Monday, September 21, 2026
Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump
Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump
An NPR investigation finds the Justice Department has removed or withheld Epstein files related to President Trump.
The Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor, an NPR investigation finds. It also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump.
Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.
NPR reviewed multiple sets of unique serial numbers appearing before and after the pages in question, stamped onto documents in the Epstein files database, FBI case records, emails and discovery document logs in the latest tranche of documents published at the end of January. NPR's investigation found dozens of pages that appear to be catalogued by the Justice Department but not shared publicly.
The Justice Department declined to answer NPR's questions on the record about these specific files, what's in them and why they are not published. After publication, the Justice Department reached out to NPR, taking issue with how its responses to questions were framed. Department of Justice spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre reiterated DOJ's stance that any documents not published are privileged, are duplicates or relate to an ongoing federal investigation.
Following NPR's reporting, the House Oversight Committee's ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., released a statement about the missing files.
"Yesterday, I reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the Department of Justice. Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes," Garcia stated.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have already been investigating this allegation against the president and will now open a parallel investigation into the DOJ's decision not to release these particular documents.
Other files scrubbed from public view pertain to a separate woman who was a key witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial of Epstein's co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. Maxwell is seeking clemency from Trump.
Some of those documents were briefly taken down and put back online last week, while others remain hidden, according to NPR's comparison of the initial dataset from Jan. 30 with document metadata of those files currently on the Justice Department's website.
NPR does not name victims of sexual abuse.
When asked for comment about the missing pages and the accusations against the president, a White House spokeswoman told NPR that Trump "has done more for Epstein's victims than anyone before him."
"Just as President Trump has said, he's been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told NPR in a statement. "And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee's subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein's Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein's victims than anyone before him. Meanwhile, Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Stacey Plaskett have yet to explain why they were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender."
The White House has previously pointed to a statement from the Justice Department that says the Epstein files contain "untrue and sensationalist claims" about the president.
In a Feb. 14 letter to members of Congress first reported by Politico, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insist that no records were withheld or redacted "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."
First woman accuses Trump of sexual abuse
According to the newly released files, the FBI internally circulated Epstein-related allegations that mention Trump in late July and early August 2025. The list, collected from the FBI's National Threat Operations Center, included numerous salacious allegations. Agents marked most of the accusations as unverifiable or not credible.
But one lead was sent to the FBI's Washington office with the purpose of setting up an interview with the accuser. The lead was included in an internal PowerPoint slide deck detailing "prominent names" in the Epstein and Maxwell investigations last fall.
The woman who directly named Trump in her abuse allegation claimed that around 1983, when she was around 13 years old, Epstein introduced her to Trump, "who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out."
Out of more than 3 million pages of files released by the Justice Department in recent months, this specific allegation against Trump appears only in copies of the FBI list of claims and the DOJ slideshow.
But a review of FBI case file logs and discovery documents turned over to Maxwell and her attorneys in the criminal case against her point to one place the claim could have come from — and how serious investigators took it.
The FBI interviewed this Trump and Epstein accuser four times. That is according to an FBI "Serial Report" and a list of Non-Testifying Witness Material in the Maxwell case that were also released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Only the first interview, conducted July 24, 2019, is in the public database. That interview does not mention Trump.
Of 15 documents listed in a log of the Maxwell discovery material for this first accuser, only seven are in the Epstein files database. Those missing also include notes that accompany three of the interviews. The discrepancy in the file for the Trump accuser was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger.
According to NPR's review of three different sets of serial numbers stamped onto the files, there appear to be 53 pages of interview documents and notes missing from the public Epstein database.
In the first interview document, the woman discussed ways Epstein abused her as a girl and, in identifying him to investigators, showed a cropped photo of the disgraced financier. Her attorney said it was cropped because she "was concerned about implicating additional individuals, and specifically any that were well known, due to fear of retaliation."
The FBI agents noted it was a "widely distributed photograph" of Epstein with Trump.
A woman whose biographical details and description of Epstein's abuse found in the FBI interview also line up with details from a victim lawsuit. In the December 2019 filing, "Jane Doe 4" does not mention Trump, and the woman voluntarily dismissed her claims against Epstein's estate in December 2021.
Attorneys for this accuser declined to comment.
