Epstein files, Nyt: over 50 unpublished pages on complaint against Trump
According to the newspaper, three FBI memos, with their notes, do not appear in the documents released by the US Department of Justice
Key documents related to a sexual assault allegation against Donald Trump are missing from the Jeffrey Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice. This was noted in an analysis by the New York Times, which examined the official index of investigative materials made public and found the absence of several FBI memos related to the testimony of a woman who reported in 2019 that she was assaulted, as a minor, by both the financier and the then-future president. The allegations have not been verified in court.
The issue closely touches on one of the most delicate steps of the maxi-release of documents ordered after the passage of the federal law - the Epstein Files Transparency Act - that imposed transparency on the Epstein files. When the Justice Department released millions of pages of materials in late January, it assured that the package included all documents sent by the public to the FBI. The official release pointed out that the papers also included sensationalist and unsubstantiated allegations against Trump, submitted in the run-up to the 2020 election.
According to the New York Times reconstruction, however, the public index of records clearly indicates the existence of four interviews conducted by the FBI with the woman in 2019. Of these, only the summary of the first, centred on the allegations against Epstein, has been published. The other three reports, along with the underlying investigative notes, are absent. An analysis of the serial numbering of the available pages suggests that over fifty pages of material related to the affair are not included in the public file.
The Justice Department told the New York newspaper thatany omissions would only concern documents covered by legal privilege or duplicates. In a second statement it added that some materials may have been withheld due to "ongoing federal investigations". No specific explanation was given as to why the memos relating to the allegations against Trump do not appear in the release.
The woman came forward in July 2019, a few days after Epstein's arrest for sex trafficking. In an interview on 24 July that year, a summary of which has been made public, she told officers that she had been repeatedly abused in the 1980s, when she was between 13 and 15 years old. She said she was approached in South Carolina under the pretext of a babysitting job at a house on Hilton Head Island. Once she arrived, she reported finding only a man who introduced himself as 'Jeff' and who, according to her account, allegedly administered alcohol and drugs to her before abusing her several times.
