Justice Department posts FBI interview memos related to Trump sex abuse allegation
By Hannah Rabinowitz, Casey Tolan, Paula Reid, Isabelle Chapman, CNN
(CNN) — The Justice Department has posted online three FBI memos describing interviews related to unverified sexual assault allegations against President Donald Trump that had been missing from the massive trove of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice.
A CNN analysis discovered dozens of witness interviews were missing from the online archive of evidence related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, all of which were memorialized in so-called “302” memos laying out what an interviewee told FBI agents. The 302s do not include other corroborating information or agents’ opinions.
Among the missing records were three memos about interviews with a woman who told agents that Epstein had repeatedly abused her physically and sexually decades ago, starting when she was approximately 13 years old, and who also accused Trump of sexually assaulting her.
Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. In a statement Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the claims from the FBI interviews as “completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence.” She also questioned the credibility of the accuser, whose name is redacted in the files, pointing to her criminal record.
“The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s department of justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them — because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” Leavitt added.
FBI agents conducted four interviews with the woman, but only one memo memorializing an interview in July 2019 was available in the DOJ database that was made public earlier this year. In that interview, the woman alleged she was repeatedly abused by Epstein when she was a minor living in South Carolina. She did not make any allegations about Trump in that interview.
Newly released FBI interviews
The newly released files cover three additional interviews conducted with the woman in August and October 2019.
In the second interview, the woman described additional abuse by Epstein and several of his male associates. She said that Epstein “drove her and/or flew her to either New York or New Jersey” sometime when she was between 13 and 15 years old, and she was taken to a “very tall building.” It was there that she said Epstein introduced her to Trump.
Trump asked everyone to leave the room where they met, and “mentioned something to the effect of, ‘Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be,’” according to the description of the woman’s comments in the interview. He then unzipped his pants and put her head “down to his penis,” she told agents.
The woman told agents that she bit Trump, who then struck her and said “words to the effect of, ‘get this little bitch the hell out of here.’”
Later in the interview, the woman told agents she heard Trump and Epstein talking about Epstein blackmailing people and also heard Trump “talking about washing money through casinos.”
In the woman’s third FBI interview, about three weeks later, agents wrote that she described receiving threatening telephone calls that she said she believed had to do with Epstein or Trump, as well as several incidents where she was “almost run off of the road” by other cars.
During the fourth interview – about two months after her last meeting with FBI agents – the woman did not have an attorney present, unlike the previous meetings. She told law enforcement agents she was uncomfortable being recorded and asked them, “what’s the point?” of coming forward with allegations after the statute of limitations had likely passed, the agents wrote.
The memo noted that the agents encouraged her “to go home and take as much time as she needed to think about speaking with the agents further.”
It’s unclear what became of the FBI’s investigation into the woman’s claims. An email sent between FBI agents last summer and included in the DOJ files notes that “one identified victim claimed abuse by Trump but ultimately refused to cooperate,” although it doesn’t specify if it’s the same person as the accuser.
A lawsuit against the Epstein estate includes a victim who made claims about the financier – that he had abused her in South Carolina and brought her to gatherings in New York City with “prominent, wealthy men” – that matched some of the claims the woman made in the FBI interviews. She does not name Trump in the lawsuit.
That victim, identified as “Jane Doe 4,” was “deemed ineligible to receive compensation” by the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program, a system set up to independently review claims by victims, according to a court record from May 2021. It’s not clear why she was deemed ineligible.
She voluntarily dismissed her lawsuit in December 2021, and her lawyer told The Post and Courier newspaper in January that she received a financial settlement from the estate. Her lawyer declined to comment to CNN last week.
The Justice Department has not explained why the Trump-related witness interview descriptions were not released but said in a statement last week that it had initiated a review to see whether any documents were “improperly tagged in the review process.” If that happened, the department said it would release them, the statement said.
Under the law, the DOJ can withhold files that are duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation.
Problems with redaction process
The department has been fiercely criticized for its redaction process, and has had to repeatedly take down documents, edit redactions, and republish them. Among the most egregious issues reported were victims whose identities, or photos, were made public without their knowledge.
The Justice Department also republished images to the Epstein files library on Wednesday that had been temporarily taken down after being flagged for potential nudity.
There are still several thousand images left to repost, a department official told CNN, which will also be done Thursday.
Three months after their release, Justice Department employees are still spending several hours a week on the files, fixing redaction and posting mistakes, a senior Justice Department official told CNN. About 1% of the 3 million documents had issues with redactions, the official said.
“Normally in life, getting 99% of things right is pretty good, but that’s a lot of mistakes,” the person said.
No active US investigation into people tied to Epstein
The Justice Department is not currently investigating any individual connected to Jeffrey Epstein, a senior Justice Department official said Thursday.
At this point, without any new information, the official does not expect anyone will be charged in connection with Epstein.
Trump previously directed the department to open an investigation into Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats. That investigation was opened, under Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton, but it has not resulted in any new cases.
Isabelle Khurshudyan and Samatha Waldenberg contributed to this report
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