Footage of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a party at Mar-a-Lago in the 1990s (Image: Screengrab via NBC News)
A key piece of material referencing assault accusations against Donald Trump now appears to be missing from the Epstein files, according to The New Republic, just days after reporters began to put a spotlight on them.
The material in question references interviews the FBI conducted in 2019 with a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was a minor. The alleged incident, she claimed, took place sometime between 1983 and 1985, with Jeffrey Epstein having allegedly introduced Trump to her at some point in 1984.
Records of those interviews were uncovered by reporter Roger Sollenberger, who found that the FBI interviewed her four separate times about the allegations. He noted, however, that it is not clear whether or not the agents ever verified the claims, though they found them credible enough to look into initially, or if any other evidence to support them was found. Trump himself has long denied all allegations of sexual misconduct, and his administration has stated that it has no evidence that he was involved in Epstein's crimes. Sollenberger noted that the woman's accusations were hampered by the fact that she could produce no written material about the alleged assault from the time it happened, such as a letter or journal entry.
In a follow-up report, Sollenberger noted that a key file related to these interviews, "a document cataloguing information that the government provided counsel for convicted Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell during her trial," has since been removed from the trove of Epstein files released to the public by the Department of Justice.
This development, he argued, cuts against the administration's repeated claims that it has not been engaged in a cover-up to protect Trump and his associates, and that no materials exist to implicate Trump in any way.
"This revelation adds to the mounting pile of evidence undermining statements from Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior administration officials assuring the public that the Epstein file release has been transparent, complete, and bereft of any evidence implicating Trump in wrongdoing," Sollenberger wrote.
As The New Republic detailed, the FBI's first interview with the accuser took place on July 24, 2019. It was not entered into the Bureau's files until August 9, 2019, an abnormally long gap for such a process. A day after it was entered, Epstein was found dead in his New York City prison cell, the official cause being given as suicide.
