‘What Else is Being Covered Up?’: DOJ Quietly Scrubs 16 of the Infamous Files, Including a Trump Photo That Has Everyone Asking Questions
President Donald Trump‘s Justice Department quietly removed at least 16 documents from its public webpage containing files related to Jeffrey Epstein less than a day after posting them, triggering more scrutiny over what the administration is withholding from the public.
The missing materials, which were accessible Friday and gone by Saturday, included an image that drew particular attention online: a photograph showing President Trump alongside Epstein, Melania Trump, and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, the Associated Press reported. The image appeared inside a drawer among other photos and carried a batch number ending in 468, according to journalist and political commentator Aaron Parnas.
“Today, it’s been scrubbed from the website,” Parnas told his followers. “The link has been taken down.”
The unexplained deletions immediately intensified speculation surrounding the long-awaited release of the files, which were made public under a law signed by Trump in November requiring disclosure by last Friday.
In a post on X, the Justice Department said only that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”
View on Threads
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee seized on the disappearance of the Trump image, writing on X: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”
The episode compounded the frustration already brewing over the document release itself. While tens of thousands of pages were made public, the disclosures offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid federal charges for years.
Some of the most closely watched records — including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos about charging decisions — were missing altogether.
Those gaps raised renewed questions about accountability in a case that has long symbolized failures at the highest levels of law enforcement. The absent records could have shed light on how investigators evaluated survivor testimony and why Epstein, despite mounting evidence, was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a single state-level prostitution charge.
The omissions extend to several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, who are barely referenced in the files, even as the disclosures span tens of thousands of pages. That imbalance has fueled doubts about whether the release meaningfully advances public understanding of who was scrutinized and who was not.
The Justice Department’s broader release remains far from complete. What the documents do contain are scattered insights rather than a comprehensive narrative. Among the newly surfaced materials is a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children, as well as records showing the Justice Department’s internal decision to abandon a federal investigation into Epstein years before he took his own life.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, sought for months to keep the files sealed.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said federal prosecutors in Manhattan alone possess more than 3.6 million records related to Epstein and Maxwell, many of them duplicative but still largely unreleased. Many of the documents made public so far were previously available through court filings or freedom of information requests, though never assembled in one searchable location.
Others arrived heavily redacted or stripped of context. A 119-page document labeled “Grand Jury-NY,” believed to relate to federal sex trafficking investigations that led to charges against Epstein in 2019 and Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out. The Justice Department also appears to have redacted Trump’s name from at least one exhibit where it had appeared in an earlier version, according to posts by the independent outlet MeidasTouch.
Friday’s release was heavy with photographs of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with images of celebrities and politicians. There are multiple previously unseen photos of former President Bill Clinton, while photos of Trump appeared largely left out.
Despite missing the deadline to release all the files, the Justice Department has said it plans to release records on a rolling basis, with Blanche citing the time required to redact survivors’ names and identifying details. No timeline has been provided for subsequent releases.
That approach angered some lawmakers who said the release has opened an indefinite waiting period for a full accounting of Epstein’s crimes and to cover up Trump’s potential involvement.
Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., whose discharge petition led to the congressional vote compelling the release, both criticized the outcome. Massie wrote that it “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law,” adding he will push for an impeachment investigation against Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Online reaction was mostly suspicious of the documents, with critics saying the partial release was predictable, and comments like: “No surprise here,” “Shocker,” and “Corruption at its finest.”
One person asked: “I apologize for what may be a silly question, but if the Dept of Justice is corrupt and the Attorney General is corrupt and the head of the FBI is corrupt, who exactly would charge him with obstruction of justice, arrest him and make a charges stick? And no, I’m not talking about impeachment. He’s been impeached twice and nothing has happened. Is it actually possible to have real consequences?”
A Trump supporter responded on Threads by attacking Parnas and Democrats: “You posted a AI picture fool. And those files were taken down by Democrats. You need to get a hold of Hillary Clinton. She had them removed because of her & husband were all over them,” he wrote.
The Justice Department plans to release another batch of the files on Monday afternoon.
View on Threads