House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a staff report on 26 October 2026 that accuses Donald Trump of being "an active participant" in Jeffrey Epstein's "sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s" and asks for an independent special counsel. The 53-page report rests on the accounts of 11 women, five of whom accuse Trump of rape or sexual assault in Epstein's company or presence, and on FBI interview summaries released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Todd Blanche, then deputy attorney general and now attorney general, interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell on 24 and 25 July 2025, and the Justice Department's transcript shows him turning her away from "Jane", a trial witness whose FBI file names Trump, while the House Oversight Committee had Maxwell's own interview set for 11 August. The report reached the public eight days before the 3 November midterm elections.

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Newsweek that "none of these allegations are true" and told Politico that Trump had been "totally exonerated on anything related to Epstein". A Justice Department spokesperson called the report "nothing more than a last-ditch effort by House Judiciary Democrats to mislead the public." Trump has denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein's sex trafficking, has acknowledged a past friendship with him and says the two men had a significant falling out.

Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who is ranking member of the committee, said the department "appears to be covering up these crimes to protect the President", The New Republic reported. "The women who survived Epstein deserve to be heard, Congress must have the complete files required by law, and an independent special counsel must investigate Epstein's co-conspirators and DOJ's cover-up and ensure that state and foreign prosecutors have the evidence they need to pursue justice," Raskin said. Congress cannot appoint a special counsel, and a House majority could instead hold hearings, issue subpoenas and pass legislation to support state and foreign prosecutions, Newsmax wrote. Under Justice Department rules the appointment belongs to the attorney general, which puts the decision with Blanche.

The report

Minority staff wrote the document, and no member signed it. Its title, "'We Have Certain Things in Common, Jeffrey': The Case Against Donald Trump Emerging in the Epstein Files and DOJ's Desperate Efforts to Cover it Up", quotes the note Trump is shown to have written in Epstein's 50th birthday album in 2003. Its table of contents runs to a closing section on page 51 titled "The Bottom Line: There Is More Than Sufficient Evidence to Launch a Criminal Investigation", and outlets gave its length as 50 pages and 53 pages.

The authors draw on committee staff interviews, survivors' public accounts, FBI interview summaries known as FD-302s, email released by the House Oversight Committee and documents the Justice Department produced under the transparency act, cited by their EFTA document numbers. They also cite what they call "never-before-released whistleblower testimony" and, in one footnote, "Whistleblower Information obtained by the House Committee on the Judiciary", without identifying the source. Committee members, they write, have reviewed unredacted versions of documents that the public can see only with black bars across them.

Much of the material has been public before. Michael Gold of the New York Times wrote on Monday that the report "largely cites allegations that have already been public". The new elements are an account of rape that Beatrice Keul gave to committee staff over several weeks, the authors' reading of the Blanche transcript against an FBI slide deck, an FBI case number that links the two men and the text of a 2009 email the Justice Department still holds under redaction.

The report is separate from the Epstein inquiry that the House Oversight Committee has run since 2025. Oversight is chaired by Republicans and has subpoenaed the Justice Department, Epstein's estate and associates of Epstein including Leon Black, who sued the panel in September. Democrats are favoured to win the House on 3 November, and Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on Oversight, indicated in April that Donald and Melania Trump would be subpoenaed over their ties to Epstein if they do.

Democrats have spent the closing weeks of the campaign tying congressional Republicans to Epstein in speeches and television advertisements, citing Republican leaders' early opposition to releasing the files and the transfer of Maxwell to a minimum-security camp. Bis told TIME that the report was "nothing more than a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans from the surging Republican momentum driven by President Trump's historic achievements."

Blanche and Maxwell

The Justice Department and the FBI said in a memo reported on 7 July 2025 that their review of the Epstein files had found no "client list" and no evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. The report says the memo was released by Blanche and Emil Bove, his senior deputy, both of whom had represented Trump in his criminal cases. The department announced on 22 July that Blanche would interview Maxwell, Epstein's former partner, who was serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, in order to "pursue justice wherever the facts may lead".

FBI agents spent the preceding weeks assembling a slide deck titled "Prominent Names", the report says, citing email traffic in EFTA00164897 that describes the work as a "Response to 07/10/2025 Director's call". A separate email of 21 May 2025 sought material for another presentation at the request of the "DD", which the authors read as Deputy Director Dan Bongino. The requests peaked on the evening of 23 July and the morning of 24 July, the morning Blanche began questioning Maxwell, according to EFTA01648955. The director at the time was Kash Patel. The authors write that it is unclear who saw the deck, when it was finished or whether there were several versions.

