At a press briefing Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took a sharp tone while addressing questions about new emails that purport to add new details about President Donald Trump's relationship to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say newly released emails show correspondence that Epstein wrote in 2011 to Ghislaine Maxwell, claiming that Trump “spent hours at my house” with a victim of sex trafficking. The emails, House Democrats say, raise questions about “Trump’s knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and relationship to victims.”
Leavitt has said that the emails prove nothing.
In a statement to Scripps News earlier, Leavitt said that "Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump."
At the briefing, Leavitt reiterated a number of points that the White House has doubled down on over the past several months: She said President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago years ago; she she said that he was not involved in wrongdoing and "couldn't have been friendlier;" and she pointed to the administration's support of a Justice Department effort to have grand jury testimony unsealed.
RELATED STORY | House Democrats uncover Epstein correspondence with claims involving Trump
However, one of the main questions going forward is a discharge position in the House of Representatives, set to receive its last signature with the swearing in of Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva as soon as Wednesday.
Hours before being sworn in to Congress, Rep.-elect Grijalva told Scripps News she believes the weeks-long delay was a direct result of her commitment to sign that petition.
“I absolutely do believe there’s a connection because Representative Walkinshaw won his special election September 9th, sworn in on the 10th. I actually won my election five days before the shutdown and what Speaker Johnson continued to do is make excuses about why I wasn't getting sworn in," Grijalva said.
The White House on Wednesday called the petition a distraction.
Leavitt said "These stories are nothing more than bad faith efforts to distract from President Trump's historic accomplishments and any American with common sense sees right through this folks and clear distraction from the government opening back up again."
President Trump on Wednesday called the case of his involvement with Epstein a "hoax" and said Democrats were using it as a distraction.
"The 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 Shutdown, and so many other subjects," the president wrote on social media.
"Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap," he wrote.
