Why is Trump covering up the Epstein files while protecting pedophiles?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/politics/trump-epstein-files.html

Epstein Files Are Missing Records About Woman Who Made Claim Against Trump
Documents released by the Justice Department briefly mention a woman’s unverified accusation that Donald J. Trump assaulted her in the 1980s, when she was a minor. But several memos related to her account are not in the files.

By Mike Baker and Michael Gold

Feb. 25, 2026Updated 12:41 p.m. ET

The vast trove of documents released by the Justice Department from its investigations into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein failed to include some key materials related to a woman who made an accusation against President Trump, according to a review by The New York Times.

The materials are F.B.I. memos summarizing interviews the bureau did in connection to claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein’s arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier, when she was a minor.

The existence of the memos was revealed in an index listing the investigative materials related to her account, which was publicly released. According to that index, the F.B.I. conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries about each one. But only one summary of the four interviews, which describes her accusations against Mr. Epstein, was released by the Justice Department. The other three are missing.

The public files also do not include the underlying interview notes, which the index also indicates are part of the file. The Justice Department released similar interview notes in connection to F.B.I. interviews with other potential witnesses and victims.

It is unclear why the materials are missing. The Justice Department said in a statement to The Times on Monday that “the only materials that have been withheld were either privileged or duplicates.” In a
neon Tuesday, the department also noted that documents could have been withheld because of “an ongoing federal investigation.” Officials did not directly address why the memos related to the woman’s claim were not released.

The woman’s description of being assaulted by Mr. Trump in the 1980s is among a number of uncorroborated accusations against well-known men, including the president, that are contained in the millions of documents released by the Justice Department.

When the files were made public late last month, officials described the trove as including all material sent by the public to the F.B.I. “Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the F.B.I. right before the 2020 election,” the department said in a statement at the time, calling such claims “unfounded and false.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. In a statement on Tuesday, a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said Mr. Trump had “been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.”

A lawyer who previously represented the woman in a lawsuit against Mr. Epstein’s estate declined to comment.

The missing records deepen questions about how the Justice Department has handled the release of the Epstein files, which was mandated by a law signed by Mr. Trump last year after bipartisan congressional pressure.

Under the law, the Justice Department can redact material that could be used to identify Mr. Epstein’s victims, depicted violence or child sexual abuse, or would hurt a continuing federal investigation. But the law expressly prohibited federal officials from withholding or redacting materials “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity” to public figures.

Some lawmakers and survivors of Mr. Epstein’s abuse have strongly condemned the department for how it handled redactions, noting that details identifying some victims were left exposed and nude photographs of young women were included in the public release, while material related to claims of abuse by other men had been heavily redacted.

The woman who made the accusation about Mr. Trump came forward in July 2019, days after federal investigators arrested Mr. Epstein on sex-trafficking charges, according to records in the public files of tips the F.B.I. received during that period. She claimed that she had been repeatedly assaulted by Mr. Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s, according to a summary of an F.B.I. interview with her on July 24, 2019.

Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said that when he reviewed unredacted versions of the Epstein files at the Justice Department on Monday, interview summaries related to the woman’s claim were also missing from that trove.

“Documents that are listed, which should be included, which are referenced in other documents, are not in the files,” Mr. Garcia said. He added that the Justice Department had also not provided them to the Oversight Committee, which issued a subpoena last year for all of the Justice Department’s investigative material regarding Mr. Epstein.

Mr. Garcia said the Justice Department had not provided a proper explanation for why the materials were missing. Democrats plan to open a separate investigation into why the documents are not available.

In the sole summary of the F.B.I. interview that was released, the woman told investigators that she did not know Mr. Epstein’s full identity until 2019, when a friend sent her a photograph of Mr. Epstein. She said she then recognized the person who she said had raped her.

The woman told the agents she still had the photo on her phone, and they noted that it was a widely distributed photo of Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump, according to the document. She gave the agents permission to take a photograph of the image but asked them to crop out Mr. Trump. When asked why, her lawyer interjected that the woman “was concerned about implicating additional individuals, and specifically any that were well known, due to fear of retaliation,” according to the F.B.I. memo.

