TEHRAN – Just days after the U.S. government shutdown ended, the House Oversight Committee released nearly 20,000 pages of documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, reigniting a scandal that some had thought was over.
The documents include an email in which Epstein claimed that President Donald Trump “knew about the girls,” and a 2015 note to a New York Times reporter that read, “Can I have a photo of Donald (Trump) and the girls in bikinis in my kitchen?” Critics say these lines confirm long-standing suspicions about Trump’s deep ties to Epstein.
Many observers, and the commission itself, argue that this material deserves urgent scrutiny. The White House has called the release a politically motivated smear.
The emails show Epstein telling Obama’s former deputy adviser Kathy Remler that Trump is “so bad…even worse in real life and up close,” and telling Larry Summers that “he (Trump) doesn’t have a single good cell in his body.”
But proximity created complicity. According to a 2011 dispatch, Trump was isolated for “many hours” at Epstein’s mansion with his victim, Virginia Giuffre, who was later released from his abuse (“the dog that never barked”), but Epstein gloated about his implicit influence.
In a 2017 email to his lawyer, Epstein claimed to have arranged “a $30 million loan from a casino to Donald Trump” and was allegedly backdated, instructing his lawyer to “ask one of his cronies to show me the mortgage to Mar-a-Lago…cash from the electricians union,” adding that “the driver, Matt, was a bagman who later became a public company executive.”
After his 2016 victory, Epstein haunted Trump Tower. Mr. Epstein, who committed suicide in his Manhattan cell in 2019 and avoided a human trafficking trial, was more than just an unscrupulous Wall Street maverick.
Besides the creepiest pieces, some of the perhaps more important files, first compiled and detailed by the investigative news organization Drop Site News, link Epstein to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and senior Israeli intelligence officer Yoni Koren.
As revealed in leaked emails analyzed and published by Drop Site News, the calendar and hacked Barak emails show that Mr. Koren had multiple stays at Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan apartment between 2013 and 2016, that bank transfer details were sent through Epstein, and that Mr. Epstein was internationally assisting in brokering security and surveillance projects involving Israel, including correspondence.
These reports portray Epstein as a facilitator of influence and espionage activities, as well as sex trafficking.
The drop site’s series goes further, documenting emails in which Mr. Epstein drafted the highlights of his discussions with Mr. Barak, discussed possible back channels to Russia during the Syrian civil war, and pushed for security deals in Mongolia, Ivory Coast and elsewhere, claims that, if corroborated, would recast Mr. Epstein as a geopolitical intermediary with unusually close ties to Israeli officials.
Despite months of cover-up by the Trump administration, the revelations set off a bitter standoff over secrecy and accountability in Washington.
House Democrats argued the disclosure was evidence of a deliberate cover-up, but leading Republicans were divided. Thomas Massie called for full transparency without redactions and even introduced a bipartisan bill to force the release of the remaining files.
Survivors and advocates say the documents raise painful questions about who protected Epstein and why.
What emerges from the voluminous pages is a portrait of a man who cultivated corridors of power spanning finance, politics, and Israeli intelligence while simultaneously trafficking young women, a link that investigative files now reveal is undeniable.