Although the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has publicly released, with redactions, thousands of files related to the late billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, many questions about his crimes and who was or wasn't a part of them remain unanswered. Journalist Roger Sollenberger, in a February 20 column posted on his Substack page, focuses on a document related to President Donald Trump that disappeared from DOJ's Epstein files database only to reappear later.
Sollenberger first reported on the document's disappearance in a February 18 column. But by Thursday night, February 19, the reporter notes, the document had reappeared.
The document pertains to a woman who alleged to the FBI that Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a child.
Sollenberger explains, "It's unclear why the DOJ deleted the document in the first place…. The information in the document pertaining to the Trump accuser — whom the DOJ identifies as a victim of Jeffrey Epstein in the early-mid 1980s — doesn't appear altered in any way. However, the existence of this record — more specifically, the public's knowledge of its existence — carries significant implications when it comes to the president and his DOJ's posture against Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. That's because this document shows the FBI conducted not just one, but four, interviews with Trump's accuser. And, as I reported Wednesday, while the government gave all four of those interviews to Maxwell's legal team ahead of her trial, the government gave only one of those four interviews to us in the Epstein files."
The reporter adds, "In other words, this document shows that, in choosing to withhold three of the four interviews from the Epstein files, the DOJ has granted Maxwell potential blackmail on the sitting president of the United States."
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for her role in Epstein's crimes.
Sollenberger notes that the alleged victim described in the deleted/readded DOJ document sued Epstein's estate and agreed to a "reported payout in December 2021."
"If DOJ had released those interviews with the Epstein files, as it appears the law absolutely requires, any leverage Maxwell had there would be gone," Sollenberger writes. "Instead, Trump's DOJ — starring Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and Kash Patel — let her keep it. What's more, the American people still wouldn't even know that Maxwell could potentially be blackmailing the president with these sworn victim statements if it weren't for the existence of precisely this document — the document I caught DOJ removing from its public database…. The record that disappeared — and is now back online — is an evidence catalog showing that those interviews were among the 'non-witness material' that DOJ prosecutors produced for Maxwell's defense team."


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