• Today’s release: The House Oversight Committee has released an additional 20,000 pages of documents the GOP-led panel received from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender whose death by suicide spawned intense scrutiny of the high-profile people he knew. CNN reporters went through the files and posted their findings below.
• What we’ve found: Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell coordinated their public response to a 2015 lawsuit brought by an anonymous woman later revealed to be Virginia Roberts Giuffre. In an interview with the Justice Department this summer, Maxwell had said her relationship with Epstein was “almost nonexistent” between 2010 and 2019 outside of corresponding over legal matters.
• Epstein insults of Trump: Epstein wrote that, “I know how dirty Donald is,” referring to potential scandals that might come out about Trump in an August 2018 email to Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama. Epstein also emailed about Trump’s mental state with his personal attorney and Ruemmler in March 2018.
• White House pushes back: Press secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted the emails, saying they prove “nothing.” Trump accused Democrats of bringing up Epstein to “deflect” from their handling of the government shutdown.
• The deciding vote: Rep. Adelita Grijalva was sworn into Congress after 50 days of waiting and then signed the discharge petition to release the Epstein case files.
Continue reading the complete article on the original source
