The victim’s name blacked out in two of the emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate released by House Democrats on Wednesday is Virginia Giuffre, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told TIME in an email.
“The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump. The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions,” Leavitt wrote in a statement to TIME.
TIME was unable to independently verify that Giuffre’s name is what was blacked out and marked “victim” in two of the three emails released Wednesday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Read more: With Latest Epstein Emails, Democrats Dropped a Perfectly Timed Political Bomb
Giuffre has alleged she was a victim of Epstein who was initially approached by the pedophile financier’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, while Giuffre was working at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Giuffre died by suicide in April and in a book published posthumously last month described meeting Epstein when she was a teenager and being “loaned” out to his contacts. Giuffre wrote in her memoir that she met Trump in 2000. “Trump couldn’t have been friendlier,” her memoir reads.
In an email dated April 2, 2011, Epstein appears to have written to Maxwell: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him .. he has never once been mentioned.” Maxwell replied: “I have been thinking about that…”
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors. Trump and his Administration have faced intense scrutiny over their handling of the Epstein case—as well as the President’s own years-long relationship with the late sex offender—in recent months as prominent supporters have called for Trump to release more Epstein case files.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One on July 29 that Giuffre was one of the people Epstein “stole” from the Mar-a-Lago spa, and that was part of Trump’s reason for eventually banning Epstein from the club. Giuffre had “no complaints about us, as you know – none whatsoever,” Trump said.
“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre. 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 hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again,” Leavitt said.
In an unusual step, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Maxwell over two days in late July at a federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida. “I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects,” Maxwell said, according to a Department of Justice transcript. Blanche asked Maxwell if she remembered recruiting a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago to give a private massage to Epstein. “I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she said.
