The U.S. Department of Justice released on Friday, the 6th, FBI documents describing interviews with a woman who made an accusation against Donald Trump. The pages had been withheld from the vast set of files linked to Jeffrey Epstein, convicted of sex crimes. The argument was that the withheld documents were duplicates.
Among the documents released yesterday are three memos about interviews with a woman who told agents that Epstein had physically and sexually abused her repeatedly, decades ago, when she was 13 years old. She also accused Trump of sexual assault.
FBI agents conducted four interviews with the woman, but only one, conducted in July 2019, was available in the Department of Justice database released in January. In this sole statement released, she claims to have been repeatedly abused by Epstein when she was a minor and living in South Carolina. She does not mention Trump in the interview.
The omission of the other three interviews raised even more suspicions that the White House was shielding crimes. The documents released yesterday contain the three missing testimonies, conducted in August and October 2019.
In the second interview, the woman described other abuses by Epstein and several of his male friends. She said Epstein took her to New York and New Jersey when she was between 13 and 15 years old, and led her to a “very tall building.” There, she said, Epstein introduced her to Trump.
Suspicions
At the time, according to the testimony, Trump asked everyone to leave the room where they were gathered and, according to the woman’s account, “said something like: ‘Let me teach you how little girls should behave.’” He then unzipped his pants and placed the head of her mouth “on his penis.” The woman then said that she bit Trump, who then assaulted her and said something like: “Get this little bitch out of here.”
Later, in the same interview, the woman told agents that she heard Trump and Epstein talking about how the financier blackmailed people and heard Trump “talking about how he laundered money in his casinos”
Threats
In the third interview, three weeks later, the agents noted that she said she had received threatening phone calls that, according to her, were related to Epstein or Trump, as well as several incidents in which she “almost was run over” by cars.
During the fourth interview – two months after her last FBI deposition – the woman was not accompanied by an attorney, unlike the previous meetings. She told the agents that she felt uncomfortable being recorded and questioned the usefulness of the testimonies.
It is not clear what happened to the FBI’s investigation into the allegations. An email exchanged between FBI agents, included in the Department of Justice files, mentions “an identified victim who alleged abuse by Trump, but ultimately refused to cooperate,” without specifying whether this refers to the same person.
Initially, authorities had justified the omission of the interviews by saying that they were duplicates or had already been disclosed elsewhere. However, a later review determined that this was not what happened.
Criticisms
The omission of the memos further fed criticisms by some lawmakers and victims that the Trump administration had neglected its legal responsibility. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed in November by Congress, requires the government to disclose all investigative files related to the case, without revealing information that would identify its victims.
In a statement published online on Thursday, the Department of Justice acknowledged that, besides these FBI memos, it identified about a dozen other documents that had been “incorrectly coded as duplicates.”
Moreover, federal prosecutors in Florida determined that five indictment memos, initially classified as confidential, could be disclosed with redacted portions, according to the department. Trump denies any irregularity and says the Epstein files fully exonerate him.
DOJ officials have also faced criticism for how they handle the files, including inconsistent redactions that exposed dozens of victims and initially kept the names of prominent men hidden.
The department this week republished thousands of documents that had been taken offline after officials found that a batch contained many nude images. A source said they were temporarily removed as a precaution and would be reviewed before republication. (WITH INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES)