Elsewhere in the released Epstein files, someone in the FBI wrote on July 22, 2025, before the list and slide presentation were compiled, that Trump's name was in the larger case files and that "one identified victim claimed abuse by Trump but ultimately refused to cooperate."
Second accuser says she met Trump at Mar-a-Lago
The other woman whose mention of Trump made the DOJ's presentation appears in Maxwell discovery files released last month in what's known as a Testifying Witness 3500 material list.
In the first interview of six with the FBI conducted between September 2019 and September 2021, the second woman detailed how Epstein and Maxwell's abuse began while she was around 13 years old and attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts and described how, at one point, Epstein took her to Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club to meet him.
"EPSTEIN told TRUMP, 'This is a good one, huh,'" the interview report reads.
In a 2020 lawsuit against Epstein's estate and Maxwell, the second woman added that both men chuckled and she "felt uncomfortable, but, at the time, was too young to understand why."
That interview was removed from the DOJ's public files some time after initial publication on Jan. 30 and was republished Feb. 19, according to document metadata.
The Justice Department told NPR the only reason any file has been temporarily removed is that it had been flagged by a victim or their counsel for additional review.
Multiple FBI interviews with other people refer to the second woman's meeting with Trump while she was a minor and being abused by Epstein. One interviewwith a fleeting mention of Trump was removed from the public database and subsequently restored last week, while another interview with the woman's mother is still offline. After publication, the Justice Department said, the file required additional redactions and will be reposted soon.
In that conversation, the mother recalled hearing that "a prince and DONALD TRUMP visited EPSTEIN's house," which made her "think that if they are there then how could EPSTEIN be a criminal," according to NPR's copy of the file that was first published.
The possible omission of files that mention these women's particular allegations against the president come as the Justice Department has warned about other documents it has published in full that include what it calls "untrue and sensationalist claims" about Trump.
At the same time, the Justice Department has removed and reuploaded thousands of pages in recent weeks to fix improperly redacted victim names. That includes documents related to the allegations from these two women, who separately say they were around 13 years old when Epstein first abused them.
Robert Glassman, who represents the woman who testified against Maxwell, sharply criticized the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files.
"This whole thing is ridiculous," he told NPR. "The DOJ was ordered to release information to the public to be transparent about Epstein and Maxwell's criminal enterprise network. Instead, they released the names of courageous victims who have fought hard for decades to remain anonymous and out of the limelight. Whether the disclosures were inadvertent or not—they had one job to do here and they didn't do it."
A DOJ spokesperson told NPR that the department is working "around the clock" to address concerns from victims and handle additional redactions of personally identifiable information that have been flagged.
"In view of the Congressional deadline, all reasonable efforts have been made to review and redact personal information pertaining to victims, other private individuals, and protect sensitive materials from disclosure," the statement reads. "That said, because of the volume of information involved, this website may nevertheless contain information that inadvertently includes non-public personally identifiable information or other sensitive content, to include matters of a sexual nature."
NPR's Saige Miller and Ryan Lucas contributed reporting.
Have information to share about the Epstein files? Reach out to Stephen Fowler through encrypted communications on Signal at stphnfwlr.25. Please use a nonwork device.“
Sunday, September 20, 2026
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Thursday, September 17, 2026
Democrats Hope Voting Rights Decision Will Drive Black Turnout in South
Democrats Hope Voting Rights Decision Will Drive Black Turnout in South
“Black Democratic candidates in the South hope voting rights decision backlash will drive turnout. Keisha Lance Bottoms and Scott Colom campaign amid redistricting; Shomari Figures and Don Davis remain competitive. Republicans maintain confidence.
Black Democratic candidates for governor, the Senate and the House are hoping that attacks on Black representation will bring out Black voters in November.
Emily Cochrane, who covers the South, reported from Tuskegee, Ala.; Mound Bayou and Meridian, Miss.; Athens, Ga.; and Memphis, Tenn.
Across the South, from the Mississippi Delta to Georgia’s suburbs, Black Democratic candidates are imploring Black voters to rise up and secure the representation this November that they were expected to be denied with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.
The hill is high, and Republicans remain supremely confident, but Democrats are trying to contest races typically seen as too far out of reach.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, remains in a tossup contest to be the next Georgia governor, despite being outspent 9 to 1 by her deep-pocketed Republican opponent, the businessman Rick Jackson.