Slide 18 of the deck carries an allegation from Jane, as the report calls her: that in 1994 at Mar-a-Lago, Epstein introduced her to Trump "saying 'This is a good one, huh' and Trump responded 'Yes.'" Jane was 14 years old. The allegation appears in EFTA01660639. In the version of the files made available to members of Congress, the report says, she is identifiable as one of four women who testified against Maxwell at her 2021 trial under a pseudonym, and her testimony described abuse at Epstein's properties in Florida, New Mexico and New York.

The transcript shows Blanche raising the youngest victims on the second day. "So some of the, I think even someone who testified at trial, but certainly have publicly talked about, was as young as 14 when she was introduced to Mr. Epstein," he said, according to page 292. Maxwell answered: "Well, I believe you're talking about Jane, and I'm very happy to address that. I actually don't think that the testimony is correct." Blanche said "Yeah, look, I don't" before she cut back in.

Maxwell returned to Jane on page 293 while laying out a timeline year by year from 1991. "In that time frame, you have the allegations of Jane, who I dispute. I don't think he met her until she was," she said. "Let's not talk about individuals," Blanche said, according to the transcript. "Yeah, yeah. I'm with you."

Maxwell raised her a third time on page 300. "Yeah, yeah, I don't want to get into," Blanche said, and then: "he said, she said." Maxwell said she did not want to "go there either", then said she had known Jane was "a young child" and "not an adult" but did not believe Epstein had met her until she was 16. Blanche asked Maxwell no question about Jane's account of Trump at any point in the interview, the report says.

The authors argue that Blanche knew what Jane had told the FBI because the bureau's deck put it before the department in the weeks before the trip, and that her claims about Trump were not public at the time. They write that the interview was meant "to create a conspiracy of silence" and that Blanche "may have engaged in criminal obstruction of justice". Maxwell's interview with House Oversight was scheduled for 11 August 2025, 18 days after Blanche began his; the report describes the gap as "less than two weeks".

Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Tallahassee to a minimum-security camp in Bryan, Texas, on 1 August 2025, a week after the interview. Raskin wrote to Trump on 9 November 2025 about her treatment there, and the report says the transfer breached a Bureau of Prisons policy that bars sex offenders from the camp.

Blanche said in an interview on CNN's State of the Union that the department had reviewed the files and found nothing that allowed it to prosecute anyone, and that many anonymous allegations against Trump had been "very quickly" judged not credible. "It's not about President Trump, it's about a ton of people," he said. Raskin, interviewed after him on the same programme, said Blanche "has never once attempted to make the transformation from being Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer to the number two person" at the department and called the heavy redactions "a full-blown cover up".

Trump said in 2025 that he was "allowed" to pardon Maxwell, and a Trump administration official said that summer that the president was not considering clemency for her. Giuffre's family, responding to Trump's remarks about Mar-a-Lago, urged him never to consider "giving Ghislaine Maxwell any leniency" and said she "deserves to rot in prison".

The memo and the camp

Senior prosecutors handling the Epstein case in the Southern District of New York were ordered in January 2025 to send their investigative files to Justice Department headquarters, the report says. The July 2025 memo followed. It stated that the department and the bureau "did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties", although, by the committee's count, nearly 50 survivors had given investigators the names of more than 20 alleged co-conspirators.

Blanche, Vice President JD Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, communications director Steven Cheung and press secretary Karoline Leavitt met in the Situation Room in July 2025 to contain Republican anger over the decision not to release the files, the New York Times reported in June, according to the Daily Beast. The New Republic reported last week that White House officials were involved in drafting the July 2025 memo. Garcia told the Senate Judiciary Committee in July that Blanche had helped shape the administration's response to Oversight's subpoena and to the transparency act and that the department had released only about half the material it collected. Senior White House and administration officials discussed how to limit disclosure of the files, Garcia wrote, citing the Times.

Congress passed the transparency act in 2025, and Trump signed it. The department released documents in batches, including about three million pages in January 2026, and Blanche has said repeatedly that the department met its obligations under the law. The report says the department withheld a large share of the material and redacted passages that implicate Trump.

