Justice Department releases mistakenly withheld FBI records on Trump-Epstein allegations
The U.S. Department of Justice has released additional FBI documents that include interviews with a woman who alleged Donald Trump sexually assaulted her after she was introduced to him by Jeffrey Epstein. The department said the records were not made public under previous congressionally mandated disclosures because they were mistakenly marked “duplicative.”
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In a post on X, the department said the newly posted records were among 15 documents it had “incorrectly coded as duplicative” and therefore omitted from earlier releases tied to Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender. Democrats are examining the government’s handling of the Epstein files and have accused the Trump administration of concealing records related to the former president.
The documents describe multiple FBI interviews conducted in 2019 with the woman, who said she was assaulted by both Epstein and Trump when she was between 13 and 15 years old. In one interview, she told agents that Epstein took her to “either New York or New Jersey” and introduced her to Trump. She said she bit Trump as he tried to force her to perform a sex act on him.
The woman also told investigators she and people close to her had received threatening phone calls over the years demanding her silence—calls she believed were connected to Epstein. In the final interview, conducted in October 2019 during Trump’s first term, agents asked if she would provide more information about Trump. According to the report, she questioned “what the point would be of providing the information at this point in her life when there was a strong possibility nothing could be done about it.”
Trump has denied any wrongdoing connected to Epstein. The Justice Department has cautioned that some documents released as part of the broader review “contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump.”
Separate records previously released by the department show Trump flew several times on Epstein’s plane in the 1990s, which Trump has denied. After Epstein was first accused of sexual misconduct, Trump called the police chief in Palm Beach to say that “everyone has known he’s been doing this,” according to an FBI interview record.
Democrats in Congress have intensified scrutiny of how the government managed the disclosures. A committee in the House of Representatives voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to question her about the handling of the records, according to the documents.
The new tranche underscores the continuing fallout from the Epstein case and the sensitivities surrounding the public record. While the Justice Department said the omission stemmed from a coding error, it also reiterated its warning that the cache includes unverified and at times sensational allegations. The department did not indicate whether the FBI planned additional investigative steps tied to the newly released materials.
Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Trump has said his association with Epstein ended in the mid-2000s and that he was never aware of the financier’s abuse.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether more Epstein-related documents remain to be released under the congressional mandate.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
