President Donald Trump is talked about greater than 1,000 occasions within the three million Jeffrey Epstein documents released Friday, after the president initially resisted the hassle. While among the references are benign, others embrace newly disclosed unverified sexual assault claims in opposition to Trump in addition to recent particulars about how a few of Epstein’s victims described their interactions with the long run president.
Most notably, the newly launched documents include a listing of unverified assault allegations in opposition to Trump compiled by FBI officers final yr. There are additionally FBI notes about a lady who accused Trump in a lawsuit of raping her when she was 13, and an FBI interview with one among Epstein’s victims who acknowledged that Epstein’s confederate Ghislane Maxwell as soon as “presented her” to Trump at a celebration.
There’s no public proof that the any of the allegations in opposition to Trump contained within the new documents have been deemed credible by the FBI, and the Justice Department stated on Friday that the allegations in opposition to Trump within the documents have been false. Trump has lengthy denied any wrongdoing associated to Epstein or any allegation of sexual misconduct.
The revelations function a reminder of Trump’s preliminary resistance in opposition to releasing the recordsdata, regardless of pledging to accomplish that when he took workplace.
Congress finally bucked Trump and handed a regulation forcing the Justice Department to launch the entire Epstein recordsdata by mid-December. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche stated the Justice Department belatedly accomplished that obligation on Friday with its launch of 3.5 million documents, although Blanche stated some documents have been withheld beneath exceptions to the regulation.
The new particulars are additionally a reminder of Trump’s decades-long friendship with Epstein, a convicted intercourse offender who died by suicide in 2019, and Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime affiliate who’s at the moment in jail for intercourse trafficking.
It’s onerous to seize at this level the complete scope of what’s contained within the hundreds of thousands of documents that have been put on-line Friday morning, due to the sheer enormity of the discharge.
A search of the Justice Department’s Epstein web site for “Donald Trump” yielded greater than 1,800 hits, a quantity that rose through the day Friday because the DOJ web site seemingly listed extra recordsdata. Many of these references are information articles mentioning Trump throughout his presidency that Epstein shared with others, in addition to his commentary about Trump with a mixture of journalists and different associates, like Steve Bannon.
Blanche stated Friday the White House had “no oversight” of the evaluation of documents associated to the Epstein investigation.
“Let me just be clear — they had nothing to do with this review,” Blanche stated. “They had no oversight over this review. They did not tell this department how to do our review, what to look for, what to redact, what to not redact.”
The Justice Department stated in its launch that “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.”
One of probably the most intriguing documents involving Trump was a listing officers on the FBI compiled this previous August with of greater than a dozen allegations associated to Trump , lots of which seem to have come from unverified suggestions by the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center, which takes suggestions from the general public.
The documents have been included in emails that have been despatched by officers within the FBI’s New York subject workplace on the Child Exploitation & Human Trafficking Task Force. “Yellow highlighting is for the salacious piece,” one official wrote to clarify how the allegations have been being sorted.
It’s not clear why the allegations have been compiled final summer season. In July, the FBI and DOJ launched a memo claiming there was no proof that Epstein had a listing of highly effective males who participated in his alleged underworld of intercourse trafficking and pedophilia.
The allegations seem to be unverified, and officers observe that some are secondhand info. The FBI doc says that in lots of situations, there was no contact made with the people who despatched within the allegations, or no contact info was supplied.
There are additionally unverified allegations made within the doc in opposition to former President Bill Clinton, who has denied wrongdoing associated to Epstein.
Between Trump’s stints within the White House, lots of his allies turned right-wing influencers and podcasters. And many, like now-FBI Director Kash Patel, latched onto the Epstein saga and suggested that the Justice Department was defending Democrats and liberal celebrities – whereas largely ignoring Trump’s well-documented ties to Epstein.
After whipping up activists within the GOP base, strain constructed final yr on the Trump administration to use its new powers over the DOJ and FBI to launch Epstein-related supplies from the vault. One early try by Attorney General Pam Bondi backfired when new supplies she touted ended up being a curation of already public filings.
This led to a drumbeat of Republican lawmakers calling for the complete launch of the Epstein recordsdata. They labored with Democrats who have been eager to use the problem as a cudgel in opposition to a person that lots of them noticed as a sexual predator, after greater than a dozen ladies accused him of assault and harassment and he was found liable by a jury in 2023 for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in a civil defamation case. (He denies all of those allegations and hasn’t ever been accused by regulation enforcement of any wrongdoing associated to Epstein.)
Trump fought hard to cease Congress from passing the regulation and personally lobbied particular person GOP members on the White House. But he was outmaneuvered by a bipartisan groundswell of assist from lawmakers and the general public, and ultimately dropped his opposition. The invoice handed practically unanimously and Trump signed it into regulation in November .
