the Washington Post reports<\/a>.<\/p>\nAlthough the transcripts do not name the lawmaker Epstein was texting during the February 2019 hearing, an analysis by the Post suggests it was Stacey Plaskett, the US Virgin Islands\u2019 non-voting Democratic delegate. By matching the timestamps of the messages with video of the hearing, the analysis concluded that Plaskett was the member of Congress in contact with Epstein.<\/p>\n
At the time, Cohen was appearing before the House oversight committee to testify against Trump, accusing him of racism, financial fraud and directing hush-money payments to conceal his extramarital affairs. Trump denied all of these allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cCohen brought up RONA – keeper of the secrets,\u201d Epstein texted the person, referring to former Trump executive assistant Rhona Graff, but misspelled her name.<\/p>\n
\u201cRONA??\u201d the person responded. \u201cQuick I\u2019m up next is that an acronym,\u201d the person added, suggesting they would question Cohen soon.<\/p>\n
Plaskett\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Her chief of staff told the Post that she was \u201cnot in a position to confirm or not\u201d whether the congresswoman was texting with Epstein during the hearing.<\/p>\n
When Plaskett questioned Cohen during the hearing, she asked about Trump associates that he had mentioned previously and if there were \u201cother people that we should be meeting with?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Allen Weisselberg is the chief financial officer in The Trump Organization,\u201d Cohen replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to quickly give us as many names as you can so we can get to them,\u201d Plaskett jumped in to say. \u201cShe is Ms Rhona, what is Ms Rhona\u2019s \u2013 \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRhona Graff is the \u2013 Mr Trump\u2019s executive assistant \u2026 She was \u2013 her office is directly next to his, and she\u2019s involved in a lot that went on,\u201d Cohen replied.<\/p>\n
This interaction is part of the more than 20,000 pages released Wednesday that reignited a long-running scandal over Epstein\u2019s relationship with the rich and powerful. Democratic lawmakers said the messages, along with three newly disclosed emails, suggest Trump may have known more about Epstein\u2019s activities than he has suggested in public.<\/p>\n
In another instance on the day of the hearing, Epstein texted the person: \u201cAre you chewing\u201d. One minute before, a live television feed of the hearing had cut to Plaskett, as she appeared to be chewing.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot any more,\u201d the person replied to Epstein. \u201cChewing interior of my mouth. Bad habit from middle school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plaskett was the first non-voting delegate to the House to serve as an impeachment manager during Trump\u2019s impeachment trial in the Senate in 2021 for inciting the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. She represents the US Virgin Islands, a territory that does not have a vote in Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newly released documents from Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s estate show the convicted sex offender appeared to be texting with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-285446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}