EDITORIAL:

Missing pages in Epstein files protect the powerful, abandon the vulnerable

Documents that were included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files are photographed Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. Photo by: Jon Elswick / Associated Press

Sunday, March 1, 2026 | 2 a.m.

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In politics and law, patterns often matter more than any single decision. One delayed document can be bureaucratic inertia. A single redaction error can be an honest mistake. But when a cascade of missing records, suppressed findings and victim disclosures all move in the same direction, shielding the powerful while exposing the vulnerable, Americans are justified in asking at what point caution and coincidence become conspiracy.

The latest alarm comes from reporting by NPR, which uncovered a striking irregularity in the Justice Department’s release of records tied to the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. Through meticulous comparison of serial numbers and discovery logs, reporters identified more than 50 pages of interview notes and related materials that appear to exist within federal archives yet remain absent from the public Epstein database. Those pages, critically, are linked to allegations that Donald Trump forced a 13-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him.

The Department of Justice has offered familiar explanations: privilege, duplication, ongoing investigative sensitivity. These are the kinds of reasons agencies routinely cite when information cannot be released. But routine explanations begin to sound less convincing when they collide with a documented paper trail showing that the missing material was logged, indexed and, in some cases, referenced in other disclosures.

The discrepancy surrounding FBI interviews is particularly unsettling. Records tied to the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell indicate at least four interviews with an accuser whose allegations mention Trump. Yet only one interview appears publicly. The other interviews, along with accompanying notes, remain out of view, despite clear evidence that investigators conducted them.

No definitive proof of wrongdoing lies in that absence alone. But absence, when selective, acquires meaning. The same document release that struggles to locate interview transcripts somehow managed to expose victims’ names and identifying details through flawed redactions. Survivors who spent years seeking anonymity instead found themselves exposed, some even discovering that nude photographs had been made publicly accessible. The imbalance is jarring: Information that could embarrass the powerful disappears and is routinely redacted in the files, while information that could retraumatize victims slips through.

None of this establishes criminal conduct by the president, and the presumption of innocence is foundational to our legal system. But it is difficult to ignore how consistently this imbalance seems to operate in one direction.

Inescapably, one can only conclude that Trump has directed his lickspittles at the highest levels of law enforcement to not only tolerate child sexual abuse but protect it. And most importantly protect the president. The same president who in 2006 told Howard Stern in a recorded broadcast interview that “I have no age — I mean, I have age limit. I don’t want to be like Congressman (Mark) Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds.” The accuser in the FBI files was 13 at the time when she alleged that Trump raped her.

While Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal lawyer, insist that no information was suppressed to protect reputations or avoid political discomfort, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., has suggested that unredacted logs indicate survivor interviews were withheld without a clear legal basis.His concerns may ultimately be validated or disproved, but they underscore the central issue: The public is being asked to accept a process whose outcomes repeatedly defy intuitive expectations of fairness.

The unease intensified when U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon blocked the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report examining Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The legal rationale emphasized due process and the absence of a trial verdict, arguments with some, though certainly not absolute legal authority. Yet the practical effect was unmistakable: Another potentially revealing record concerning presidential conduct was placed beyond public scrutiny by a judge who has repeatedly and consistently ruled in Trump’s favor, even when that ruling relied on suspect legal precedent.

Viewed in isolation, the ruling can be defended as cautious jurisprudence. Viewed alongside the Epstein document irregularities and Cannon’s history of questionable decisions, it contributes to growing evidence that Trump’s functionaries have an unusual habit of making critical information about Trump vanish into bureaucratic and procedural limbo.

This observation is not the product of partisan suspicion. Nonpartisan civil society groups such as American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute sought to intervene in the classified documents case, arguing that blocking access to consequential investigative findings undermines longstanding transparency norms. Their argument is not that every allegation is true, but that the public’s ability to evaluate evidence should not hinge on a sequence of opaque decisions made by government insiders.

Perhaps the most troubling dimension is what this pattern communicates to victims. Survivors of Epstein’s abuse were promised transparency, accountability and protection. Instead, they have witnessed a process in which their privacy proved negotiable while the visibility of allegations involving powerful men proved remarkably fragile. The message, which appears to be very intentional, is that vulnerability invites exposure while power invites discretion.

Trust in democratic institutions depends on integrity. Each missing page, each delayed release and each sealed report cements the reality that the full story remains just out of reach as Trump’s minions do everything in their power to hide the facts.

This Justice Department and this FBI and this administration have debased the very notion of justice. It will take years to repair this damage, and the victims themselves will never fully be restored.