The US Department of Justice on Thursday released additional documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, including FBI memos describing interviews with a woman who has made unconfirmed allegations against Epstein and Donald Trump.
The documents were not included in previous releases of Epstein-related files, which began in December. Justice Department officials have said the documents were initially withheld because they were incorrectly categorized as duplicates.
Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein or any knowledge of his criminal activity.
The materials released Thursday, which The Guardian obtained and reported last week, describe a series of FBI interviews conducted in 2019 with a woman who claims she was sexually abused by Epstein and Trump in the 1980s when she was a minor. The woman contacted the FBI shortly after Epstein's 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.
Her claims have not been verified, and the FBI has never filed charges related to them. The Guardian reported last week that some of her statements appear to contradict what is known about Epstein's life in the early 1980s.
In a statement to The Guardian, White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt called the woman's allegations "completely baseless" and said they are supported by "zero credible evidence."
“The complete baselessness of these allegations is further supported by the clear fact that Joe Biden’s Justice Department knew about these for four years and did nothing about them – because it knew President Trump had done absolutely nothing wrong,” Leavitt said. “As we have said many times, President Trump has been completely exonerated by the release of the Epstein files.”
In January, the Justice Department stated that "some of the documents contain false and sensational claims against President Trump, which were handed over to the FBI shortly before the 2020 election."
"To be clear, these allegations are baseless and false, and if they had even a shred of credibility, they would surely have already been used against President Trump," they added.
On Thursday, the Justice Department said in a statement that it had "reviewed public allegations" that some documents were missing from the release of the Epstein files and that it had identified "15 documents that were incorrectly coded as duplicates."
“Also, the Southern District of Florida separately determined that five prosecutorial memos, which were initially marked as privileged, may be released while still protecting the privileged materials,” the statement said. “All 20 of these documents are now public.”
The new release comes after Democrats last week launched an investigation into whether the Justice Department intentionally withheld material from the Epstein dossier releases related to allegations against Trump.
It also comes after five Republicans on the House Oversight Committee joined Democrats last week to subpoena US Attorney General Pam Bondi to explain the Justice Department's investigation into Epstein and how the document releases were handled.
