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The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it is investigating whether it mistakenly withheld documents from the Jeffrey Epstein case files, following reports by several media outlets. These outlets noted the absence of certain records, including uncorroborated allegations made by a woman against former President Donald Trump, from the public release.
This development comes after reports suggested that a large collection of documents released by the department was missing several interview summaries. These interviews were conducted by the FBI with an unnamed woman who claimed, after Epstein’s 2019 arrest, that both Trump and Epstein sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when she was a minor.
“Several parties, including news organizations, have recently highlighted missing files related to documents produced during the Ghislaine Maxwell criminal case discovery,” the Justice Department stated on X. “We are currently reviewing these flagged documents.” Maxwell, a close associate of Epstein, is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
The Department assured that any document found to be improperly withheld and pertinent to the legal mandate for file release would be published in accordance with the law.
The focus is on a series of interviews reportedly conducted in 2019 with a woman who accused Trump, who has persistently denied any involvement with Epstein’s alleged crimes. Recent reports indicate that while the FBI interviewed this accuser four times to evaluate her claims, only one interview summary was included in the publicly available documents.
The missing records were earlier reported by the journalist Roger Sollenberger on Substack and NPR, and have since been documented by other news organizations, including The New York Times, MS Now and CNN.
Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement that Democrats on the panel would investigate the withheld records. He said he had reviewed unredacted evidence logs and “can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews” with the accuser.
The Justice Department last month said it was releasing more than 3 million pages of records related to Epstein, who took his own life in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The department said at the time that, though it was attempting to be transparent, it was also entitled to withhold records that exposed potential abuse victims, were duplicates or protected by legal privileges, or related to an ongoing criminal investigation.
“Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” the department said in a statement last month as it released the records.
The redaction process was quickly revealed to have been flawed, with the department withdrawing some materials identified by victims or their lawyers, along with a “substantial number” of documents identified independently by the government.
Lawyers for Epstein accusers told a New York judge this month that the lives of nearly 100 victims had been “turned upside down” by sloppy redactions in the government’s latest release of records. The exposed materials include nude photos showing the faces of potential victims as well as names, email addresses and other identifying information that was either unredacted or not fully obscured.
Other uncorroborated claims against Trump and other public figures were included in the publicly available files. The department did not say in its social media post Wednesday why records related to this specific accusation might have been withheld.