A newly surfaced report alleging thetemporary removal of a Justice Department recordtied to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation has intensified scrutiny over undisclosed evidence and the handling of sensitive FBI interviews linked to President Donald Trump.
The controversy stems from a document briefly taken offline from a federal Epstein records database before reappearing, raising questions about transparency, discovery disclosures, and whether critical investigative material remains unevenly accessible to the public.
The claim, published on 20 February 2026 by investigative journalist Roger Sollenberger, centres on discovery evidence provided to convicted trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell during her criminal proceedings but allegedly withheld from broader public releases.
According toSollenberger's reporting, the disputed documentserved as an evidence catalogue related to the federal prosecution inUnited States v. Ghislaine Maxwell, Case No. 20-Cr-330,in the Southern District of New York. Court filings confirm that prosecutors produced extensive discovery to Maxwell's defence ahead of trial, including interview reports, investigative notes, and materials relating to non-testifying witnesses.
NEW: I caught the DOJ deleting a record showing Ghislaine Maxwell has potential blackmail on Trump. The document reveals that DOJ gave Maxwell's lawyers three FBI interviews with an underage Trump accuser that have not been released to the public.https://t.co/CPx7L9YBGBpic.twitter.com/mlobE7hPPN
Federal court records show that prosecutors disclosed more than 20,000 pages of interview notes and related materials during pre-trial discovery in April 2021, reflecting the unusually large evidentiary scope of the case. Those disclosures formed part of routine obligations under federal criminal procedure, allowing the defence to examine statements potentially relevant to witness credibility or exculpatory evidence.
The contested database entry allegedly indicated that four FBI interviews were conducted with a woman identified by the government as an Epstein victim from the early-to-mid-1980s. The report claims that only one of those interviews appeared in the publicly released Epstein files, while all four were produced to Maxwell's legal team as 'non-witness material.'
If accurate, that discrepancy would not, in itself, prove misconduct. Discovery rules often permit defendants access to broader investigative material than what later becomes public. However, transparency advocates argue that once large-scale document releases were authorised under recent Epstein disclosure efforts, disparities between defence access and public access became politically and legally significant.
Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 on federal sex-trafficking charges for recruiting underage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein and was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years' imprisonment. The Department of Justice maintains an official archive of filings and procedural orders from the case, documenting discovery schedules, victim statements, and evidentiary rulings.
Court filingssurrounding later disclosure disputes confirm that government discovery encompassed far more material than what jurors ultimately saw. Prosecutors acknowledged that investigative files included interview reports, search warrant applications, electronic forensic evidence, and victim accounts collected over decades.
Source: International Business Times UK
