Justice Department publishes missing Epstein files involving
uncorroborated claim about Trump
[March 06, 2026]
By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Thursday released additional
Jeffrey Epstein files involving uncorroborated accusations made by a
woman against President Donald Trump that the department said had been
mistakenly withheld during an earlier review.
The department said last week that it was working to determine if any
records were improperly withheld after several news organizations
reported that the massive tranche of records that had been made public
didn’t include some files documenting a series of interviews conducted
in 2019 with a woman who made an allegation against Trump.
The accuser was interviewed by the FBI four times as it sought to assess
her account but a summary of only one of those interviews had been
included in the publicly released files.
On Thursday, the department said those files had been “incorrectly coded
as duplicative,” and therefore were inadvertently not published along
with other investigative documents related to the disgraced financier,
who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in
2019.
“As we have consistently done, if any member of the public reported
concerns with information in the library, the Department would review,
make any corrections, and republish online,” the department said in a
post on X.
Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
The department noted in January that some of the documents contain
“untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were
submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”
The new disclosures come as Attorney General Pam Bondi faces continued
turmoil over the department's handling of the files released under a law
passed by Congress after months of public and political pressure. Five
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee joined Democrats in voting
Wednesday to subpoena Bondi, demanding that she answer questions under
oath in a sign of mounting frustration among members of the president's
own party.
The Trump administration has faced constant political headaches since
the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the
department of hiding certain documents or over-redacting files, or in
some cases, not redacting enough. In some cases, the department
inadvertently released nude photos showing the faces of potential
victims as well as names, email addresses and other identifying
information that was either unredacted or not fully obscured.
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Department officials have defended their handling of the files,
saying they took pains to release the files as quickly as possible
under the law while also protecting victims. Department officials
have said errors were inevitable given the volume of the materials,
the number of lawyers viewing the files and the speed at which the
department had to release them. The department has said it’s
entitled to withhold records that exposed potential abuse victims,
were duplicates or protected by legal privileges, or related to an
ongoing criminal investigation.
Some of the new records published Thursday pertained to a woman who
contacted the FBI shortly after Epstein’s 2019 arrest and claimed
that a man named “Jeff” living in Hilton Head, South Carolina, had
raped her there in the 1980s when she was around 13 years old. The
woman told the agents she didn’t know the man’s identity at the
time, but decades later concluded he was Jeffrey Epstein when a
friend texted her his photo from a news story.
In a follow-up interview a month later, the woman added a host of
other claims, including that Epstein had schemed to have her mother
sent to prison, beaten her, arranged sexual encounters with other
men and once flew her to either New Jersey or New York, where she
claimed to have bitten Donald Trump after he tried to sexually
assault her.
Agents spoke with the woman two more times, at one point asking her
to provide more detail on her supposed interactions with Trump, but
reported that she declined to answer additional questions and broke
off contact. There’s no indication that Epstein ever lived in South
Carolina and it was unclear whether Trump and Epstein knew each
other during the time period involved.
The woman’s report was one of a number of uncorroborated, sometimes
fantastical, reports that federal agents received from members of
the public alleging misconduct by Trump and other famous people in
the months and years after Epstein’s arrest.
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