US authorities have released new details of a sexual assault allegation against US President Donald Trump in the middle of the country’s war on Iran.
The trio of interviews were previously flagged as missing from the Epstein files and were released on Friday after pressure on the White House.
An unidentified woman told FBI agents in 2019, shortly after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges, that she had been sexually assaulted by the paedophile and Trump while she was a teenager in the 1980s.
The documents mark the most explosive allegations to be published as part of the Epstein files to date. Their release outside official publication windows and in the heat of the US conflict with Iran will raise questions over the US Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein scandal.
Her central allegation is that Trump hit her after she bit his penis when he attempted to force her to perform oral sex on him, according to FBI summaries of her interviews with investigators.
The woman’s allegations have not been verified and the FBI never brought charges related to her claims, some details of which appear outlandish.
Last Saturday, the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, killing the supreme leader and triggering a regional war that has drawn in the Gulf states.
The Democrats have long accused Trump and the White House of a cover-up for not releasing the files with original documents late last year.
The FBI memos, which summarise four interviews with the unidentified woman, claim she came forward after recognising Epstein from a photo sent to her by a childhood friend.
She alleged Epstein started abusing her as a teenager and on one occasion when she was aged between 13 and 15 he drove her to either New York or New Jersey to be “introduced to someone with money, money... It was Donald Trump”.
The woman told FBI agents she met the President “in a very tall building with huge rooms”, and that “from the get-go, he didn’t like that I was a boy-girl”, which the interview notes interpreted to mean tomboy.
She said Trump asked others present to leave the room and then said “something to the effect of, ‘Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be’”, according to the interview notes.
Trump then unzipped his trousers and put her head “down to his penis”, the woman alleged to the FBI. She said she “bit the s*** out of it” because she was disgusted by him, prompting Trump to lash out, pull her hair and punch her on the side of her head, the FBI summary of one interview alleges.
The memo does not contain further details about the incident and the allegation concludes with the woman’s claim that “at that point, people re-entered the room [with no further information provided]”.
The woman said in a separate interview with the FBI that she or people close to her later received a series of threatening phone calls, including one on a co-worker’s landline that she claimed was intended for her.
The woman “stated under her breath that if it was not Epstein, maybe it was the ‘other one’”. When asked the identity of the “other one”, she stated, “Trump”, the FBI note claimed.
The woman also alleged Epstein “blackmailed her mother through explicit photographs of [her], which resulted in her mother embezzling from her real estate company to pay him”.
She told FBI officers that her mother “tried to buy back the photos and secrets over the years” and was “sent to prison in South Carolina for embezzlement”. The woman also claimed Epstein and two other men “assisted” her mother in “fixing” her real-estate books so she could embezzle funds and pay Epstein blackmail money.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the allegations as “completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence, from a sadly disturbed woman who has an extensive criminal history”.
“The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them – because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong. As we have said countless times, President Trump has been totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein Files.”
The US Justice Department did not publish the records in its release of more than three million Epstein files earlier this year, and a separate document hinted at their existence.
Their absence, which was first identified by US media, raised questions over whether the White House has botched its release of sensitive documents related to powerful individuals such as Trump.
Democrats are investigating whether the US Justice Department purposefully withheld materials that included sexual assault allegations against the President.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to allegations against Epstein and there is no evidence in the material released that he took part in the paedophile’s sex trafficking operation.
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