A newly released email from 2017 shows the late financier Jeffrey Epstein describing then-President Donald Trump in starkly negative terms, stating, “i have met some very bad people .. none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.. so yes- dangerous.”
The email, sent on February 8, 2017, to former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, was made public on Wednesday, November 12, 2025, by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The release, which contained just three email threads, was intended to raise “glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President,” according to a committee statement.
The release set off an immediate political firestorm, with Republicans on the same committee accusing Democrats of “selective leaking.” Hours later, Republicans released their own, much larger tranche of over 20,000 documents from Epstein’s estate. They argued this fuller context, which includes financial reports and other correspondence, shows Epstein “frequently expressing displeasure with Trump and his presidency.”
The White House issued a swift and forceful response. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of a “bad-faith” effort to “selectively leak emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”
Leavitt’s statement, delivered hours after President Trump signed a bill to end the 43-day government shutdown, called the email release a “clear distraction from the government opening back up again.” She reiterated that the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
The 2017 email was part of a broader document drop that included other damaging, unverified claims. In a separate 2019 email to a journalist, Epstein alleged that Trump “knew about the girls.” Another 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell claimed Trump “spent ‘hours at my house’ with one of the alleged sex trafficking victims.”
The release has already amplified political tensions, with Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker telling the Associated Press he fears the President might try to “distract” from the “devastating” revelations. “What does that mean? I mean, he might take us to war with Venezuela just to get a distraction in the news,” Pritzker said.
