Previously unreleased FBI memoranda contain explicit but unsubstantiated allegations that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman when she was a minor in the early 1980s, with the involvement of Jeffrey Epstein, according to a review by the Guardian.
The documents relate to four interviews conducted by FBI agents in 2019. They were not included when the US Department of Justice (DoJ) began releasing millions of pages connected to Epstein in December. Their absence was first reported by the independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and later confirmed by NPR, prompting anger in Washington and an inquiry by congressional Democrats.
The Guardian obtained the missing FBI form 302 reports, which total 25 pages of agents’ notes from interviews carried out in the summer and autumn of 2019. The records show that the woman approached investigators after recognising Epstein in a photograph sent by a childhood friend. Only the first interview, in which Trump was not named, appeared in the public release. The Guardian has chosen not to identify the woman.
Her claims have not been verified and no charges were brought by the FBI in connection with them. Some of her statements appear implausible and conflict with established details of Epstein’s life in the early 1980s. While the DoJ document release has led to resignations and arrests in other cases, it has also included allegations later shown to be false. Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing related to Epstein and said last week: “I did nothing.”
An administration official confirmed the authenticity of the three missing reports obtained by the Guardian. The DoJ told NPR that “nothing has been deleted”, stating that any withheld material was either duplicative or legally privileged. An administration official made a similar claim to Breitbart, which has also reviewed the files.
The documents contain a fuller account of the allegations than those summarised in an internal FBI slideshow produced in 2025 as part of the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell investigations. The DoJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“These non-credible accusations against President Trump made in 2019 were in the SDNY files and listed by reviewers as duplicative files, which are not legally required to be released by the Epstein Transparency Act as it was written by Congress,” an administration official told the Guardian. The official added that the DoJ was continuing to review the material.
In the interviews, the woman said Epstein began sexually abusing her when she was 13, around 1983, while she was living on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. She told agents that between the ages of 13 and 15 she was taken by Epstein to a building in either New York or New Jersey, travelling by plane or car.
Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, told the Guardian he was unaware of his brother spending summers on Hilton Head during that period. “I would have known,” he said. There is no evidence that Trump and Epstein knew each other in 1983, although Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that he had met Epstein about 15 years earlier.
According to the FBI notes, the woman claimed that at the New York or New Jersey location she was introduced to Trump and several associates. She alleged that when she was left alone with Trump, he said something to the effect of: “Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be,” before attempting to sexually assault her. She said she bit him, after which he struck her and had her removed from the room.
She also told agents that Epstein and Trump discussed blackmailing people in her presence, and that she overheard Trump speaking about “washing money through casinos”.
The four interviews took place on 24 July, 7 August, 22 August and 16 October 2019 at the Washington state offices of her lawyer, Barry Brandenburg. Brandenburg did not respond to a request for comment.
Beyond her allegations involving Trump, the woman told investigators that Epstein gave her alcohol while she was an early teenager, which she suspected had been spiked, offered her cocaine and marijuana, and forced her to perform oral sex on him.
She further claimed that Epstein blackmailed her mother using explicit photographs of her, leading her mother to embezzle money from a real estate company to pay him. According to the woman, her mother later went to prison in South Carolina for embezzlement, and Epstein and two other men helped falsify records to facilitate the theft. The Guardian was unable to corroborate these claims.
In the third interview, the woman described what she said were years of threats, including several incidents in which she claimed she was almost run off roads in Oregon and Washington.
At the final interview in October 2019, she attended without her lawyer and declined to be audio recorded. When asked if she wished to expand on her allegations involving Trump, she questioned the purpose, saying there was “a strong possibility nothing could be done”.
The Guardian identified a woman whose biographical details match those in the FBI files. She has faced multiple fraud and theft charges in Washington state and, in 2023, a felony charge in Georgia for the exploitation of an elderly person. The outcomes of those cases are unclear.
In 2020, a Jane Doe with matching details joined a lawsuit against Epstein’s estate. She later withdrew her claims, and it is not known whether she received a settlement. Her lawyer in that case, Lisa Bloom, declined to comment.
Robert Garcia, the senior Democrat on the House oversight committee, said he was unable to find the files when he reviewed unredacted material at the justice department. The Republican committee chair, James Comer, also said lawmakers would examine claims that documents alleging Trump’s assault of a minor had been removed from the DoJ database.
“There is definitely, in my opinion, evidence of a cover-up happening,” Garcia told NBC News. “The FBI clearly investigated, and now those documents are gone.”
In a letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, Garcia demanded a full explanation for the files’ omission, saying the DoJ had “illegally withheld FBI interviews with a survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes”.
