The Justice Department on Thursday night released a trio of previously unseen interviews from the Epstein files that contain uncorroborated allegations that President Trump sexually assaulted a minor in the 1980s.
The female in the files said she “bit him” after he tried to force her to perform oral sex, prompting him to hit her — one of the latest bits of information to come out in the intermittent release of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Department of Justice said the interview summaries were originally withheld from the January Epstein document dump because they were believed to be duplicates of other documents.
“After this was brought to our attention, we reviewed the entire batch with the similar coding and discovered 15 documents were incorrectly coded as duplicative,” the department said.
Democrats are investigating whether the department withheld the files because they include four FBI interviews — known as 302s — of a woman who said Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her as a young teenager.
Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein allegations and has not been charged with a crime in connection with them.
In a series of 2019 interviews, the woman, whose name is redacted, alleges that she was sexually assaulted by Epstein and Mr. Trump, having come forward shortly after the disgraced financier and sex trafficker was arrested.
Epstein died in 2019.
The woman said that when she was between 13 and 15 years old, Epstein took her to either New York or New Jersey to meet Mr. Trump “in a very tall building with huge rooms.”
She also said that she received threats that she believed were directed by Epstein, but if not from him, maybe from the “other one,” referring to Mr. Trump, according to the interview notes.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the allegations as “completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence, from a sadly disturbed woman who has an extensive criminal history.”
Before the additional documents were released, congressional Democrats accused the Justice Department of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act — requiring the government to release all of the investigative files related to Mr. Epstein without revealing identifying information about victims — to protect the president.
When many of the files were publicized in late January, officials acknowledged uncorroborated allegations.
“This production may include fake or falsely submitted images, documents or videos, as everything that was sent to the FBI by the public was included in the production that is responsive to the Act. Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they are fed up with the delays in releasing the Epstein files, pushing the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to vote Thursday to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi.