The first wave of releases started on December 19, which was the deadline to launch every little thing. Even although it was solely a partial launch, Trump’s title was throughout it.
The documents revealed that federal prosecutors collected evidence in 2020 that Trump flew on Epstein’s personal airplane a number of occasions within the Nineteen Nineties. This blew a gap in Trump’s earlier denials, together with a 2024 assertion that “I was never on Epstein’s Plane.”
The December documents additionally revealed that the Justice Department subpoenaed Trump’s Mar-a-Lago membership earlier than Maxwell’s felony trial in 2021. It’s unclear how the membership responded. But the doc requested info about a former Mar-a-Lago worker.
Just as they did on Friday, Trump appointees went out of their manner to make clear that these disclosures additionally contained unverified suggestions about Trump, releasing the same statement that the recordsdata contained “untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”
Plenty of the new materials additional enhanced the general public’s understanding of Epstein’s ties to a big selection of Democratic figures, celebrities, and businesspeople. The recordsdata additionally made clear that Epstein intently followed information tales about Trump – and that he was in way more common contact with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon than beforehand recognized.
Included among the many hundreds of thousands of pages of documents launched Friday have been new particulars from the FBI’s interview notes with Epstein’s victims. While there was no smoking gun that lots of Trump’s critics had hoped for, the documents introduced new consideration to Trump’s longstanding ties to a sexual predator.
One FBI memo from an Epstein sufferer contained allegations that Maxwell as soon as “presented” her to Trump at a celebration in New York and later made clear to Trump that she was “available,” telling her, “Oh I think he likes you. Aren’t you lucky. This is great,” in accordance to the doc. The lady advised federal investigators that “nothing happened” between her and Trump.
Another FBI memo contained notes from an obvious 2021 interview with Virginia Giuffre, one of the outspoken Epstein survivors, who died by suicide in April 2025. The partially redacted memo signifies that Giuffre advised investigators about working as an adolescent at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago membership, how she was recruited from there to work for Epstein, and about the sexual abuse she says she was later subjected to by Epstein.
The recordsdata additionally included an FBI form that details a complaint from a lady who accused Donald Trump of raping her when she was 13 years outdated.
This nameless accuser, Jane Doe, beforehand launched lawsuits in opposition to Trump and dropped them, the final proper earlier than the 2016 election.
The FBI doc particulars a number of situations the place she alleged abuse by Trump, together with rape. It additionally says Epstein was allegedly “angry that Trump was the one to take Doe’s virginity” and in addition raped Doe. These descriptions mirror the allegations that Jane Doe made in her 2016 lawsuit.
Trump had beforehand denied the lady’s allegations.
When the lawsuit was dropped in 2016, Epstein emailed tales about the event to a number of associates, which have been included within the recordsdata launched Friday. There are additionally emails Epstein forwarded to Trump’s buddy Tom Barrack in April 2016 when a Reuters reporter reached out to Epstein for remark after the lawsuit was filed.
“Nuts but i thought you guys should know,” Epstein wrote.
Beyond the FBI notes, the Epstein documents include a number of emails that supply a glimpse into the convicted intercourse offender’s view of his former buddy after he was elected president in 2016.
Epstein emails with a variety of associates, together with journalists, executives and others, with loads of commentary about Trump.
(*3*)
In December 2018, Epstein requested journalist and creator Michael Wolff for assist pushing again in opposition to a narrative. Their alternate got here simply days after the Miami Herald published a deep investigation with interviews with dozens of girls who stated they have been victims of Epstein’s abuse.
“Im thinking what would trump do,” Epstein wrote to Wolff as they bounced concepts off each other.
“He never tries to explain. He denies, blames media, denigrates someone else,” responded Wolff, who had written a salacious book about Trump’s White House that yr.
“All about Donald Trump, the real villain,” Wolff adopted up.
There are a number of emails between Epstein and Larry Summers, the previous US treasury secretary and Harvard University president, discussing Trump’s presidential marketing campaign and first time period. Summers beforehand told NCS he’s “deeply ashamed” of his correspondences with Epstein and took leave from instructing at Harvard in November.
In October 2016, Summers requested Epstein: “How plausible is idea t=at trump is real cocaine user?”
“Zero,” Epstein replied.
While discussing Trump’s overseas coverage in July 2017, Summers wrote to Epstein: “I think your friend is mentally ill.”
“Not my friend,” Epstein responded, “and i ve told you that before.”
NCS’s MJ Lee, Hannah Rabinowitz and Sarah Owermohle contributed to this report.