The Jeffrey Epstein victim who told the FBI that Donald Trump also sexually and physically assaulted her when she was 13-15 years old had a brother who was arrested for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an unlawful effort to keep Trump in power, a review of public records shows. The woman was suing Epstein’s estate at the time.
I can’t reveal more about the arrest or brother without revealing potentially identifying details about the victim, whose name is redacted in the Epstein files, often accompanied by potentially unique internal directives at the time to “protect source.” I have, however, become aware of some redaction issues regarding this victim in the DOJ’s processing of the Epstein files for public release.
It’s unclear whether the victim told her brother at any point about her alleged experiences with Trump and Epstein. The victim informed the FBI when she first came forward — days after Esptein’s arrest in July 2019 — that she had previously only told two people about those experiences: Her then-dead mother and a childhood friend. The woman eventually aired those allegations not just to the FBI after Epstein’s 2019 arrest, but apparently also in her civil lawsuit against Epstein’s estate, where, I reported yesterday, she joined a number of other anonymous victims and was reportedly awarded a financial settlement.
As I also reported yesterday, the DOJ at some point removed a record of three additional interviews the FBI conducted with the woman, which was previously accessible in the Epstein files database in late January. It’s unclear what was discussed in those interviews.
Nina Burleigh and Kate Chenowith, in a report that also identified the apparent interviews and the claims in the victim’s lawsuit, observed that the DOJ appears to have had serious and potentially uniquely serious concerns about protecting this victim’s identity specifically during their investigation. They also reported on an internal FBI email last year — sent two days before Deputy Attorney General and erstwhile Trump criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche held a proffer session with convicted Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell — that mentions, and highlights in yellow, that one Trump accuser comes up as a “positive hit” in the case files.
”Donald Trump (one identified victim claimed abuse by Trump but ultimately refused to cooperate),” the email says.
In the victim’s initial FBI interview — the one that is public — her lawyer told federal agents that his client did not want to implicate Trump out of “fear of retaliation.”