Trump fired Pam Bondi as attorney general on 2 April 2026 and made Blanche acting attorney general. Raskin said at the time that Bondi had refused at a committee hearing in February even to look at Epstein survivors in the room, and at the same hearing she called him a "washed-up loser lawyer". Bondi refused to answer questions about Trump when House Oversight deposed her on 29 May, Garcia told reporters, and she put responsibility for missteps with the documents on Blanche.

Trump nominated Blanche on 8 June, and the Senate confirmed him on 8 August by 50 votes to 49. At his confirmation hearing in July, Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, pressed him to meet 10 of Epstein's victims within 30 days. Blanche left the law firm Cadwalader in 2023 to represent Trump in the New York hush money case and the classified documents case.

The report calls Blanche Trump's "personal Attorney General" and says Bondi and Blanche ran the department "like a private legal defense firm for their former client". It lists men it calls "likely co-conspirators" who have benefited from the closed inquiry: Paolo Zampolli, Leon Black, Jes Staley, Les Wexner, Leon Botstein, Lesley Groff and Larry Visoski, whom it calls "Larry Visoki". Wexner, who retained Epstein as his money manager from 1987 to 2007, said in a statement before his Oversight deposition that he "never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein's criminal activity" and was "never a participant nor co-conspirator".

An FBI document in the January 2026 release listed Wexner as a co-conspirator of Epstein alongside Groff, Maxwell, Jean-Luc Brunel, Karyna Shuliak and four people whose names remained redacted, Forbes reported. A Wexner spokesman told Forbes that an assistant US attorney told Wexner's counsel in 2019 that he was "not a co-conspirator or target in any respect" and that prosecutors never contacted him again. The executive summary names Botstein, Groff and Visoski in a single sentence with Wexner, Black and Staley and sets out its case against Zampolli in later pages.

New Mexico's attorney general, Raúl Torrez, asked the department in spring 2026 for Epstein material for his state's inquiry into Epstein's Zorro Ranch, with a deadline of 11 May, and followed up on 29 May without a substantive answer, emptywheel reported. The report asks Congress to direct federal support to state and foreign prosecutors pursuing Epstein's associates.

Keul

Beatrice Keul was a 24-year-old Swiss model and financial services worker when Jill Harth recruited her for the Donald J. Trump American Dream Pageant in Atlantic City and New York in November 1993, according to the report's account, which it says rests "solely on extensive discussions between Committee Staff and Keul over a period of several weeks". At a press luncheon at the Plaza Hotel, then owned by Trump, he introduced himself with "Finally we meet Ms. Keul", mispronouncing her name as "cool", she told staff.

Trump spent at least 15 minutes with her, Keul said. He told her that "Paolo" would arrange a visa for her, a reference the report takes to mean Zampolli, and that he would personally see to her admission to New York University. When she said she could handle her own visa, he answered: "No no, my friend Paolo will take care of that." Epstein approached her as soon as Trump stepped away, introducing himself as "Jeffrey, Don's best friend", she said. He talked to her for at least 10 minutes while grinning across the room at Trump and invited her to a party at Mar-a-Lago: "You know I can take care of you. We organize many parties with Don." Flights and accommodation would be covered, he told her.

Later that day a Trump representative invited Keul upstairs to meet him. She told staff that Trump grabbed her from behind as she entered the suite and raped her, tearing her dress, and that she was left bleeding and bruised. She described the assault as "brutal". Afterwards, she said, he sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated his offers of a visa and a university place and told her: "The show must go on." Keul said she finished the pageant "in a daze" because her passport had been taken from her on arrival and she did not want to signal anything was wrong by asking for it back.

During the pageant she was called with four other models to a private audition with John Casablancas, founder of Elite Model Management, who made her walk for him and promised to take care of her, she said. She went home to Switzerland, turned down a second Trump-sponsored pageant in Hawaii weeks later and declined again when Trump telephoned her months afterwards to repeat the offer of a visa and a place at New York University.

Keul first spoke publicly about the episode in October 2024, when she told The Independent that Trump had groped her in a Plaza Hotel suite, the report says. Until she spoke to staff, she had said she "talked Trump down" when he tried to rape her. TIME, which reported her account on Monday, said it had been unable to verify it independently.

The authors set out three details they say support her. At the same pageant Keul met an 18-year-old Czech contestant, Terezie, who was staying with Ivana Trump, had grown up in Ivana's village and said she would win because of her closeness to Donald Trump and intended to marry him. Harth's 1997 lawsuit alleged that on or around 20 November 1993, the final day of the competition, Trump demanded access to a Czech contestant he called a "sex object", and the complaint gives her age as 17. Harth's complaint also alleged that Trump telephoned "several" models for four years afterwards to offer career help "in return for sexual favors".

