House passes bill to reopen government as new Epstein revelations roil US politics – as it happened

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• Longest US government shutdown in history set to end after House passes bill

• Epstein’s emails stir new doubts over Trump’s past denials

• Trump news at a glance: new batch of Epstein emails suggest Donald Trump ‘knew about the girls’

In a new batch of emails released by Democrats on the House oversight committee, Jeffrey Epstein wrote that Donald Trump knew about the late financier and sex-offender’s conduct. In the three emails released, Epstein apparently told his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump “spent hours” at his house with one of Epstein’s victims.

In two other emails to author Michael Wolff, Epstein wrote that “of course he knew about the girls”, referring to the now-president. According to the exchanges, Epstein also solicited Wolff’s advice about how he should handle Trump discussing their friendship in an interview with CNN. “I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff writes. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”

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Source: www.theguardian.com

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