DOJ Reviewing Withheld Epstein Records 02/26 06:03

   The Justice Department said Wednesday that it was looking into whether it 
had improperly withheld documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files after several 
news organizations reported that some records involving uncorroborated 
accusations made by a woman against President Donald Trump were not among those 
released to the public.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department said Wednesday that it was looking 
into whether it had improperly withheld documents from the Jeffrey Epstein 
files after several news organizations reported that some records involving 
uncorroborated accusations made by a woman against President Donald Trump were 
not among those released to the public.

   The announcement followed news reports saying that a massive tranche of 
records released by the Justice Department did not include several summaries of 
interviews that the FBI conducted with an unidentified woman who came forward 
after Epstein's 2019 arrest and claimed to have been sexually assaulted by both 
Trump and Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s.

   "Several individuals and news outlets have recently flagged files related to 
documents produced to Ghislaine Maxwell in discovery of her criminal case that 
they claim appear to be missing," the Justice Department said in a post on X. 
"As with all documents that have been flagged by the public, the Department is 
currently reviewing files within that category of the production." Maxwell, 
Epstein's longtime confidant, is serving a 20-year prison sentence on a sex 
trafficking conviction.

   It said that if any document is found to have been improperly withheld and 
is responsive to the federally enacted law mandating the files' release, "the 
Department will of course publish it, consistent with the law."

   At issue is a series of interviews said to have been conducted in 2019 with 
a woman who made an allegation against Trump, who has consistently denied any 
wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. News reports from recent days say the 
accuser was interviewed by the FBI four times as it sought to assess her 
account but a summary of only one of those interviews was included in the 
publicly released files.

   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.