Department of Justice did not release FBI memos when it uploaded millions of pages of files beginning in December
Three memos that describe four interviews conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2019 contain explicit but unsubstantiated claims that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman when she was a minor in the early 1980s with the assistance of Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Guardian review of those documents.
The Department of Justice did not release those records when it uploaded millions of pages of files related to Epstein beginning in December. The existence of the missing documents was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and subsequently confirmed by NPR, causing outrage in Washington and sparking an investigation from congressional Democrats.
The Guardian obtained the missing FBI form 302 reports, which memorialize 25 pages of agents’ notes from the four interviews conducted in the summer and fall of 2019. The notes describe how the woman came forward to tell agents she recognized Epstein from a photo sent by a childhood friend. Only the first session, in which she did not name Trump, made it into the public release. The Guardian has chosen not to publish the woman’s name.
Oh Guardian. When will journalism ever learn that this faux fairness and false equivalence is exactly what brought us here.
The fact that the files were omitted is what’s important, not that some things may not be factually correct. If you’ve been violated and you’re talking to scary burocratic men who show little empathy and are known to protect the powerful, you might not be insanely factually correct either.
The smoking guns are that they didn’t investigate, and they were excluded or removed from the files. Maybe write an article about that.