Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Especially Epstein.
President Donald Trump’s name shows up a lot in the latest batch of files, which includes material ranging from investigative documents to emails to news clips. A few of the mentions stand out so far.
First is an email chain from August 2025 in which an apparent FBI employee displays a list of apparently unsubstantiated tips involving Trump and Epstein – many of them quite salacious.
“Yellow highlighting is for the salacious piece,” one official writes to explain how the allegations were being sorted.
Trump has never been accused by law enforcement of Epstein-related wrongdoing, and he has denied engaging in any.
The allegations appear to be unverified, and the officials note that some are secondhand information. The document notes that in many instances, there was no contact made with the individuals who sent in the allegations, or no contact information was provided.
Some of the allegations were followed up on. One was sent to the FBI’s Washington field office to conduct an interview, and another was deemed not credible, according to the document.
There are also allegations made in the document against former President Bill Clinton, who has denied wrongdoing related to Epstein.
Two files featuring that particular email were later removed temporarily from DOJ’s website then restored. A DOJ official said the document had gone down “due to overload.”
It’s not clear why officials created the list of allegations related to Trump last year. But the political sensitivities of Trump’s proximity to Epstein – with whom he associated for years before Trump said he ended their relationship in the mid-2000s – were made abundantly clear last year when Trump at one point falsely denied having been told his name was in the files.
