The Justice Department is drawing fresh scrutiny after releasing Epstein-related records that appear to black out Donald Trump’s face in a photograph.
The Trump administration last week made public roughly three million pages of Justice Department records tied to its long-running investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile financier who died in custody in 2019.
Among the newly released materials is a 2019 text exchange between Epstein and Stephen Bannon, a former top adviser to Trump, that includes an image of Trump speaking at an event—his face conspicuously hidden beneath a black redaction box.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the DOJ for comment.
The administration has long treated Trump’s appearance in the Epstein records as a political flashpoint. Despite campaign promises in 2024 from Trump allies to fully disclose the files, the White House later pulled back, stoking speculation that the materials might contain politically embarrassing details.
That suspicion deepened in December, when the Justice Department briefly posted—then removed—a photograph of Epstein’s New York mansion showing an image of Trump with several young women tucked inside a drawer. Officials later said the image was taken down to protect victims, before reposting it.
Concerns about transparency resurfaced again this week when officials acknowledged that only about half of the total Epstein records collected by the government had been released. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said roughly three million pages were made public, out of six million gathered, along with thousands of videos and images, calling the move the culmination of a lengthy review process.
The disclosure arrived six weeks after the legal deadline, which required the department to make public all records tied to Epstein’s crimes and associates under the Transparency Act—a measure President Trump signed into law last year only after considerable resistance.
The newly released materials contain frequent references to Trump. The New York Times identified more than 5,300 files with tens of thousands of mentions of Trump, his family, and Mar-a-Lago. None, however, show direct communications between Trump and Epstein.
The latest document release also contains interview summaries and investigator notes from conversations with Epstein’s victims, some of which reference Trump.
In one set of handwritten notes from a September 2019 interview—conducted weeks after Epstein’s death—a victim described being driven in a dark green vehicle to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Trump. According to the notes, Epstein introduced her by saying, “This is a good one, huh?” The account does not allege any improper behavior by Trump.
Elsewhere in the files, investigators recorded statements from Juan Alessi, a former Epstein employee, who told authorities that Trump was among several prominent figures who had visited Epstein’s residence.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein and has not been charged or accused by prosecutors in connection with the billionaire’s crimes. The pair were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Trump maintains that he cut ties with Epstein well before the convicted sex offender’s 2006 arrest.
Trump has also said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in the mid-2000s following a dispute over Epstein’s conduct toward a young woman, though the specifics of that incident have never been fully confirmed.
