On Wednesday, as House Republicans prepared to vote on a Senate-passed bill to finally reopen the government, a group of House Democrats attempted to direct the media and the nation's attention to a handful of old emails involving the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein that mentioned President Donald Trump.

In response, Trump accused Democrats of attempting to "deflect" and distract the public -- and their furious voter base -- away from their poor handling of the costly government shutdown, according to Breitbart.

Trump, his White House, and House Republicans also quickly pointed out that the context-free emails, which don't specifically incriminate Trump in any wrongdoing -- and could actually be interpreted as exonerating him -- were released by Democrats solely to create another slanderous "fake narrative" against the GOP president.

Another distraction from Democrats

"The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects," President Trump wrote in a Wednesday afternoon Truth Social post. "Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap."

"The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk -- and they should pay a fair price," he continued.

"There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else," Trump said, "and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!"

About a half hour later, the president added in a separate post, "In other words, the Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one -- THE SHUTDOWN!"

Latest smear campaign launched

Early on Wednesday morning, Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee summarily released a trio of years-old emails involving Epstein that mentioned President Trump, albeit without any explanation or context for the purportedly incriminating messages.

"Oversight Dems have received new emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate that raise serious questions about Donald Trump and his knowledge of Epstein’s horrific crimes," the Democrats wrote in an X post. "Read them for yourself. It’s time to end this cover-up and RELEASE THE FILES."

In the first email, a 2011 exchange between Epstein and his closest associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, a mention is made of Trump and how he "spent hours" with a redacted "victim" at Epstein's home.

In the second email, a 2019 exchange between Epstein and anti-Trump author Michael Wolff, Epstein seemed to confirm that Trump had previously kicked him out of his Mar-a-Lago resort club in South Florida, and that Trump "knew about the girls" because he'd asked Maxwell to "stop" recruiting them from club employees.

The third email, a 2015 conversation between Wolff and Epstein, seemed to expose their scheming on how best to smear Trump if the then-candidate spoke poorly of their prior "relationship."

Why was the victim's publicly available name redacted?

The Oversight Democrats' post was subsequently shared by House Oversight Republicans, who pushed back on the release and asked, "Why did Democrats cover up the name when the Estate didn't redact it in the redacted documents provided to the committee? It's because this victim, Virginia Giuffre, publicly said that she never witnessed wrongdoing by President Trump. Democrats are trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump. Shame on them."

Likewise, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the situation during Wednesday's briefing and said, "These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong, and what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach, and so was Jeffrey Epstein."

She also noted that Epstein had been a member of Mar-a-Lago until Trump "kicked him out" for being a "pedophile and a creep," pointed out that Giuffre had never claimed any wrongdoing by Trump, and added, "I think it’s a question worth asking the Democrat Party, and you should all go ask them after this briefing, of why they chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and is unfortunately no longer with us."