Rachel Abrams

Aside from the questionable journalistic ethics of Michael Wolff, this exchange seems to suggest something similar to the first email you read, right?

That Epstein has something on Trump, or at least is trying to show that he does.

But just to be clear, we don't know what, if anything, Epstein actually had over Trump.

We know that he was making it seem like he had some kind of leverage, but we don't actually know whether he had any information that Trump would have legitimately been concerned about, right?

Is Epstein basically saying here Trump is lying because I was never a member to begin with of Mar-a-Lago, so therefore if he says that he kicked me out, that's not true?

You mentioned Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving prison time for helping Epstein with his sex trafficking operation.

And earlier this year, she told the Justice Department that she had never seen Donald Trump in a, quote, inappropriate setting.

Does anything in these emails contradict that statement?

OK, so you've just walked us through the three emails released by Democrats.

What happened next?

We know from other reporting that Epstein was constantly trying to portray himself as having access to people that maybe he didn't actually have access to or he wasn't as close with as he portrayed.

And it seems here in all these emails that we've seen so far that he's trying to leverage the perception of his proximity to Donald Trump.

Right.

And I just wonder, based on what we know about how transactional Epstein was, how much stock should we put into the way that Epstein is portraying his relationship to Donald Trump?

David, thank you so much.

After the break, I talked to our colleague Michael Gold about the fight on Capitol Hill over the Epstein files and the push to release even more documents.

We'll be right back.

Michael Gold, thank you so much for joining us from what looks like a phone booth on Capitol Hill.

Is that where you are?

Well, thank you for finding a quiet space for us.