US Justice Department withheld allegations against Trump from Epstein files, NPR finds
Investigation finds that FBI interviews with a woman who alleged Trump sexually and physically assaulted her as a minor were missing from Epstein database, in violation of law
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The United States Department of Justice withheld and prevented the release of several documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files that contained allegations of sexual assault of a minor by US President Donald Trump, according to an investigation carried out by US media outlet NPR.
The probe, which was subsequently backed up by an independent CNN review, found that among the withheld files were several interviews with a woman who alleged that Trump had sexually assaulted her decades earlier when she was a minor.
The decision to withhold the documents would appear to be a violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated that all of the documents relating to convicted sex offender Epstein be made public by December 19, although in reality, millions were only released weeks later.
The three missing interviews are among more than 50 pages of FBI witness interviews that have been withheld from the public despite appearing to have been catalogued by the DOJ, the NPR probe found. The accompanying notes from the conversations are missing as well.
The same woman also accused Epstein of repeatedly assaulting her, starting when she was 13 years old. Unlike the documents concerning her allegations against Trump, the FBI interview in which she accuses Epstein of sexual assault was among the millions of documents released to the public.
With the FBI interviews missing from the database, NPR found that the only publicly available mentions of the allegations she leveled against Trump were in copies of the FBI list of claims and in an internal DOJ presentation dated August 2025.
The contents of the presentation were first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger on February 15.
The allegation against Trump appears on a page in the slideshow titled “Prominent Names,” with the name and identifying details of the accuser redacted.
“[Redacted] stated Epstein introduced her to Trump who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit,” the text reads. “In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out.”
The presentation places the alleged assault as having taken place sometime between 1983 and 1985, when the victim was 13-15 years old.
A separate accusation against Trump by a different woman is detailed directly below the first item.
“[Redacted] remember Epstein introduced her to Trump saying ‘This is a good one, huh’ and Trump responded ‘Yes,'” the presentation reads, adding that this incident took place in 1984 when the victim was 14 years old.
According to Sollenberger, the second claim in particular “carries immense credibility” within the DOJ as it came from a government witness whose testimony was instrumental in convicting Ghislaine Maxwell, a close Epstein associate found guilty of sex trafficking in 2022.
Although the DOJ presentation is the only publicly available mention of the first woman’s allegations against Trump, NPR said it had found what could be the origin of the withheld interviews through a review of FBI case file logs and discovery material provided to Maxwell’s attorneys during her trial.
The discovery material comprised 15 documents, NPR said, but only seven of them were later released as part of the Epstein files database.
The interview in which the woman accused Epstein of assaulting her as a minor was among the material given to Maxwell’s legal team and later made public, leading NPR to assess that the withheld interviews and accompanying notes were likely included in the discovery material but not in the Epstein files database.
In the wake of NPR’s investigation, the ranking member of the US House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia (Democrat of California), said the committee’s Democratic Party members had conducted their own review and “can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes.”
He said Oversight Democrats would open an investigation into the apparent cover-up of the documents, alongside an ongoing investigation into the FBI’s handling of allegations from 2019 of sexual assault on a minor made against Trump.
The DOJ declined NPR’s request for a comment on the report that it had withheld documents, while a White House spokesperson reiterated the administration’s line that the Epstein files contained “untrue and sensationalist claims” against Trump.
The spokesperson further told NPR that Trump had “done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him,” and had been “totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.”
The Times of Israel Community.