Transcription
One of the women identified in the interview notes as a high school friend told the Post and Courier that she was never contacted. The fact that the FBI never followed up with any of these corroborating witnesses is just part of an ever growing list of failures.
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Hey, it's JT Suscowski with Status Coup. A credible accuser against President Donald Trump of sexual and physical assault when she was as young as 13 in the early to mid 1980s might have corroborating witnesses for a key part of her story. This is reporting from the Charleston Post and Courier, the local newspaper from Charleston, South Carolina. This is their story. FBI records detail potential witnesses of South Carolina Epstein victim they aren't public by Marilyn Thompson and Mitchell Black who have been doing just incredible reporting on this story.
FBI agents prepared handwritten interview notes that contain the names of possible corroborating witnesses and other information detailing a woman's accusations that Jeffrey Epstein lured her into his deviant orbit when she was a teen on Hilton Head Island and sexually abused her. The Post and Courier reviewed 30 pages of FBI agents notes which have not been publicly released. The notes made by agents in a series of 2019 interviews offer a few new details about her claim that she traveled with Epstein to the New York area in the 1980s. She alleged that she encountered Donald Trump during a visit and was once forced into a sex act. The White House has assailed her claim, describing it as backed by no evidence.
And I want to pause here just to note just to note that so far we have covered this woman's claims in detail here on status couns. What have we been repeatedly saying? That there are not corroborating witnesses that we were aware of to any of the allegations she made about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, the hands of Donald Trump, and of another man, Jim Atkins. There were no witnesses and the only person that we were aware of that she told that story to at the time that it happened or at least near the time that it happened was her mother who has since passed away. But if these other witnesses exist and can come forward, well then that has the possibility to confirm that she was indeed in Jeffrey Epstein's orbit, that she was a victim of him. And I'll note that every other part of this woman's story aside from the allegations of abuse and some of the details surrounding it have proven to be true. So the abuse itself not confirmed by any evidence, but every other part of her story has checked out so far. And that's been important reporting that the Post and Courier has been doing on this story. And I just want to note what a [ __ ] shame it is that this kind of important journalism falls to a local outlet in South Carolina because none of the big national reporting outlets that have millions upon millions of dollars at their disposal are doing anything to try and run down this woman's story or at least nothing that is publishable. Why are they being lapsed? Why are the New York Timeses of the world, the CNN's of the world being lapped by the Charleston Post and Courier who have, from what we can tell, assigned two reporters plus maybe a little bit of support staff to the story, and this is everything they've been able to turn up. It should be shaming to those big national outlets.
I'm going to return here to the reporting where they say the agents unredacted notes were not disclosed in the millions of Epstein documents released so far by the US Department of Justice. They flesh out some aspects of her claims that she crossed paths with Epstein in the low country before he built a global sex trafficking operation. The Post and Courier compared the notes with officially official summaries known as 302s that agents prepared after the interviews. Some details in the handwritten notes never made it into the prepared summaries which were heavily redacted by the Justice Department for their public release as required by law. Those 302s, those summaries of these interviews that were done with this accuser in 2019 were publicly released as part of the Epstein files. At least the first one was the first of four of these interview summaries that from interviews that were conducted in 2019. The first was publicly released as part of the Epstein files, then through the tenacious reporting of Roger Sullenberger, which was then um who was an independent journalist whose work was then confirmed by NPR and the New York Times among other outlets. It was confirmed that there were even more of these interview summaries that existed but were not released as part of the Epstein files. Those were then released by the Department of Justice. But now we get into some of the specifics of what was contained within these FBI notes because there were the 302 summaries, but those were based on field notes that the FBI conducted as part of these interview. And these notes had not been released. And these are among some of the files that we know have not been released by the Department of Justice in the Epstein files. And these notes do shed new light on this credible Trump accuser's story. And this is some of those details.
During one interview, for instance, an agent scribbled that the woman provided the names of four young teen girls who by her account attended a pool party on Hilton Head when Epstein came by. This was during the time when she alleged Epstein was sexually assaulting her and pllying her with drugs and alcohol. Details about the four friends were not visible in the FBI's 302 reports and may have been redacted in an effort to protect victim privacy. It is unclear whether the FBI ever pursued leads offered by the alleged victim. One of the women identified in the interview notes as a high school friend told the Post and Courier that she was never contacted by the FBI.
