Epstein Files: The Justice Department releases previously redacted FBI reports on sexual assault allegations against Trump

The Justice Department on Thursday released three previously redacted FBI interview reports from 2019 related to a woman who made unsubstantiated claims that she was abused by Donald Trump in the 1980s, when she was a minor.

The Ministry of Justice, in a statement on social media, said summaries of the interview – Known as FBI 302 Reports – It was initially withheld from the January release of millions of pages of Justice Department documents related to Jeffrey Epstein Because it is believed to be a duplicate of other documents.

“What we found through the extensive review is that 302 postings — which were additionally disclosed in a published spreadsheet — had 302 suffixes that were coded as ‘duplicate.’ After this was brought to our attention, we reviewed the entire batch with identical coding and discovered that 15 documents were incorrectly coded as duplicates,” the DOJ account said.

The statement did not appear to explain why the records were classified as duplicates, other than possible human error. As of Thursday evening, the Justice Department’s database still did not include handwritten notes from the interviews themselves.

According to reports, the FBI interviewed the woman four times between July and October 2019. During each interview the woman, whose identity was withheld, made allegations of abuse by Epstein.

In her second interview with federal investigators, she claimed that Epstein once took her to New York or New Jersey, where he met Trump when she was between 13 and 15 years old. According to the report, she claimed that Trump abused her during that trip.

In the fourth interview in October 2019, the woman refused to provide additional details about the alleged interaction with Trump when asked by agents, according to a summary of that interview.

Her statements to federal agents allege that the incident with Trump occurred in the early and mid-1980s — a period when there appeared to be no contact between Epstein and Trump.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to his relationship with Epstein or any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.

In her initial interview with the FBI, the woman claimed she was sexually assaulted by Epstein after she was hired for what she thought was a babysitting job, but she said there were no children involved. She said similar violations had occurred on several other occasions, according to a summary of the first report, which the Justice Department released in January.

The witness said many of the alleged incidents with Epstein occurred in South Carolina, a location Epstein is not known to have frequented. The timing of these allegations would place them two decades before Florida law enforcement began investigating Epstein for sexual exploitation of minors.

Before the additional records were released on Thursday, Democrats in Congress accused the Justice Department of illegally withholding documents to protect the president.

“It is unreasonable, illegal, and… [Attorney General] “Pam Bondi and the president need to answer where these files are,” Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, said last week.

In a statement in January, the Justice Department said some of the investigative files in the massive slide released would include unsubstantiated allegations about Trump.

“Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalized allegations against President Trump that were made to the FBI immediately prior to the 2020 election. To be clear, these allegations are baseless and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they would certainly have been used as a weapon against President Trump,” the statement read.