cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43334510

The Department of Justice spoke four separate times to a woman who credibly accused Donald Trump of having sex with a minor he met through Jeffrey Epstein—but most accusations against the president appear to have been removed from the government’s documents on the alleged sex trafficker.

A 21-page slideshow buried in the massive trove of Epstein-related documents included allegations that sometime between 1983 and 1985, Trump forced a woman to give him oral sex when she was in her early teens. When the woman bit down on Trump’s exposed penis, he allegedly punched her in the head and kicked her out. That same woman told the DOJ that Epstein had introduced her to Trump in 1984.

Yet last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that there was “no evidence” that Trump had committed any crime—adding to the growing pile of denials from Trump officials that constitute a sweeping cover-up of the president’s alleged wrongdoing.

Justice Department records indicate that the FBI spoke to this woman not once but at least four separate times, according to independent journalist Roger Sollenberger. Now those records appear to have been removed from public viewing—despite the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires all documents relating to the alleged sex trafficker to be made public.

Sollenberger discovered a record of four separate interviews, which took place in the summer of 2019, in a separate database of documents downloaded from the government’s public files on Epstein. That document indicated that the first of the four interviews was conducted on July 24, 2019, and the last conducted on October 16, 2019. That document was given to Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers as part of her trial, though the specific allegations predated Maxwell’s involvement with Epstein, Sollenberger wrote.

The woman’s first interview was entered into the FBI’s case files on August 9, 2019, just one day before Epstein was found dead in his jail cell. FBI agents typically have a deadline of five working days to file interview write-ups, indicating an abnormal 16-day gap, Sollenberger noted.