FBI agents were tasked earlier this year with flagging any mentions of President Donald Trump while reviewing files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. Durbin included the allegation in a letter he sent Friday, July 18, to the FBI and the Department of Justice.
CNBC first reported the letter.
Durbin asked federal officials to explain “apparent discrepancies regarding the handling of the Epstein files,” and a Monday, July 7, DOJ memo detailing “instructions reportedly received by FBI personnel.”
Instructed to ‘flag’ records
Durbin said the FBI was pressured to place 1,000 agents and other bureau employees on 24-hour shifts to review 100,000 Epstein-related documents “that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline.”
Many of those assigned to the review “lacked the expertise to identify statutorily protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses” and were “instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned.”
“MAGA world is completely imploding over the Jeffrey Epstein coverup,” Durbin wrote on X. “The FBI was told to ‘flag’ any file mentioning President Trump. Why? It’s time for some real answers.”
As the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Durbin has oversight authority over both the DOJ and the FBI.
Trump’s ties to Epstein under scrutiny
Durbin’s letter followed a report late Thursday, July 17, from The Wall Street Journal detailing a racy birthday letter that Trump allegedly gave Epstein in 2003. Trump has denied writing the letter, which includes a drawn image of a naked woman and a note wishing every day to “be another wonderful secret.”
Trump said he does not “draw pictures.” However, The New York Times reported Friday that in the early 2000s, Trump regularly donated sketches and doodles to charity auctions. The Times said many of those drawings “appear to be done with a thick, black marker and prominently feature his signature” in a manner similar to the birthday note he purportedly sent to Epstein.
Trump was photographed numerous times with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including at parties at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The president has said their relationship ended before Epstein was charged with prostitution-related offenses in Florida in 2006.
Trump is threatening legal action against the Journal over the story about the birthday greeting.
“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”
Trump has also called for grand jury testimony from the Epstein case to be unsealed, although details are scarce.
The uproar comes after the DOJ and FBI concluded that Epstein did not keep a client list, did not blackmail powerful figures involved in sex trafficking and died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.
