Memos Omitted from DOJ's Epstein Release Contain Claim Trump Abused Minor
- Epstein Watch
- Feb 27
- 5 min read
FBI 302s Contain Unsubstantiated Claim Trump Abused Minor via Epstein
FBI Memos Omitted from DOJ's Epstein Release Contain Unsubstantiated Abuse Allegations Against Trump
Three Federal Bureau of Investigation memos describe four interviews conducted in 2019. Those memos contain explicit but unsubstantiated claims that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman when she was a minor in the early 1980s, with the assistance of Jeffrey Epstein. The Guardian reviewed those documents.
The Department of Justice did not release those records when it uploaded millions of pages of Epstein-related files beginning in December.
Discovery and Confirmation
Independent journalist Roger Sollenberger first reported the existence of the missing documents. NPR subsequently confirmed that reporting. The omission prompted an investigation by congressional Democrats.
The Guardian obtained the missing FBI Form 302 reports. Those reports memorialize 25 pages of agents' notes from four interviews conducted in the summer and fall of 2019. An administration official confirmed to the Guardian that the three missing reports are authentic.
The DoJ told NPR that "nothing has been deleted" and that any withheld material was either duplicative or privileged. An administration official made the same claim to Breitbart, which also reviewed the files.
"These non-credible accusations against President Trump made in 2019 were in the SDNY files and listed by reviewers as duplicative files, which are not legally required to be released by the Epstein [Files] Transparency Act as it was written by Congress," an administration official told the Guardian. "The DoJ is continuing its review of the duplicative files as we speak."
The DoJ did not immediately respond to the Guardian's request for comment.
Contents of the FBI Interviews
The four interviews took place on 24 July, 7 August, 22 August, and 16 October 2019. They were conducted at the Washington state law offices of the woman's attorney, Barry Brandenburg. Brandenburg did not reply to a request for comment. The Guardian has chosen not to publish the woman's name.
Only the first session — in which the woman did not name Trump — was included in the public document release.
The three missing documents contain an expanded version of allegations that were summarized in an internal FBI slideshow about the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell investigations, created in 2025.
In the documents, the woman told agents she had been sexually abused by Epstein beginning at age 13, starting approximately in 1983, while living on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. She said that between ages 13 and 15, Epstein took her to a building in either New York or New Jersey. She said they traveled by either plane or car.
Once at that location, she told investigators, she was introduced to Trump and a group of associates. According to the internal FBI notes, she claimed that when they were alone, Trump "mentioned something to the effect of: 'Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be,'" before attempting to sexually assault her. She told agents she bit him, that Trump then struck her, and that she was removed from the room.
She also claimed that Epstein and Trump discussed blackmailing people in front of her. She told agents she overheard Trump talking about "washing money through casinos."
The woman told agents Epstein gave her alcoholic beverages in her early teenage years, which she suspected may have been spiked. She said he offered her cocaine and marijuana and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
She stated that Epstein "blackmailed her mother through explicit photographs of [her], which resulted in her mother embezzling from her real estate company to pay him." She said her mother "tried to buy back the photos and secrets" over the years and was sent to prison in South Carolina for embezzlement. She said Epstein and two other men "assisted" her mother in "fixing" her real estate books so that funds could be embezzled to pay Epstein.
The Guardian was unable to corroborate the account of her mother's prison term or criminal case.
The third interview consists largely of the woman describing what she described as years of threats, including "four to five close calls" in which she claimed she was nearly run off roads in Oregon and Washington.
At the fourth and final interview in October 2019, she arrived without Brandenburg, who had attended all previous sessions. She declined a request to be audio recorded. When agents asked whether she felt comfortable elaborating on her contact with Trump, she questioned what the point would be, given that "there was a strong possibility nothing could be done."
Assessment of the Claims
The woman's allegations have not been verified. The FBI never brought charges related to her claims. The Guardian notes her statements at times appear outlandish and that they contradict what is known about Epstein's life in the early 1980s.
Mark Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein's brother, told the Guardian he had no knowledge of his brother spending summers on Hilton Head in the early 1980s. "I would have known," he said in a phone call.
There is no evidence Trump and Epstein knew each other in 1983. Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that he had met Epstein 15 years earlier.
Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing related to Epstein and said last week: "I did nothing."
The millions of investigative documents released by the DoJ have contained allegations that led to resignations and arrests, as well as claims that later proved false.
Background on the Woman
The Guardian identified a woman matching the biographical details in the FBI records. She has faced several fraud and theft charges in Washington state and, in 2023, a felony charge for the exploitation of an elderly person in Georgia. It is not clear how those cases were resolved.
In 2020, a Jane Doe joined a lawsuit against Epstein's estate. The allegations and biographical details in that filing match those in the FBI interviews. She later dropped her claims. It is unknown whether she received a financial settlement. Her attorney in that case, Lisa Bloom, declined to comment.
Congressional Response
US Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said he visited the Department of Justice to examine unredacted files and could not locate them.
Republican Oversight Committee Chair James Comer also said lawmakers would look into allegations that documents containing accusations against Trump had been removed from the DOJ database.
"There is definitely, in my opinion, evidence of a cover-up happening," Garcia told NBC News. "The FBI clearly investigated, and now those documents are gone."
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Garcia demanded "a full accounting" of why the files had been withheld, writing that the DoJ had "illegally withheld FBI interviews with a survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes."
Source
Reported by Jacqueline Sweet and Joseph Gedeon for the Guardian. Read original article.