Keul described the promise of a place at New York University in October 2024. Survivors later told the committee that Epstein had used promises of admission and tuition at New York University and Columbia to recruit and silence them, which the committee made public on 14 January 2026. Epstein's assistant from the 1990s told the New York Times that on dozens of occasions he had her telephone pageant winners abroad and invite them to Florida, which the authors compare with Trump's call to Keul in Switzerland.

Williams and Harth

Stacey Williams, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, met Epstein at a Christmas party Trump hosted at the Plaza in 1992 and dated him, she told CNN in October 2024. On a visit to Trump Tower in 1993, she said, Epstein took her to Trump's office, where Trump groped her while the two men kept talking, "smiling and grinning". "His hands were all over me," she said. Epstein berated her afterwards for letting Trump touch her, she said, and three women told CNN that Williams had described the incident to them in 2006, 2015 and 2018.

Trump sent Williams a postcard of Palm Beach some months later with Mar-a-Lago in the foreground, inscribed "Stacey, your home away from home. Love, Donald," she told The Guardian. "I just think it was trophy hunting," she later told the New York Times. "I think Jeffrey liked that he had this Sports Illustrated model who had this name, and that Trump was pursuing me."

Jill Harth recruited models for Trump's Calendar Girl competitions and sued him in 1997, alleging that at a Mar-a-Lago party in 1993 he "forcefully removed" her from the public rooms into a bedroom belonging to his daughter Ivanka Trump, where he "forcibly kissed, fondled, and restrained" her, the report says, quoting the complaint. Her former husband told the New York Times in 2025 that Trump and Epstein appeared to be the only men among numerous models at the party. Harth withdrew the suit when Trump settled an unrelated case brought by her husband. The report's summary dates the assault to 1994; its account of the complaint dates it to 1993.

Harth's complaint also described Trump entering the bedroom of a young model, Lauren Petrella, uninvited in the "pre-dawn hours" of the same Mar-a-Lago party and telling her: "You said you don't sleep with men on the first date. Now it's the second date and here I am!" When a New York Times reporter asked Epstein in 2015 for information on his friendship with Trump, Epstein sent Petrella's contact details and said she was in "photso of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen", according to an email released by House Oversight.

Johnson and Jane Doe 4

A woman using the pseudonym Katie Johnson sued Trump in federal court in California in April 2016, alleging he raped her at Epstein parties in New York in 1994, when she was 13. She withdrew the suit in November 2016, before the election. The FBI interview notes reproduced in the report, EFTA01683592, state that she reported her allegations to the bureau through her lawyer: that at four parties she was made to perform sexual acts on Trump, that Trump raped her at the fourth, and that Epstein then raped her in anger "that Trump was the one to take Doe's virginity". Both men struck her during the assault and threatened her with violence if she spoke, the notes say.

The FBI agent who handled Johnson's complaint searched the bureau's systems for Trump and Epstein together under "exploitation of minors", the report says, and the search returned case number 31E-HQ-C1461253, one of several numbers attached to the 2007 federal investigation of Epstein in Florida. The department has produced only one other document under that number. Sources inside the administration have told the committee that documents linked to the case number have been withheld from Congress and the public, the report says, citing whistleblower information.

The authors argue that if Johnson had invented her account to damage Trump, as his 2016 campaign said, she had little reason to make Epstein, then far less known, the more violent of the two men. They also say her description of sexualised massages matches accounts that other survivors gave only years later.

The Justice Department said in December 2025, as it released early batches of the files, that they contained "untrue and sensationalist claims" against Trump that had been submitted to the FBI before the 2020 election. Trump called the release of a further million pages "a Democrat inspired Hoax" and "just another Witch Hunt" in a post on Truth Social, and urged the department to "embarrass" Democrats who had worked with Epstein. Johnson's account was submitted to the bureau through her lawyer; the report does not give the date.

