SC victim is at center of Jeffrey Epstein storm over missing FBI documents. DOJ denies missteps.

The Epstein files released by the U.S. Justice Department failed to include three FBI interview summaries and six other documents related to the investigation of a victim who said Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly sexually assaulted her when she was a young teen living on Hilton Head Island.

The documents also noted allegations involving the teen that were made against President Donald Trump. The omission raised questions about whether the Justice Department selectively withheld documents that referenced allegations against Trump and other powerful figures caught up in Epstein’s elite circle.

Under a law passed by Congress, the agency was legally required to release all Epstein-related documents in its possession by Dec. 19.

The controversy has put the former Lowcountry resident at the center of an international media storm. Scrutiny has pivoted to what appears to be missing documents gathered during a years-long sex trafficking investigation involving the multimillionaire and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

At some point after Epstein came under federal scrutiny, a tipster to the FBI claimed that the Hilton Head teen was forced to perform a sex act on Trump in New Jersey more than 35 years earlier, according to a bureau record. The caller alleged that Trump was bitten during the encounter and someone struck the teen in the face after she laughed.

The FBI record shows that someone spoke with the caller and that the lead was referred to the “Washington Office.” It is unclear how far law enforcement pursued the matter.

On Feb. 8, The Post and Courier reported a detailed account of the alleged abuse the teen victim suffered at the hands of Epstein in South Carolina and the missing documents. The newspaper relied on an FBI report detailing an interview with the victim and noted an index of available records in the federal prosecution of Maxwell indicated there were three additional interviews related to the Hilton Head victim, as well as other potentially related documents.

None of those additional interview records appear in the massive trove of Epstein files the DOJ released in December and January. DOJ officials have defended the department’s approach to releasing the files.

This week, national media seized on the omission, led by a Substack writer and followed by other articles that raised questions about unaccounted for documents. It now is drawing attention from members of Congress.

U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said Feb. 24 that he is aware of the victim’s name after viewing unredacted files that DOJ has made available to Congress. He said his committee is investigating the case.

The Post and Courier was first to report the woman’s initial contact and interview with the FBI in July 2019. She alleged that when she was 13, she was hired to babysit by Epstein while he was staying at the Sea Pines resort on Hilton Head. Her mother, a Realtor, offered up her services to rental clients and owners.

She said that she arrived at the condo and discovered there were no children. Epstein gave her drugs and alcohol and then sexually assaulted her, she told the FBI. Her account included sordid details of other encounters with him during his time on the island. She and her attorney acknowledged that she had told other girls about Epstein in hopes of recruiting “fresh meat,” as she said Epstein called it.

The girl’s age at the time of the alleged assault in the 1980s makes her one of the youngest known Epstein victims. More than a 100 victims filed claims, many anonymously, under a special fund set up by Epstein’s estate.

Epstein was convicted of child sex crimes in Florida in 2008. He was found dead in a New York City jail cell in 2019 after being charged for similar crimes by federal prosecutors. Maxwell, the daughter of a British publishing scion, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking minors.

Connecting dots in the files

More than 3 million documents to date have been released in relation to the Epstein case. Many offer tantalizing details about his luxury lifestyle and exploits with hundreds of females, including teenagers, who encountered him at his residences in New York, Palm Beach, Fla., New Mexico, Paris and Little Saint James Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. But sorting through the material using the DOJ search engine, which labels each document by a specific number, has challenged both forensic experts and amateur sleuths.

It is almost impossible to follow a trail of evidence to its conclusion given the site’s limitations and ample redactions. Some documents are almost black with redactions. Others reveal identifying details, even victim photographs. Complicating matters, the department has posted pieces of evidence, then taken documents down and later reinstated them.

But stitched together, the records reveal more about the federal inquiry into allegations regarding the abuse of the teen on Hilton Head. Those allegations surfaced shortly after Epstein’s arrest by federal agents in July 2019.

By this time, the former South Carolina resident had moved to the Pacific Northwest. FBI agents visited the office of her attorney on the West Coast to hear the woman’s account. A lawyer with the family firm confirmed their representation, but otherwise declined to comment.

The FBI logged several photographs as evidence in her case. One image was of three people, their faces blacked out for privacy, partying in a living room setting.

The other was a photo stored in her phone of a widely-circulated image of Epstein with Trump, as the two had been close friends in the 1980s and 90s before a major fallout in the early 2000s. The woman asked agents to crop Trump out of the photo before they registered it as evidence. Her attorney said their client did not want to implicate others.

“Attorney advised (his client) was concerned about implicating additional individuals, and specifically any that were well known, due to fear of retaliation,” the FBI noted in its report.

In July, August and October of 2019, agents conducted interviews with unknown subjects related to the case, according to an inventory of witness material compiled for Maxwell’s trial. After her initial interview, the woman changed lawyers and was represented by the Bloom Law Firm, one of the top firms providing legal services for Epstein’s many victims.

The records show that FBI officials in New York communicated with agents in the Seattle field office and the victim’s attorneys about services the agency could provide for victims, including six paid visits with a trauma therapist. Victims were invited to special sessions with prosecutors to discuss the cases.

The woman appears to have cut off direct contact with the FBI in November 2019. The FBI noted that her attorney contacted the agency to report she had encountered a "suspicious incident” at her workplace. The attorney asked the FBI not to contact the victim again without going through the law firm, a record shows.

Her interview was included in an enormous dossier of records compiled for the Maxwell case. Each document in the catalogue is marked with a 10-digit code. The woman’s interview is included in 15 records that have the same initial numbers. Only six of those documents are available through the DOJ’s Epstein file library.

Among the missing records are three interviews, three sets of accompanying notes, a photograph, a “law enforcement report” from an unknown agency and license records.

Where are the other records?

Legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump allowed the DOJ specific parameters to withhold or redact portions of records that identify victims, contain child sex abuse material, jeopardize an active federal investigation, depict certain macabre photos or interfere with a foreign policy initiative.

In response to a request for comment, a DOJ spokesperson pointed The Post and Courier to a social media account for the department that said no records were deleted from the online library.

“If files are temporarily pulled for victim redactions or to redact Personally Identifiable Information, then those documents are promptly restored online and are publicly available,” the DOJ said. “ALL responsive documents have been produced unless a document falls within one of the following categories: duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation.”

Justice Department officials released almost 3.5 million Epstein-related files on Jan. 30. The massive release was the second tranche of records published by the department and marked the end of its document review, according to a memo from DOJ leadership.

The Justice Department has received backlash for its approach to releasing the files. Critics said that the DOJ had blown past the Congressional deadline, redacted the identities of Epstein’s accomplices and unlawfully outed victims.

Attorney Arick Fudali represented an Epstein victim who made claims in a civil lawsuit that mirrored the reported abuse on Hilton Head. Fudali said that his client, identified in the litigation as Jane Doe, received a settlement. He did not respond to questions about whether she interviewed with the FBI.

“The law didn’t say you could start trickling the documents in on that date. There was a due date,” he told The Post and Courier in January. “It’s both a combination of a concerted effort to cover up a lot of these documents, along with just sheer incompetence.”