It is unclear exactly what F.B.I. agents learned about her claims related to Mr. Trump in their three subsequent interviews.

The woman spent most of the interview on July 24, 2019, describing in detail what she said were repeated violent assaults by Mr. Epstein that she had endured, as reported earlier byThe woman spent most of the interview on July 24, 2019, describing in detail what she said were repeated violent assaults by Mr. Epstein that she had endured, as The Post and Courier. She said that as a teenager in South Carolina, she was asked to babysit at a house on Hilton Head Island. But after she arrived, there were no children to babysit, and only a man she came to know as Jeff who she said plied her with alcohol, mar1juana and cocaine. She described him raping her on multiple occasions.

The woman joined a lawsuit later in 2019 against Mr. Epstein’s estate. She subsequently dropped her claim. Court records do not indicate if she received any financial settlement. A court record from 2021 said she was separately deemed ineligible for compensation from a fund set up for Epstein victims, but it did not specify why.

 

Right. The point wasn’t what’s realistic, but what’s possible. Congress has the power, and 2027 is the earliest possible point for real accountability, though it is probably unlikely.

Veto-proof is possible, like what happened with the Epstein Disclosure Act, which passed the Senate with unanimous consent (technically not veto-proof, but it is veto-proof politically). POTUS signature is not required.

 

Precisely because the president controls an entire branch, Congress was designed to be the strongest. In practice, a divided Congress is slow, and a rubber-stamp Congress (as it is today) is effectively nonexistent. But that weakness is a matter of choice, not a constitutional feature of Congress.

 

well, I’m focused on what’s realistic, and so are the victims

if Congress had the power, Trump wouldn’t be doing half the sh*t he’s doing right now

Did Congress approve tariffs? If we go to war with Iran, will it have been approved by Congress? Congress passed a law that Tiktok would be banned if not sold by Jan 19, 2025, and Trump came in and said “nope”

the Epstein Disclosure Act passed with unanimous consent because Trump told his cult to do it…and they have still continued to break that law every single day by not releasing anywhere close to all of the Epstein Files and while redacting a bunch of stuff that shouldn’t be redacted/deleting files

before Trump told them to do it, that Act barely had any republican votes in the House, and had zero in the Senate…republicans don’t have any agency within their own party, 99% of them do whatever Trump tells them to do as we saw with the bipartisan border bill that was killed because Trump who wasn’t even president at the time, told them to do so

 

I disagree. At one time, the chances may have been very slim, but nowadays, it's merely slim or perhaps unlikely, but I think the odds are heading towards 40% or better.

Dems need to keep Ossoff's seat in Georgia, which I think will happen. (And then he will run for President.)

They also need to keep the Michigan open seat, which I think they will.

Then, they need to take the North Carolina open seat, which is a real possibility--don't discount the bungling FEMA Helene recovery here. Dems have the popular ex-governor Roy Cooper while the Republicans are looking at a brutal primary fight between one guy endorsed by Trump and another endorsed by the really crazy group of Michael Flynn, Allen West, Mark Robinson, and Sidney Powell. Cooper bests both Repub candidates in recent polling by a decent margin.

After that, you've got to knock off Collins in Maine. Not excited about the two Dem candidates there, but we'll see if the state is finally tired of the wishy-washy mamby-pamby politics of Susan Collins.

Do all that and you are at 49, so you need two more.

I would not be completely surprised to see the open seat in Iowa go blue. Repubs have been screwing up in the state house and there is not a lot of good will towards the departing Ernst. Plus, a chunk of Iowa is in the Minneapolis TV shadow.

If you get Iowa, you still need one more to make Vance irrelevant and it probably has to come from one of Alaska, Ohio, or Texas.

Ohio is interesting because you have a guy who was appointed to Vance's seat campaigning for the first time going against ex-Senator Sherrod Brown, who has the better fundraising apparatus.

Alaska has the current Repub senator going against the last Democrat to hold statewide office, Mary Peltola, who won the lone House seat a few years ago. It's probably more competitive than you would think, and in a wave election, you could squint a bit and see the Dems win here.

Everyone knows about Texas, so I'll leave that one be.