Jane Doe 4, as the report calls her, came forward in 2019 shortly after Epstein's arrest. A third party first told the FBI that the woman, at 13 or 14, had "bit President Trump while performing oral sex" and that he "hit [her] in the face after she laughed about biting President Trump", according to EFTA01660679. The FBI tip summary reproduced in the report places the episode "approximately 35 years ago in NJ"; the report's account places it in South Carolina in 1983, and its summary describes an assault in New York in the mid-1980s. The woman's biographical details match an Epstein survivor who joined a 2019 lawsuit against Epstein and later received a settlement from his estate, the report says. That suit alleges Epstein flew her to New York three or four times and offered her as "fresh meat" at gatherings of "prominent, wealthy men".

The committee says it has been unable to verify her claims against Trump. Epstein's presence in South Carolina in the 1980s has never been publicly established, and her account would predate every other survivor's by nearly a decade. The Post and Courier of Charleston reported that it reviewed handwritten notes by the FBI agents who interviewed her, naming people who might corroborate her account, and the report says the department withheld those notes as "duplicative". A journalist wrote in August that the department had sent him the unredacted notes, which the report says would, if true, breach the transparency act.

Kate and Farmer

Kate, as she was known at Maxwell's trial, was about 20 and a young English model when Maxwell took her to a party in New York and "presented" her to Trump, according to her FBI interview summary, EFTA00158676. Maxwell "seemed very excited that there would be a lot of great men" for her to meet, the summary says, and the two talked for about 20 minutes before Kate was invited to Mar-a-Lago and given a tour by Trump with Epstein and Maxwell present. Maxwell told her "Oh I think he likes you. Aren't you lucky. This is great," the summary says, and Kate said it was the same way Maxwell had "introduced" her to Epstein. Kate does not accuse Trump of misconduct.

Maureen Comey, then one of the lead federal prosecutors on the Epstein case, summarised a call with Kate's lawyer on 15 December 2020 in an email, EFTA00158675, listing people who knew of Kate's relationship with Maxwell. One entry reads "Donald Trump (GM set [Kate] up on a date with him)". Another names Alan Dershowitz. Other names on the list are redacted, and the report says the redactions are improper.

The Sunday Mirror wrote about Kate by name on 23 November 1997, reporting that Trump had "fallen under the spell of a 20-year-old English girl" whom he met through "Robert Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine, who has introduced several of her attractive friends to the property developer." Trump then "flew Madam Maxwell and the model south to the sunshine state," the tabloid said, and Kate "was installed in one of Donald's many apartments" on their return to New York. Kate said in 2025 that Maxwell introduced her to Trump "with a clear message of my being with him in the same way that she had trafficked me and brought me to Jeffrey Epstein", the report says.

Kate told NBC News in 2019 that Epstein abused her on his island and at his homes in New York and Paris. "And in every location there was this microcosm of acceptance, of yes people, who acted like this was normal," she said. She has not spoken publicly about Trump beyond the 2025 statement the report quotes.

Maria Farmer, who worked for Epstein in the 1990s and with her sister Annie Farmer was abused by him, went to meet him at his Manhattan office late one evening and was approached in the dark by Trump, who stood over her "like he was in on some secret", she told the New York Times in July 2025. Epstein came out laughing and said, "No, no. She's not here for you," and took Trump to another room. As the two men left, she heard Trump say "oh I thought she was 16", she told CNN; she was in her 20s. Annie was 15 at the time. Epstein later told Maria that he had "inherited" Trump in Trump's divorce from Ivana, she said.

The White House communications director said in 2025 that Trump had never been in Epstein's office, the report says, a statement it says numerous people around Epstein contradict. Farmer reported Epstein to the FBI in 1996 and again in 2006 and raised concerns about Trump both times, according to the Times. Her reports appear nowhere in the files the department has released, the report says, and CBS News found that more than 70 per cent of about 5,000 documents listed in one discovery index from Maxwell's trial, including FD-302s, could not be found by searching the released archive.

Jane Does 5 and 6

Jane Doe 5, a Scandinavian student at New York University, was photographed with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 1995 and 1997, in one picture kissing him, and flew on his jet more than a dozen times, sometimes as the only other passenger, the report says. By 1998 she was photographed with Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago and appeared to rent a flat in a Trump building. Trump was dating her when he met Melania Knauss, according to reports the committee cites. The committee says it has seen nothing to suggest she experienced misconduct at the hands of either man and does not name her.

Epstein's 2003 birthday album contains a page showing him holding a cheque, captioned "Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women sells 'fully depreciated' [name redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500." The report identifies Jane Doe 5 as the woman under the redaction. In an email to a New York Times reporter on 8 December 2015, EFTA00839258, Epstein described her as "my 20-year-old girlfriend in 1993, that after two years I gave to Donald." The Wall Street Journal reported that she became "a point of tension" between the two men and that Epstein was bitter when she chose to go out with Trump.

