Trump mentions are missing from Epstein trove

Dozens of FBI files that mention US President Donald Trump are missing from the vast Epstein releases. A review by CNN shows that these include records of key FBI interviews with an alleged victim of both wealthy paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Trump.

CNN said the missing files include:

three interviews related to a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her decades ago.

The US media outlet found:

An evidence log provided to attorneys for Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell includes serial numbers for about 325 FBI witness interview records – but more than 90 of those records, over a quarter of the list, don’t appear to be present on the DOJ website.

The woman had told FBI agents:

that Epstein had repeatedly abused her starting when she was approximately 13 years old, and who also accused Trump of sexually assaulting her.

Trump — privileged documents?

Another US media outlet, NPR, challenged the authorities on the missing files. NPR said:

The Justice Department declined to answer NPR’s questions on the record about these specific files, what’s in them and why they are not published.

However, after NPR published their story:

the Justice Department reached out to NPR, taking issue with how its responses to questions were framed. Department of Justice spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre reiterated DOJ’s stance that any documents not published are privileged, are duplicates or relate to an ongoing federal investigation.

Legal firm Norton Rose Kennedy describes ‘privilege’ as:

a legal right which allows persons to resist compulsory disclosure of documents and information.

The term suggests the documents are part of legal cases which are ongoing. Which cases these are is unclear.

Victims lost in the noise

Beyond this the withholding of documents by the US government remains a mystery to investigators.

Democratic Party Representative Robert Garcia told CNN:

We have a survivor that made serious allegations against the president. But there’s a series of documents, and it would appear to be possible interviews, that the FBI conducted with the survivor that are actually missing, that we don’t have access to.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing. And the DOJ has insisted it was following the law and had deleted no files.

A DOJ spokesperson told CNN:

We have not deleted anything, and as we have always said, all documents responsive were produced.

CNN added:

They [DOJ] did not answer follow-up questions about specific files.

The internal goings-on in the DOJ, FBI and Trump’s camp remain as opaque as ever. The Canary has said before, the media circus around the files keeps rolling on month after month — while the needs of victims are sidelined. Victims’ desire for justice is being lost amid the noise, chaos and static produced by the institutions involved in the releases. And, in some cases, by the very individuals implicated in the files.

Featured image via the Canary