The Justice Department is releasing Epstein files that include unsubstantiated Trump allegations, after complaints
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The US Department of Justice has released additional files linked to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including descriptions of conversations with a woman who has made allegations against President Donald Trump, who was Epstein’s friend.
The department said Thursday that the files were “incorrectly coded as duplicates,” so they were not initially published. The department has faced scrutiny from Congress over its handling of the documents, which it is required to make public as part of the Epstein Transparency Act, which was spurred by efforts from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
Some of the new records are about a woman who contacted the FBI shortly after Epstein’s arrest in 2019 and said a man named “Jeff” who lived in Hilton Head, SC, raped her there in the 1980s when she was about 13 years old. The woman told agents she didn’t know who the man was at the time, but decades later concluded it was Jeffrey Epstein when a friend texted her a picture of him from a news story.
The woman was interviewed four times by FBI agents and later added a number of other claims, including that Epstein arranged for her mother to be imprisoned, beat her, arranged for her to have sex with other men and took her to New Jersey or New York sometime in the mid-1980s, where she said she bit Trump after he tried to sexually assault her.
He eventually refused to answer further questions and cut off contact with agents, according to the filings.
‘Totally baseless’
White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt, in Politico, called the woman’s claims “absolutely baseless allegations, supported by solid evidence.”
The Justice Department warned that some of the documents included “false and sensational claims” against Trump.
It is not known exactly when Epstein’s relationship with Trump began, but the first time it has been publicly given so far is in the late 1980s.
Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that he had known Epstein for 15 years. The article portrayed Epstein as a mystery but made no mention of misconduct.
Separately, a former executive at a Trump-owned casino in Atlantic City between 1987 and 1990 described seeing his boss and Epstein more than once.
Records previously released by the department show that Trump flew several times in Epstein’s pland in the 1990s, which Trump denied, as the plane logs included the names of passengers such as Marla Maples, his wife between 1993 and 1997, and his children Tiffany Trump and Eric Trump.
The former American president Bill Clinton told the committee in charge of the House about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, insisting from the beginning that he did nothing wrong and had no knowledge of the crime committed by the deceased, who was convicted of sex crimes during their relationship.
Trump has said he had no knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse, although according to a recently released transcript of an FBI interview with a local Palm Beach police chief, Trump allegedly called the chief and said “everybody knows he was doing this,” when the financier was first accused of sexual misconduct in 2006.
Trump said his meeting with Epstein ended before then, though conflicting stories have emerged as to why — from a rivalry over some Florida property, to allegations about Epstein’s behavior at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Epstein was convicted of federal charges in Florida in 2008 that included soliciting prostitution of a minor. He served more than a year of his sentence, and in 2019 he died in a New York City jail at the age of 66, while awaiting trial. The death was ruled a suicide.
Investigations and reporting since then have not revealed the existence of an Epstein residence in Hilton Head or elsewhere in South Carolina.
The secretary of commerce will testify
Democrats have accused the Trump administration of hiding records related to the president, and a House oversight committee voted this week to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi for lawmakers to question her about the government’s handling of the disclosures.
Also, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, said he would agree to testify before the oversight committee. Lutnick has backtracked on when his relationship with Epstein ended, as subsequent emails released by the Justice Department contradicted his earlier claims.
The former American president Bill Clinton told the committee in charge of the House about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, insisting from the beginning that he did nothing wrong and had no knowledge of the crime committed by the deceased, who was convicted of sex crimes during their relationship.
Last week, the committee released former president Bill Clinton and his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. According to a video since he was released from those times, he said he did not remember ever meeting Epstein, while saying that Epstein offered his plane to use several times as he wanted to establish the Clinton Foundation after his administration ended.
The former president said in his silence that he never saw anything wrong with the planes, and if he had known about any of Epstein’s possible crimes: “I would have implicated him myself.”
Both Clintons said they had a long relationship in 2010 with Epstein’s friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Epstein in 2022 for helping to lure underage girls. Each of the Clintons said the relationship was informed that for several years she had an affair with a technology executive who was close friends with the couple.
