American Oversight Slams Trump Administration Efforts to Erase Damning Facts From Epstein Files Lawsuits

Friday, as the government reaches its legal deadline to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein, American Oversight pushed back against the Trump administration’s effort to strike factual allegations from our lawsuit seeking records on the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) politicized review of files related to Epstein. We are arguing the government’s actions are a brazen attempt to keep the public in the dark about how the review was conducted and who it was designed to protect.

In a court filing opposing the administration’s motion to strike, we explained that the facts the government wants erased are drawn from public statements by top officials — including Trump’s own Attorney General, Pam Bondi, agency documents, media reporting, and correspondence from Congress — and are directly relevant to understanding whether DOJ and the FBI conducted an adequate search for records.

Late Wednesday, the Trump administration also filed a motion to strip similar language from a different lawsuit brought by us in October against the DOJ and the FBI seeking any interview records of President Trump in connection with the government’s investigation of Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. The FBI has refused to confirm or deny the existence of such records, even though Trump’s ties to Epstein and Maxwell are a matter of longstanding public record. We will oppose this effort as well.

“The Trump administration is asking the court to pretend history never happened and to ignore its own public statements about the Epstein case, while continuing to withhold records the public has a legal right to see,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight. “That effort to obfuscate insults the rule of law and compounds the harm to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who deserve honest answers about how this review was conducted, whether the President was questioned by the FBI, and whether justice was once again bent to protect him. The court should reject this transparent attempt to evade public scrutiny.”

We filed the underlying lawsuit in September after the DOJ and the FBI failed to produce records responsive to Freedom of Information Act requests seeking guidance, instructions, and internal communications related to the administration’s claimed “exhaustive review” of Epstein investigative materials. The complaint included factual background detailing conflicting public statements by senior officials, evidence of instructions to flag records mentioning President Trump, and widespread public interest in the review — all of which the administration now claims should be struck from the court’s record.

To further delay having to answer the lawsuit and produce records, the administration is attempting to scrub the narrative itself. Courts routinely reject such motions, which are widely disfavored and viewed as dilatory tactics. Our filing urges the court to deny the motion and order the administration to answer the complaint so the case can move forward towards the production of records.