Left: Jeffrey Epstein in an undated photograph released by the Justice Department (DOJ).
Right: President Donald Trump addresses the nation on the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C. (White House)
Supposed FBI files that have previously been referred to as “missing” were recently discovered sitting on an online document-sharing platform, files that former MSNBC host Katie Phang said Saturday contain “allegations of sexual abuse committed by Donald Trump” against a 13- to 15-year-old victim, according to a report published Saturday.
Back in February, the Justice Department (DOJ) announced it was investigating claims that it had withheld a select trove of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The DOJ had justified withholding some of the files by describing them as "duplicative" of material already turned over, a characterization that has since come under scrutiny.
A growing number of critics increasingly pointed to a trove of 37 pages of FBI hand-written notes taken during a 2019 interview with “Jane Doe 4,” a South Carolina woman who accused Trump and Epstein of sexual and physical abuse beginning when she was 13 years old.
The woman was interviewed four separate times by the FBI and was found credible by the agency, according to a DOJ source who spoke with the Miami Herald. While some details of her account have since been verified, her specific allegations against Trump remain unsubstantiated, and Trump is not being criminally investigated and has denied any wrongdoing as it relates to Epstein.
The “missing” 37 pages were aggressively pursued by investigators, including Phang, whose ongoing lawsuit against the DOJ specifically sought the release of said pages, alongside a trove of foreign-language documents related to Epstein.
This week, however, New York-based writer Amy Gabrielle appeared to have uncovered an online archive containing some of the sought-after FBI files. Writer and data researcher Rye Howard-Stone picked up where Gabrielle left off and, in a detailed write-up published on his Substack Saturday, revealed the alleged source of the mysterious upload: Kaelan Deese, a journalist with the conservative outlet Washington Examiner.
The Washington Examiner published a report written by Deese on March 7 titled: “What’s still missing from the Epstein files,” but according to Howard-Stone, Deese had “quietly released” 22 pages of the missing 37 on Scribd, an online document-sharing platform, just one day before. Those pages would go unnoticed by major media outlets for months.
“This meant that, for the last five months, anyone with internet access could view the notes, which had Jane Doe 4’s real name all over them, as well as significant biographical details and the names of childhood friends and family members who she said could corroborate elements of her story – all of which she gave the FBI in confidence, and all of which the DOJ had redacted,” Howard-Stone wrote.
“But Deese, who regularly publishes articles with a favorable conservative gloss, was part of a small, select group of people that DOJ brass secretly decided were – unlike the public and members of Congress – able to be trusted with these allegedly ‘duplicative,’ ultra-sensitive files. Entirely unredacted.”
Howard-Stone claimed that while Deese “took the files down shortly after” he contacted a Washington Examiner editor, Deese had also shared additional FBI handwritten notes with “one random person who had discovered the posts.”
“We found that person, who shared his text message exchanges with Deese,” Howard-Stone wrote.
Phang was contacted for comment on the revelation, and told Howard-Stone that the “timing of the discovery and release of these unredacted handwritten notes” was “interesting,” and that it also undermined the DOJ’s rationale for withholding them.
“There also remains an open question as to the authenticity of these published notes. That question could be readily answered if the FBI would just comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act and release the notes they’ve been legally required to do,” Phang said.
“Regardless, what these notes DO show is that they are not 'duplicative' of the FBI 302s as Blanche has asserted and they clearly contain allegations of sexual abuse and physical abuse committed by Donald Trump with a victim who was 13-15 years old at the time. So the Trump DOJ has no incentive to release them.”