In Mississippi, Scott Colom, a state prosecutor running for the Senate, is seeing a rare infusion of national cash in his bid to defeat the incumbent Republican, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.
In Florida, Black voters helped State Representative Angie Nixon overcome a lack of establishment support and fund-raising to become the party’s nominee for the Senate.
In Alabama, Republicans tried to redistrict Representative Shomari Figures to defeat, but his seat, stripped of many but not all of its Black voters, may somehow still be within reach. And the impact could extend to states that pushed ahead with redistricting before the Supreme Court decision. In North Carolina, another Black Democrat, Representative Don Davis, remains in the running for the district the Republican legislators redrew against him.
Turnout in Democratic primaries was higher this year than in recent midterms, as many races saw competitive primaries for the first time in years and as President Trump has become increasingly unpopular.
In Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina, Black and white voters both turned out in Democratic primaries at higher rates than in 2022, according to a New York Times analysis of the makeup of the electorate in states where an individual-level accounting of primary turnout was available. The increase was not driven by a surge among any particular racial group, and Black voters made up a slightly smaller share of the Democratic electorate in 2026 than four years earlier.
But with the general election looming and Republicans as their opponents, Democrats are hoping enthusiasm among Black voters, still the backbone of the party, will crest in the South, where segregation and the civil rights movement led to the Voting Rights Act. Here, the opportunity for fair representation remains deeply personal.
“One can walk away from that and say, ‘Well, my vote’s not going to matter in this election,’” said the Rev. Jay Augustine, senior pastor at Big Bethel A.M.E. Church in Atlanta. “What I’m seeing on the ground is just the opposite. People are like, ‘No, my vote is going to matter. I’m going to stand tall.’”
There are early signs that some races are narrowing more than expected. Democratic candidates in Tennessee and Louisiana have released polls that show them within striking distance in conservative areas that Mr. Trump won by double digits. At least one nonpartisan political analyst has moved Mr. Figures’s district to leaning Republican, from safely Republican.
“Discussion around voting and access to the right to vote is energizing, period,” Ms. Bottoms said in an interview in Athens, Ga., shortly before taking the stage at a joint rally with Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is also counting on Black voter enthusiasm.
Republicans remain confident they can hold off Southern challengers. As they pushed new House maps after the Supreme Court’s voting rights decision, they argued their gerrymanders were based solely on a quest for party advantage, not racial discrimination.
The situation for Democrats is complicated in Florida, where Ms. Nixon leads the Democratic ticket but a Black Republican, Representative Byron Donalds, is his party’s nominee for governor. Several Black Democrats have endorsed Mr. Donalds over former Representative David Jolly, the Democratic nominee, who is white.
The fact is, Democrats in the South cannot win on Black votes alone. Even in 2008, when a record surge of Black voting helped send Barack Obama to the White House, all but two Southern states voted Republican. Mr. Obama mustered a modern high-water mark for a Democrat in Mississippi, the state with the highest percentage of Black voters, but that amounted to about 43 percent.
“Democrats will foolishly waste time and money trying to compete in solidly Republican districts where they have zero chance of winning,” said Reilly Richardson, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
After the Supreme Court decision, the Southern Republican redistricting push targeted seats in Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama where Black voters had helped elevate Democratic lawmakers to power. The push continues; Mississippi state lawmakers are holding a series of redistricting hearings, which could lead to redrawing the map to target Representative Bennie Thompson, a Black Democrat.
That may energize Black voters ahead of November’s election, potentially to the benefit of Mr. Colom, who saw his nomination to a federal judgeship blocked by Senator Hyde-Smith during the Biden administration. He has leaned into his record as a prosecutor in Mississippi, while criticizing Republicans for making deep cuts to federal health care programs and failing to address high prices in one of the nation’s poorest states.
“We want to make sure that we have massive turnout,” said Sinessa Wilburn, 53, who attended a redistricting hearing in Meridian, Miss. “I want an Obama turnout, OK?”
Few Democrats campaign in the South without invoking civil rights. But the Supreme Court ruling has sharpened that message. By ensuring Black majorities in a number of Southern House districts, the Voting Rights Act increased the number of Black lawmakers in Congress and shaped policy and funding for otherwise underserved communities.
Without it, “we’re losing what so many people fought for — we would lose that one voice, one vote,” said Carolyn Rash Hampton, 78, who recounted to Mississippi legislators this month how she graduated from a segregated school northeast of Jackson, Miss.
