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Outrage as photos are 'disappearing' from newly released Epstein files including pictures of Trump with women in swimsuits
Pictures of Donald Trump have disappeared from the latest tranche of Jeffrey Epstein files published by the US Department of Justice. The missing images were among at least 16 documents that critics say have been removed since the files first went online.
The House Oversight Committee Democrats highlighted what they described as the removal of an image showing two printed photos of Mr Trump in a desk drawer.
Per Sky News, one photo showed Mr Trump with several women in bathing suits. The second appeared to show him with his wife Melania, Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, although part of that image was obscured. Alongside the Trump images, almost all of the other removed files were nude paintings of women that had been in Epstein’s home.
Questions over the files released
Thousands of pages related to the dead sex offender and financier were made public by the DOJ on a Friday, just hours before a deadline set by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Many pages were heavily redacted or completely blacked out, which the DOJ said was intended to protect the more than 1,200 victims and their families identified in the files.
Epstein is all smiles in the picture as he poses without a shirt and with what appears to be a white towel wrapped around his waist on a couch. Credit: US Department of Justice
Some victims and legal experts have questioned whether victim protection was the only reason behind the redactions.
The Oversight Democrats claimed: "This is a White House cover-up."
Survivor Ashley Rubright, who was abused by Epstein for years starting when she was 15, told Sky News: "Seeing [...] completely redacted pages, there's no way that that's just to protect the victims' identities, and there better be a good reason. I just don't know if we'll ever know what that is."
Problems with redaction and reaction
Lawyer Gloria Allred said she had been told that some compromising images of survivors and their names were visible in the released files despite heavy redaction.
She told Sky News: "We have had to notify the Department of Justice about names that should have been redacted that weren't redacted.
"So this is further trauma to survivors, and apparently also some of the images of some of the survivors appear not to have been redacted, and they are nude or not completely dressed.
"This is a major concern because the law clearly indicates, and the judges have indicated, that the names and any identifying information of the survivors must be redacted."
Pictures of Donald Trump have disappeared from the latest tranche of Jeffrey Epstein files published by the US Department of Justice. Credit: Leon Neal / Getty
In a letter to judges overseeing the Epstein and Maxwell cases, US attorney Jay Clayton acknowledged that a review “of this size and scope is vulnerable to machine error [or] instances of human error”.
He said the DOJ chose to blur faces of women in photos with Epstein "even where not all the women are known to be victims" because it was impractical to identify everyone in every image.
Trump has not commented on the release of the files and has not been accused of wrongdoing. Through the release process, the Trump administration said it was the most transparent in history despite Congress forcing publication by a deadline. Some Democrats and Republicans have criticised the partial release as failing to "comply with law."
Allred said: "So clearly, the law has been violated. And it's the Department of Justice letting down the survivors once again. This is not over, and it won't be over until we get the truth and transparency for the survivors."