President Donald Trump’s long association with deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is well-documented. Less publicly acknowledged, however, are uncorroborated allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor while in Epstein’s orbit, particularly after “more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations,” with a woman who accused Trump of assault were found missing from the Justice Department’s Epstein files release, said NPR. As lawmakers identify what was redacted and why, the furor over Trump’s Epstein associations seems unlikely to die down.
‘Covering up direct evidence’
At the center of the growing scandal are allegations from an unidentified woman who claimed she was forced into a sexual encounter with Trump by Epstein “around 1983, when she was around 13 years old,” said NPR. Congressional investigators determined the tranche of missing documents by “matching public files with case files listed in the evidence” made available to Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal team, said Politico.
The focus on the missing documents is “misleading the public,” said the Justice Department on X. Democrats are merely “manufacturing outrage” even though “nothing has been deleted.” Just one day later, however, the DOJ said it’s “currently reviewing files” that were allegedly withheld, and items deemed improperly redacted “will of course” be published.
While it’s unclear why the materials were missing, their absence “deepens questions” about how the Justice Department has handled the legally mandated Epstein file releases, said The New York Times. The law directing the publication of documents allows redactions to protect victims but “expressly prohibited” officials from blocking publication to avoid “embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity to public figures.”
Democrats plan to “open a parallel investigation” into the allegations against Trump and the DOJ redactions, said House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) in a statement. The Justice Department appears to be “covering up direct evidence of a potential assault” by the president.
New narrative
Trump has personally “evaded the crosshairs of credible allegations in the Epstein files” in part thanks to “misdirection, public confusion and excessive redactions from his own DOJ,” said journalist Roger Sollenberger, one of the first reporters to identify the missing material, on Substack. But the allegations “contradict the narrative” that Trump has “not been credibly accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein saga.” | 