Another to watch in a wave election is Alabama, where neither party has anything close to an awesome candidate to replace "dumbest guy in politics" Tommy Tuberville, but Doug Jones is running for Governor and his operation may help the Democratic nominee.

Kentucky, as they replace McConnell, will be interesting too. You've got the Republican primary between an average House member with the endorsements of the GOP House leadership and state politicians. Then you have a hardcore MAGA guy with endorsements from folks like Steve Bannon. Trump has yet to weigh in. On the Dem side, you have two folks who have previously lost at the statewide level.

So, again, not likely. But not unimaginable either.

 

This Congress chooses not to exercise its power.

For those concerned about executive overreach, the remedy is Congress exercising its authority to check it. That will not happen with a GOP-led Congress. The House is likely to switch, and the Senate is roughly a coin toss. A supermajority is unlikely but possible if there is a large midterm wave.

The Epstein Disclosure Act passed because Congress briefly exercised its power after the executive refused to release the Epstein files. Trump did not direct this. He realized he had lost control of the issue and rebranded it as “go pass it” to save face and claim he supported release.

 

Democrats need to stop playing politics
They are the only one playing the game

Rocket River

 

until the Democrats control the Presidency, DOJ, and Senate/House, the coverup will continue

the Epstein Act required them to release all documents with only the victims names redacted…the deadline to do that passed long ago, and they’ve released not even half with a ton of perpetrators being protected/redacted

until Pam Bondi can be ousted, she will continue to protect Trump and his pedophile friends…this b*tch brought up the Dow when talking about holding people accountable

and this is the main reason I think this regime will try their hardest to rig the midterms and 2028…if not, and Dems gain full control after 2028, then it’s very likely that lot of them are going to prison for Epstein and non-Epstein related crimes (I would say it should be a certainty, but Idk if the Dems are gonna pull another Joe Biden and slow walk accountability until it’s too late because they want to be “impartial” or “fair” or whatever BS)

Congress has done nothing to stop Trump, and that will continue until Dems control both chambers with serious people (not dipsh*ts like Fetterman or Manchin/Sinema, etc)…the only thing that’s stopped him is the courts, and he defies them on a daily basis anyways

this turd will even go so far as to withhold congressionally approved funds to states and universities while Congress sits back and does nothing

 

It's a pretty sad day when Iran holds the moral high ground over the United States of America.

But the market is doing well.

 

can't believe how politically negligent it was to not release the files in Spring or Summer 2024. Imagine dropping these after Trump's horrendous debate performance - teh unredacted ones that detail all of the Trump-related sexual assualt, Elon, everything.

Merrick Garland chose the protection of the Epstein Class reputation over the good of the country. That's a betrayal.

 

How is this a hard choice.

 

The MOVING GOALPOSTS of Trump supporters.

I have a friend who acts pretty moderate and is all like show me evidence or when MSM starts reporting on something.

When NPR broke the news about Trump raping Katie Johnson and the FBI interviewing her 4 times finding her a credible witness or that Epstein settled with her - in 2014 (I believe).....he was like.....well......I won't believe anything until it hits main stream media.

So, the next day, ABC picked it up - I sent him the links saying, look ABC is now reporting it as our several others like CNN.....he immediately switches to - well, I don't like to think about this stuff, I just want to live my life and love Jesus.

Which I responded - That is exactly how Hitler came to power, people ignoring heinous crimes because it was against others.....and BTW - JESUS was a political figure, he would have FOUGHT for others.

Radio silence ensued.

There are just some people that want to bury their head in the sand and hope for the best, unfortunately that is ****ING COWARDLY and LAZY - they are relying on others to take the bullets and hope for the best.

This is a time of diligence - what kind of country do we want? What kind of country do we want our kids and grand kids to inherit?

PEDOdent Trump must be held accountable and his cronies need to rot in prison with him.

DD

 

Your friend is in a cult. Stop arguing with him.

 

Ask TJ.

 

Do you think he would answer ? .

 

Does he even really need to answer?

 

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday after what has been reported as a suicide attempt.
https://www.aol.com/articles/former-prime-minister-named-epstein-204200924.html

How in the world is Trump avoiding all accountability. If you dig deep into the files it's obvious this is an international crime syndicate. Trump isn't just a useful idiot, he's part of it.