Jane Doe 6, a Russian model, moved to Florida in 1995 at 21 and, soon after meeting Trump, moved into a flat in his Fifth Avenue building while he was married to Marla Maples, the report says, citing Vanity Fair. The New York Post wrote at the time that her rent was paid by "an unidentified sugar daddy". Trump bought the Miss Universe pageant in October 1996, and two years later she competed in it without having qualified through the usual route. Flight logs show she later flew on Epstein's jet with Maxwell and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then Prince Andrew.

The authors count eight women who have described sexual misconduct by Trump with or in the company of Epstein and three others who had relationships with both men, and they say every incident but one falls between 1992 and 1997 in New York or Palm Beach. More than 25 women in all have accused Trump of rape, sexual assault or other sexual misconduct, the report says, and it notes that a federal jury in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll found that Trump sexually abused her in a Manhattan department store changing room in 1996. Vance said repeatedly in 2016 that he believed Trump had committed sexual assault, CNN reported in 2024, and the report quotes him. Trump has called the accusations against him political hit jobs.

The report places the Epstein accounts beside Trump's own words. On the 2005 Access Hollywood tape, released in 2016, Trump said that "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything", and in a 2023 civil deposition he said he was one such star, the report says, citing ABC News. Contestants have described Trump walking into changing rooms while young women were undressed, and Trump boasted that he could "get away with it" because he owned the pageants, the report says. Epstein later told a journalist that Trump used to offer other men the chance to "have a great time" with the women in his contests, according to a Daily Beast post the report cites.

Zampolli

Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-born modelling agent who later worked in property, says he introduced the Trumps at a party in September 1998 after hiring Melania Knauss, sponsoring her visa and housing her in New York. Trump appointed him to the Kennedy Center board in December 2020 and named him special envoy for global partnerships in March 2025. The State Department ended the appointment on 15 October 2026 after a dispute with Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, 11 days before the report. Zampolli wrote on X that envoy posts last a year and that Trump had extended his by more than six months.

An FBI interview summary with a woman the report calls Epstein Assistant 1, EFTA00159321, says Zampolli was her agent when she arrived in the US at 19 and placed her in a model apartment on Varick Street in Manhattan with 10 other women because "she did not have the funds to pay for her own apartment". Epstein visited Zampolli's agency during castings and saw a photograph of her in swim bottoms while looking through portfolios, the summary says. A redacted passage describes an affair with "the agent", whom the report identifies as Zampolli. The woman visited Epstein in prison more than 50 times and was named as a co-conspirator in a 2007 federal indictment that was never filed, the report says.

EFTA00159321 states: "Epstein introduced Melania Trump to Donald Trump." Amanda Ungaro, a Brazilian former model who was Zampolli's partner for 19 years, told the Daily Beast in June 2026 that "it was Jeffrey Epstein" who made the introduction. The report says both women had sexual relationships with Zampolli "around the time of the introduction". The witness worked for Epstein in 2005 and 2006, the Daily Beast reported, and Ungaro first arrived in New York in 2002, the New York Times reported, years after the 1998 party.

Asked about Epstein Assistant 1 by the American Prospect in April, Zampolli said: "I remember that girl, I don't even remember. She was one of them. If you say so, you know, we have so many models." A second FBI summary, EFTA01245554, describes an 18-year-old model who signed with Zampolli's agency, lived on Varick Street on a visa he arranged and was recruited to give a massage at Epstein's house, where Epstein raped her, the report says. The summary calls Zampolli "sleazy". Zampolli and Epstein made a joint bid in 2004 for the New York branch of Elite, which failed, and Zampolli then worked for the Trump Organization.

Victoria Drake, a model, sued Zampolli in federal court in Manhattan on 30 September 2026, alleging he drugged and raped her in 2023, according to the complaint the report cites; TIME reported that the case is continuing. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Ungaro during a custody dispute with Zampolli and deported her to Brazil, and Zampolli denied asking ICE to detain her, the Times reported. His lawyers said in August that the appearance of his name in the Epstein files was no proof of involvement and that he had been the target of extortion demands, and they called the accusations against him defamatory.

