Trump redactions in Epstein files raise bipartisan red flags

President Donald Trump’s long association with deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is a well-documented matter of public record. Less publicly acknowledged, however, are uncorroborated allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor while in Epstein’s orbit, particularly after “more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations,” with a woman who accused Trump of assault “decades ago when she was a minor” were found missing from the Justice Department’s legally mandated Epstein files release, said NPR. As lawmakers work to identify what was redacted and why, the furor over Trump’s Epstein associations seems unlikely to die down anytime soon.

‘Covering up direct evidence’

At the center of the growing scandal are allegations from an unidentified woman who claimed she was forced into a sexual encounter with Trump by Epstein “around 1983, when she was around 13 years old,” said NPR. Congressional investigators determined the tranche of missing documents by “matching public files with case files listed in the evidence manifest” made available to Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal team, said Politico.

The focus on the missing documents is “misleading the public,” said the Justice Department on X. Democrats are merely “manufacturing outrage” culled from their “radical anti-Trump base,” even though “NOTHING has been deleted.” Just one day later, however, the DOJ said on X that “as with all documents that have been flagged by the public,” it is “currently reviewing files” alleged to have been withheld, and items deemed improperly redacted “will of course” be published.

While it’s “unclear” why the materials were missing in the first place, their absence “deepens questions” about how the Justice Department has “handled” the legally mandated Epstein file releases, said The New York Times. The law directing the publication of Epstein documents allows redactions to protect victims, as well as for depictions of physical and sexual violence, and in instances where it could affect active investigations, but “expressly prohibited” officials from blocking publication “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity to public figures.”

Democrats plan to “open a parallel investigation” into the allegations against Trump and any DOJ redactions thereof, said House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) in a statement. The Justice Department appears to be “covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the president of the United States.”

Garcia’s Republican counterpart, Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), signaled openness to pursue the matter further. “We know what the administration says,” said Comer to reporters on Thursday. “We are still looking to get a definitive answer on that.”

‘Gaslighting the entire country’

“So far,” Trump has personally “evaded the crosshairs of credible allegations in the Epstein files” in part thanks to “false statements, misdirection, public confusion and excessive redactions from his own DOJ,” said journalist Roger Sollenberger, one of the first reporters to identify the missing material, on Substack. But the allegations allegedly described in the absent documents “contradict the narrative” that Trump has “not been credibly accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein saga.”

While “many documents” have been removed and then re-added to the DOJ’s Epstein trove since their initial release, some Epstein victims say they’ve “scoured the DOJ’s website” for their own interview documents, “only to come up empty-handed,” said CNN. Given the heavy redactions and missing documentation from the government, the implication, said Epstein victim Jess Michaels to the network, is that “this Department of Justice is actually gaslighting the entire country.”