by Michael R. Sisak and Eric Tucker

WASHINGTON  — Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2019 email to a journalist that Donald Trump “knew about the girls,” according to documents made public Wednesday, but what he knew — and whether it pertained to the sex offender’s crimes — is unclear. The White House quickly accused Democrats of selectively leaking the emails to smear the president.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three emails referencing Trump, including one Epstein wrote in 2011 in which he told confidant Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a sex trafficking victim.

The disclosures seemed designed to raise new questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about what knowledge he may have had regarding what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican businessman-turned-politician has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.

The version of the 2011 email released by the Democrats redacted the name of the victim, but Republicans on the committee later said it was Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with a number of his rich and powerful friends. Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.

The emails made public Wednesday are part of a batch of 23,000 documents provided by Epstein’s estate to the Oversight Committee.

Giuffre said Trump ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’

Giuffre, who died earlier this year, long insisted that Trump was not among the men who had victimized her.

In a court deposition, she said under oath that she didn’t believe Trump had any knowledge of Epstein’s misconduct with underage girls. And in her recently released memoir, she described meeting Trump only once, when she worked as a spa attendant at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, and did not accuse him of wrongdoing.

Giuffre wrote that she was introduced to Trump by her father, who also worked at the club. She described Trump as friendly and said he offered to help her get babysitting jobs with parents at the club.

Trump “couldn’t have been friendlier,” Giuffre wrote.

Other members of Epstein’s household staff also said in sworn depositions that, while Trump did stop by Epstein’s house, they didn’t see him engage in any inappropriate conduct.

Republicans says emails released to tarnish Trump

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Democrats “selectively leaked emails” to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”

Trump, writing on his Truth Social platform, said Democrats “are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done” on the government shutdown “and so many other subjects.”

“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!” Trump wrote.

In July, Trump said he had banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago because his one-time friend was “taking people who worked for me,” including Giuffre. The women, he said, were “taken out of the spa, hired by him — in other words, gone.”

“I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people,’” Trump told reporters. Asked if Giuffre was one of the employees poached by Epstein, the president demurred but then said Epstein “stole her.”

Shortly after Democrats released the Trump-related emails, committee Republicans countered by disclosing what they said was an additional 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate. Among them were a trove of emails written over several years by Epstein, including many where he commented — often unfavorably — on Trump’s rise in politics and corresponded with journalists.

Emails revive questions about Trump’s relationship with Epstein

The release resurfaces a storyline that had shadowed Trump’s presidency during the summer when the FBI and the Justice Department abruptly announced that they would not be releasing additional documents that investigators had spent weeks examining, disappointing conspiracy theorists and online sleuths who had expected to see new revelations.