And I'll note that the FBI wanted to pursue this investigation of this woman's claims even further than what they did in 2019, but it was the accuser who ultimately put the kibash on that, saying she did not want to participate. And at the time, we were able to excuse away the FBI not going further because we weren't aware of other corroborating witnesses. Now that they exist, the fact that the FBI never followed up with any of these corroborating witnesses or a person that they deemed credible enough to interview her four times is just part of an ever growing list of failures by the FBI surrounding the investigations of Jeffrey Epste and Galain Maxwell and so much else surrounding this story where we have just seen failed follow-up after failed follow-up on Epstein's supposed suicide where there have been so many failures to follow up on some of the leads there. So many follow failed follow-ups with regard to Zoro Ranch, which is now thankfully being looked into again by New Mexico authorities. And now here in this credible Trump accuser story as well, this represents a toptobottom failure of the FBI's investigative process here to accurately run down all of these potential leads as part of this investigation. The fact that at least one of these potential corroborating witnesses was never corre was never looked into by the FBI should raise some real red flags here.
Agents notes from a fourth interview with the alleged victim in 2019 were not available for the post and courier to review. I wanted to single this out because there were four interviews. The post and courier has gotten field notes from three of those interviews. the fourth. We don't know if those exist. Presumably, they do, but at least the post and courier here was not able to get its hands on those field notes as part of this reporting. So, there might be even more details that exist out there somewhere in the FBI's records that we just don't know what they potentially have to say.
Responding to the Post and Courier questions about its review of the FBI agents notes, a Justice Department spokesperson issued a statement saying, quote, "There are no missing pages," unquote, among the records released by the department. The DOJ has said some records are considered duplicative with what is available elsewhere and for members of Congress to view in private. Quote, "This production may include fake or falsely submitted images, documents, or videos, as everything that was sent to the FBI by the public was included in the production that is responsive to the act." The statement said, "You're going to act like you're perfect on this, that you've released everything perfectly, the way that you were supposed to, even though the Post and Courier is showing you here with this reporting that not everything was released. This is very much gerine to the Epstein case. It is related to an Epstein accuser and the information that she provided to the FBI. You're going here to try and claim that there is inf that these notes are just duplicative apparently of the actual summaries that the FBI then prepared off of those notes. And yet, we are finding new information in these notes once they do actually come to a reputable outlets.
The notes include a few clarifying details about the victim's alleged trips with Epstein to visit Trump. In the 302s, her account reflects uncertainty about her travel with Epstein off the island, quote unquote, apparently referring to Hilton Head at least once when she was 13 to 15 years old. Quote, he drove her and/or flew her to either New York or New Jersey. The report said she was quote she was introduced to someone with money, money, money. It was Donald Trump, unquote. It said she had quote two additional interactions with Trump, but when agents attempted to ask her questions, she asked that the interview move on to a different subject for the time being. The handwritten notes come across as slightly less tentative about her travel with Epstein, which if true could constitute underage sex trafficking. They suggest that Epstein both drove her and flew her to New York and New Jersey and allegedly introduced her to Trump. She told agents that she overheard them talking about business matters, including a casino, noting that Trump quote did not like her from the get-go, unquote. She described the alleged assault that was later detailed in the 302 report. The notetaker jotted down quote two more interactions, unquote, with Trump. So again, there are more details in here about this interaction between this accuser and Donald Trump that were here in these interview notes. And yet these interview notes just oh the DOJ thinks these aren't relevant to the public discourse even though they contain additional information. And if these notes for the fourth interview exist, I will note that FBI agents again brought up these accusations against President Trump in that fourth interview. So where are those notes? It's not clear. It's not clear where those notes are, but the FBI did bring up that interaction with Trump again in that fourth interview. And so there is the potential for those fourth interview field notes as well to contain new details about the accusations against President Donald Trump.
Returning here to the reporting, the redacted 302 report details a nighttime pool party with her friends, quote, possibly at the Marriott Hotel, unquote. A large blacked out portion follows that statement. She said Epstein showed up alone to the party and she left with him. She said her friends might have seen them together. Those identities appear to be redacted from the formal report. The handwritten notes clearly identified the Marriott at Shipyard Plantation as the location and includes the handwritten names of her friends with a few notes about the relationships. One woman named in the notes told the Post and Courier the hotel pool was a hangout for her high school friends. students would sneak in after school by pretending to be hotel guests. The woman said she had no memory of any creepiness, quote unquote. The Post and Courier attempted to contact people listed in the FBI notes as being at the alleged Marriott gathering to declined to comment.
So, if there had been appropriate follow-up by the FBI at this time, they may have been able to confirm whether or not this woman ever actually was in the company of Jeffrey Epste. That is one of the things that is not corroborated from any evidence that we have so far from her accounts that were publicly available before this. We were able to figure out that a lot of the story that she was telling was true just about being in particular places at particular times or that for instance she claimed that she ran into Epstein at a I believe it was a Rick James concert in Savannah, Georgia. It was confirmed that Rick James was playing in Savannah, Georgia around the time that she would have uh been alleging so that it was possible, but the actual interaction with Jeffrey Epstein is something that is not confirmed and her interactions crucially with Donald Trump. Everything else in her story seems to be checking out. And here we're seeing that there are potentially corroborating witnesses who might have seen her with Jeffrey Epstein at this Marriott hotel pool.