrong. Yeah, that's the implication from Republicans exactly.
And the problem here is that there hasn't been any sort of kind of proper legal process in interrogating the email. Media can't verify the email. It's very hard to kind of go anywhere further than what is in front of us in this single a four page of an email, and that's a bit of attention, but it gives lots
of new lines of questioning for this committee. The second email is from January twenty fifteen, so this is the lead up to the twenty sixteen presidential election, and there's an author, Michael Wolfe, who had a personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Michael Wolfe emails Epstein that CNN was planning to ask Trump about the relationship between Trump and Epstein in a televised presidential debate in the lead up to
that presidential election, which Trump then won. Epstein asked how Trump should respond, and Wolfe basically advised him to let Trump quote hang himself if he denied being close with Epstein, because that would then give Jeffrey Epstein something to have
a bit of leverage over this future presidential candidate. And so the third email then is from January twenty nineteen, so Trump is president now, Epstein tells Wolfe the author again, Trump said he asked me to resign, which is in reference to Epstein's membership at the Marlago Golf Club, because he asked Glaine to stop. That's a direct quote, and that's a reference to Glaine Maxwell trying to recruit young women who worked at the golf club for Epstein. Yeah,
and then there's this really important bit. The email from Epstein says, of course, he, being Trump knew about the girls. So that's essentially Epstein himself alleging in an email that Trump knew about the abuse, which is a claim that Trump has denied.
Speaking of Trump, how has the White House responded to these email drops?
So the White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt got on the front foot. She said that they were quote, selectively released emails meant to smear the president. She pointed to Virginia Giffray's past statements about Trump, and this is what she said.
The emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong. Miss Guffrey 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, And so 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 is and is unfortunately no longer with us.
You also mentioned at the top of this episode that this is causing problems within Trump's own party, and we have briefly touched on this on the podcast in the past. What's happening now?
So I think to understand the current state of the Republican Party and their position on the Epstein files, you
need to go back to Trump's campaign. And in Trump's campaign, he really pushed for the Epstein files to be released, and the argument that he put to supporters was that if there were these files released, a client list, a list of who was on planes going to Epstein's island that would include high profile Democrats and kind of expose the corruption behind the scenes, and particularly people like Bill and Hillary Clinton who used Epstein's services or allegedly used
Epstein services. This was a really major rallying point for the core of his base. But then after he took office, Trump's Justice Department backtracked, and in July this year, the FBI and the Attorney General said there wasn't a client list and that no more files would be released because
there's no need to. But now with all of these emails being released, with further speculation about Trump's involvement and relationship with Epstein, there are four Republican members of Congress who have signed a petition to force a House vote on releasing all the Epstein files to the public.
When's that vote going to happen or what's going on with that vote?
So if a majority of House members, So if two hundred and eighteen members of the House sign what's called a discharge petition, it makes the Justice Department release documents. So in this case, it would have to release the full files on Jeffrey Epstein. And until very recently, the petition was one signature short of two hundred and eighteen signatures, and that's the threshold it requires to force a vote.
There were two hundred and seventeen. There four Republicans and two hundred and thirteen Democrat signatures, but the House gained one extra member yesterday.
How'd that happen?
So on Wednesday, Speaker Mark Johnson finally swore in Representative Adelita Grajalva, a Democrat from Arizona. She won a special election seven weeks ago, so that can be an election
if a member steps down or retires. But Johnson had refused to actually confirm her position during the government shutdown, so Democrats said it actually wasn't the government shutdown, it was her stance on the Epstein files that kept her out, and sure enough, as her first act in office, she actually signed the petition as the two hundred and eighteenth and decisi signature.
So the petition has been signed, but a vote still needs to happen, which Trump doesn't want to happen.
Right exactly, And according to the New York Times, the White House held a meeting in the Situation Room on Wednesday with those four Republicans who had said that they would vote for the files to be released. Yeah, there was the Attorney General, Pam Bondi and FBI Director Cash Patel. They all gathered in the room to try and convince them to remove their names from the petition, which I'll tell you in a secon they actually can't do. But then it's about probably the vote, and they want them
to not vote for the files to be released. And I think it's significant that the meeting took place in the Situation Room. I mean that's a room that's normally reserved for high level crises, military operations. You know, taking out Osama bin Laden is a classic example. So using it for lobbying members of Congress about the Epstein files does show how seriously the White House is taking this. Yeah.
The one interesting point about the signature I wanted to tell you about is, according to very nuanced, specific nerdy rules of Congress, once you sign a petition of this nature, you can't unsign it. So even if the member dies or resigns, the signature stands. So you can assume that Trump's lobbying was more about how they're going to vote in this vote, rather than getting them to kind of unsign something or withdraw their support.
Yeah, okay, and now the vote is going to actually happen.
It is actually going to happen. The latest from Mike Johnson, the Speaker, says it could happen as early as next week. But even if it does pass the House, it would then probably fail in the Senate. And then even if it passes the Senate, Trump would probably veto it. But the political damage for Republicans of having to vote in public on this bill, especially when they're under pressure from
their own constituents. They just had a very bad showing in the special elections, including in New York and New Jersey, in Virginia. It's bad timing. And Trump has been very angry about this. He posted on truth Social that quote, only a very bad or stupid Republican would fall into the trap of supporting the Epstein files release. And he's calling it a democratic distraction.
But there are still his own supporters pushing for this to.
Happen, right, Yeah. And take one of the four Republicans is Marjorie Taylor Green, for example, who is known for being a very rusted on maga, you know, quite extreme in some of her view's supporter of Trump. She's advocating for the release of the files, and she's got a lot of influence over the kind of Republican base in America.
And it does look like Trump is caught between This campaign promised to expose corruption and the reality that with every disclosure there's more damage being done to him personally.
You mentioned there'll be a vote next week before that has to happen. The government has now in the last twenty four hours, yeah, voted to reopen for government.
Yep.
Where do we go from here?
So there's a bit of a backlog of work now that the government has officially reopened. But I think that the Epstein discussion is going to be really high on the agenda.
Thank you so much for explaining all of that, Sam. It's a very meaty topic with a lot of background to cover.
And I mean we say this a bit, but it's no more true than right now. This is only the beginning of this story.
Yeah, somehow, yes, and we will be keeping a very close eye on it. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Daily Oz. We will be back this afternoon with the headlines. Until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Dunda Bungelung Kalkudin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Straight Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.