In Mound Bayou, Miss., a Delta town built by formerly enslaved people as a mecca for Black independence and prosperity, Mr. Colom concluded his speech recently with a reference to the Supreme Court decision and the fallout in the Legislature.
“They don’t want to compete for the voters in the Delta,” Mr. Colom said to murmurs from the crowd. “They want to pick y’all’s congressman for y’all.”
“But,” he added, “thank God our ancestors gave us the one power we needed.”
Mr. Figures, speaking to a room of students and staff members at Tuskegee University this month, said the redistricting showed “an arrogantly high level of confidence that certain people in certain positions have that people are not going to go vote.”
He conceded that some voters, particularly younger ones, could feel disenchanted by new district lines designed to limit their power.
“How do we motivate younger voters to be able to go out and have a vested stake in what’s going on?” Mr. Figures asked, saying the civil rights movement felt as distant as World War I felt to him growing up.
Skyler Carrillo, 21, a college senior, pressed Mr. Figures about what could be done outside of the courts to respond to the ruling. A member of the historically Black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi, Mr. Carrillo is planning a forum this month to encourage students to vote.
“I know it’s hitting Alabama hard,” he said. “We can’t say our vote doesn’t matter if we aren’t going out to take that vote and take that chance.”
There are also money challenges.
“All Democrats who are in more safe seats should come to the South and help fight and give money,” said State Representative Justin J. Pearson in an interview before he clinched his primary for the Ninth Congressional District in Tennessee, a Democratic stronghold that was redrawn to guarantee a Republican pickup but that Mr. Pearson is still fighting for.
Some civic education and voting rights efforts had already been in the works, like a nonpartisan education partnership run by the National Civil Rights Museum, housed at the Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, in Memphis.
But others intensified after the ruling. The Congressional Black Caucus Institute this week announced a coordinated campaign to reach Black and rural voters in the South, including in several of the districts changed by redistricting.
Efforts to encourage voter turnout include a recent canvassing day in Memphis, where paid residents knocked on doors to let voters know that their district lines had changed and to encourage them to come out. One woman gently chided a younger, reluctant voter sitting on a porch in the Memphis heat, saying, “Your ancestors fought hard for this.”
Kimberly Davis, 51, a Memphis resident, fretted over “a crisis” facing Black voters at risk of losing their influence.
“Encouraging people and letting them know that their vote has power is something that I want to make sure that we do,” she said. She added: “There’s a serious need.”
Patricia Mazzei , Luke Vrotsos and Christine Zhang contributed reporting.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.“
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Fencing goes up around the main Kennedy Center building | AP News
Fencing goes up around the main Kennedy Center building after Trump-aligned board votes to close it
"WASHINGTON (AP) — Fencing went up Wednesday around the main Kennedy Center building, a day after the Trump-aligned board voted to close most of the performing arts center for repairs.
That vote came after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning President Donald Trump’s name to the building.
The Republican president had said in a social media post that the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he said the repairs, which Congress has allocated $257 million to cover, would only happen if the board was permitted to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.
Activists who have opposed the closure said there has been no vehicle or pedestrian access to the building. An Associated Press reporter who approached the main building was told by a security guard that it was closed.
Laura Bligh, who has attended protests with the advocacy group “Hands Off the Arts,” said she feared some or all of the building may be torn down before a legal case is concluded.
“The worst case scenario is a wrecking ball,” she said, adding that the Trump administration can’t be trusted because “look what they did to the East Wing.”
The administration demolished the East Wing of the White House and is replacing it with a massive ballroom. Trump also plans to build a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery and is eyeing a golf course renovation along the Potomac River.
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The Kennedy Center board voted in August to inscribe his name on the Kennedy Center’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
The plaza in front of the Kennedy Center would also be renamed in Trump’s honor.
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All of those proposals were shot down Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who ruled that nothing could happen “without Congress’s blessing.”
Spokespeople for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Maria Shriver, John F. Kennedy’s niece and former first lady of California, called the standoff over the name “a sad state of affairs” and a “tragedy.”
She said in a post on X that it appears Trump “will not rest until his name is permanently connected to the name of a great president, whose memory this building was dedicated to.”
“Imagine spending your days focused on this, while a war rages under your leadership,” she added."
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
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