The Miami Herald on how the Epstein debacle keeps getting worse for Trump:

The drumbeat to release the Epstein files just got a lot louder. Emails from disgraced financier and sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein released by House Democrats Wednesday say President Donald Trump “knew about the girls” and “spent hours” with a victim at Epstein’s house. Those allegations, whether true or not, must be addressed — this is the president we’re talking about.

The way to do that is to release the full Epstein files, including those from the FBI and Department of Justice. Two batches of emails from the Epstein estate were released Wednesday — about 23,000 by the House committee, followed by thousands more from Republicans — but a clean sweep is necessary. That means releasing all the files the government has.

House Democrats are highlighting three emails that were part of Epstein’s 2008 Florida plea deal, the focus of the Herald’s Perversion of Justice series. The emails were released as part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Epstein and his confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Trump has long maintained that he was unaware that Epstein was trafficking girls and young women, and he has denied participating in any of Epstein’s crimes.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails prove nothing and accused the Democrats of “selectively” leaking emails to create a “fake narrative to smear President Trump.” Leavitt said one victim, whose name is redacted from an email, is the late Virginia Giuffre, who has said she didn’t think Trump had been involved in Epstein’s crimes. Leavitt called the emails an effort to distract from Trump’s accomplishments.

Is that true? There’s one way to find out: Americans should be allowed to judge for themselves — and that means seeing the documents, all of them. Wednesday’s emails were a start, but we’re talking about a broader disclosure of the government’s Epstein investigations.

The emails we know about so far make the case for transparency more urgent. There’s this, from the 2011 email released Wednesday, in which Epstein tells Maxwell that Trump spent “hours” at his house with a victim whose name was redacted: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.”

And in a 2019 email, Epstein tells author Michael Wolff, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

A federal judge in Florida did deny a request in July by the Trump administration to unseal grand jury documents in multiple investigations into Epstein in 2005 and 2007. The judge said federal law prohibited the release of grand jury testimony except in narrow circumstances that did not apply in that case.