Jimmy Kimmel demanded answers from Attorney General Pam Bondi over 53 redacted Epstein files that appear to be deeply damaging to President Donald Trump.
Kimmel explained how NPR reported Tuesday evening that the Justice Department has “illegally withheld 53 pages of notes and memos from FBI interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually abusing her when she was a young teenager.”
The withheld files allegedly regard a series of FBI interviews with a female victim of Epstein in 2019, who claimed that in 1983, when she was around 13, she was introduced to and sexually assaulted by Trump. Former Daily Beast reporter Roger Sollenberger was the first to flag the missing files over the weekend.
The woman accused Trump of pushing her head down and pressuring her to perform oral sex on him after she was introduced by Epstein. The allegation is listed in an internal FBI slideshow that lists Trump under “prominent names,” which was made public in the DOJ’s Epstein files dump. It is also noted in a file from an FBI summary last August.
House Oversight Committee member Rep. Robert Garcia revealed on Tuesday that Democrats were investigating the Department of Justice over the redacted files.
“Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes,” Garcia explained.
He added, “Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the President of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House cover-up.”
Kimmel called out Pam Bondi by name for the scandal, telling her, “Cancel your blowout. We’ve got heinous crimes to investigate here.”
The late-night host added, “Why are they being allowed to hide this stuff? They’re supposed to release the files. What a bunch of hypocrites these people... If these interviews were on Hunter Biden’s laptop, we’d know every word of them.”
Kimmel clarified, “We don’t know if the president took part in or even knew about any of the crimes his best friend—the world’s most notorious pedophile—committed.”
He continued, “The reason we don’t know is because the people who worked for the president blacked out his name a bunch of times and made interviews disappear.”
Kimmel trolled Trump, suggesting, “The best thing for President Trump, who I’m sure did nothing wrong, is to order them to un-redact his name and release all of the Trump Epstein files so he can prove he’s innocent here.”
President Trump has repeatedly denied any knowledge or involvement in Epstein’s crimes. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the New York Times Tuesday that Trump has “been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.”
The Department of Justice’s Rapid Response Team also released a statement Wednesday attempting to counter the perception that they’re covering up files that may be incriminating to Trump.
“Should any document be found to have been improperly tagged in the review process ... the Department will of course publish it, consistent with the law,” the DOJ wrote.
The DOJ also criticized NPR and House Democrats for “misleading” the public about the missing files:
“ALL responsive documents have been produced,” the DOJ argued, “Unless a document falls within one of the following categories: duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation.”