The report's authors conclude that Trump and Zampolli "may have been co-conspirators" in Epstein's trafficking of young women in the 1990s. They write that Zampolli brought models into the US "for Epstein to recruit and abuse" and that Trump and Melania Trump "have kept Zampolli close", socialising with him and Ungaro throughout Trump's first term. The Kennedy Center appointment came at Melania Trump's urging, the report says.

Zampolli entered the fashion business in the early 1990s and helped organise the Look of the Year contest in Ibiza in 1994, Il Sole 24 Ore reported, before founding ID Models. The Look of the Year was the Elite contest Trump hosted in the early 1990s. Zampolli has said that Trump told him years ago he was "too good" to be a modelling agent and moved him into property, Il Post reported.

Melania Trump

Melania Trump said at the White House on 9 April 2026 that Epstein did not introduce her to her husband and that she had no knowledge of his abuse. In the same statement she said a 2002 email to Maxwell signed "Love, Melania", released by the department in January, was casual correspondence and that she had never flown on Epstein's plane or visited his island. The report says she has denied the accounts of Epstein Assistant 1 and Ungaro.

Her lawyers have threatened or brought defamation claims against people who linked her meeting with Trump to Epstein. Alejandro Brito, her lawyer, threatened Hunter Biden in August 2025 with a suit for more than US$1 billion after Biden said in an interview that "Epstein introduced Melania to Trump". Biden refused to retract, saying he was repeating what Wolff had written and what the Times had reported in 2019 about Epstein's own claim to have made the introduction.

Wolff sued her pre-emptively in New York on 21 October 2025, the deadline in a demand letter from Brito, asking a court to declare that he had not defamed her. A federal judge dismissed his suit on 22 May 2026 because she had already sued him in Florida, and her lawyers moved for sanctions against him on 21 July. The same day her legal team sent a retraction demand to the journalist Zev Shalev and to Ungaro over a live YouTube interview about her ties to Zampolli. She won US$3 million in damages and an apology from the Daily Mail in 2017 over a 2016 article about her modelling years with Zampolli, The Guardian reported. Wolff interviewed Epstein before his death, and Epstein told him in 2017 that he had been Trump's "closest friend for 10 years", the report says.

The modelling world

Trump began hosting Elite's Look of the Year contest for models aged 14 to 19 in 1991, the report says, citing The Guardian. The 1991 winner was 14. Contestants as young as 14 recalled being made to dance for Trump, Casablancas and other men on a yacht, and one told the Guardian: "Every time we changed, it was like Trump would find a reason to come backstage." Casablancas, then in his 50s, spoke openly of a preference for "child women" and met his third wife, Aline Wermelinger, at the 1992 contest when she was 16.

More than a dozen Elite models have accused Casablancas and the agency's president, Gérald Marie, of rape, the report says. One lawsuit alleges that in 1990 Casablancas sent a teenage model to a "casting call" at an Upper East Side address that turned out to be Epstein's, where Epstein sexually assaulted her. Casablancas died in 2013. The report also names the French scout Jean-Luc Brunel among the agency owners whose business it says served Epstein.

Ron Rice, the founder of another pageant, told reporters that he sent models and contestants to parties at Mar-a-Lago at the request of Trump and Casablancas. Tina Davis, a former teen model, said her booker told her at 14 in 1994 to "dress sexy" for a Mar-a-Lago party where underage girls were given alcohol, and that Marla Maples, then married to Trump, told Davis's mother: "Whatever you do, do not let her around any of these men, and especially my husband." Lisa Boyne alleged that at a 1996 dinner Trump and Casablancas made six models dance on the table and looked up their skirts, according to the Guardian.

Trump hosted the American Dream Calendar Girls competition at his casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza in 1993, later bought Miss Universe and founded Trump Model Management, hiring staff from Casablancas's agency. Three former Trump Model Management models told Mother Jones in 2016 that the agency had them work on tourist visas that did not permit it, and several described conditions as "modern-day slavery", the report says. When Epstein helped finance the agency MC2 Model Management years later, he said he wanted it run like Trump's agency, the Miami Herald reported in 2022.

The Mar-a-Lago email

Jack Goldberger, a lawyer for Epstein, emailed Epstein and his co-counsel Robert Critton at 14:16 on 14 October 2009 under the subject line "Trump". Trump's lawyer Alan Garten had arranged a 20-minute telephone call between Trump and a lawyer for survivors suing Epstein "in lieu of a depo", Goldberger wrote, and he summarised what Trump said. The report reproduces the text in full; the Justice Department copy, EFTA00740636 and EFTA00740637, remains redacted.

Asked whether Epstein had ever been expelled from Mar-a-Lago, Trump said: "No he was not a member may have been a guest never asked to leave," according to the email. Asked about a claim by Epstein's brother Mark that Trump had flown on Epstein's plane, he said: "I've been on a lot of planes may have been on his plane. No young girls on plane." Asked what he knew of the allegations against Epstein, he said "only what I read in the paper", and he said he may have visited Epstein's house with his wife but saw no young girls there. Burt Lemke, the Mar-a-Lago manager, had also "confirmed JE never aske to leave Mara Lago", Goldberger wrote. One line reads: "Trump specifically asked Garten to advise us on the interview."

Raskin found the passage among the unredacted files, Axios reported in February. Trump told reporters in July 2025 that he banned Epstein from the club after Epstein took employees from its spa, among them Virginia Giuffre, and Leavitt said in November 2025 that Trump had "kicked him out" because Epstein "was a creep". Giuffre's family said Maxwell recruited her from Mar-a-Lago in 2000, when she was 16, "several years before Epstein and President Trump had their falling out". Trump praised Epstein as a "terrific guy" in 2002 and wrote the birthday note in 2003.

The authors write that either Trump told the truth in 2009 and has misstated events since, or he misled survivors' counsel in 2009 to protect Epstein. Blanche told a hearing, in reply to Representative Madeleine Dean, that the email was redacted as "a privileged communication between counsel", the report says. The authors reply that the email reflects Trump's own account given to the other side, that only a joint defence agreement between Trump and Epstein could protect it and that Epstein forwarded it to Maxwell.

Trump telephoned the Palm Beach police chief in 2006 and said "thank goodness you're stopping him, everyone has known he's been doing this," the chief told the FBI, ABC News reported in February. Three years later Trump told survivors' counsel he knew "only what I read in the paper". Epstein wrote to Wolff in 2019 that Trump "knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop", according to an email released by House Oversight Democrats in November 2025.

The plane, the letter and the prince

Trump wrote on Truth Social on 9 January 2024 that he "was never on Epstein's plane". A federal prosecutor wrote in an email released in December 2025 that Trump flew on the jet at least eight times in the 1990s, Reuters reported, the report says, including one flight on which Trump, Epstein and a 20-year-old woman were the only passengers. The prosecutor wrote that on at least two flights the two men travelled with people who were potential witnesses in Maxwell's case, according to EFTA00028716.

Trump and Leavitt denied in July 2025 that he wrote or signed the birthday note after the Wall Street Journal reported its existence. "It's not my signature. And it's not the way I speak," Trump said. He sued the Journal for US$10 billion, and after a federal judge in Florida dismissed the suit he filed an amended complaint. House Oversight released the note in September 2025. Its text, framed by a drawing of a nude young woman, includes "a pal is a wonderful thing", "we have certain things in common, Jeffrey" and "may every day be another wonderful secret". Trump said, "I never wrote a picture in my life." The report cites a drawing Trump signed in 2005 that sold for nearly US$30,000 in 2017 and a 2008 letter in which he said he donated a signed doodle to a different charity each year.

Trump said in July 2019, after Epstein's arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, "I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him," and went on: "I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn't a fan." Asked that year whether he knew of Epstein's crimes, he said: "No, I had no idea." A woman who socialised with both men in New York told the Times that their friendship "was like a pissing contest, who had the most women", the report says.

Trump told New York Magazine in 2002: "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." The two men spoke several times a week through much of the 1990s, Epstein attended Trump's 1993 wedding to Maples, and they were photographed together at Victoria's Secret events in 1997 and 1999, the report says. Epstein's address books held 14 telephone numbers for Trump. Asked in a 2010 deposition whether he had socialised with Trump in the company of girls under 18, Epstein invoked his Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendment rights.

The two men fell out over a property deal, the report says. Epstein wrote to acquaintances on or around 13 November 2016, the Sunday after Trump's election, that he was at Trump Tower "seeing trump people" while Trump held cabinet interviews there, according to EFTA01744330.

Trump said in December 2019, "I don't know Prince Andrew." He had been photographed with Andrew, Melania Knauss and Epstein at Mar-a-Lago on 12 February 2000, and he attended a Halloween party in New York in October 2000 at which Andrew was accompanied by Maxwell, the report says. Andrew was stripped of his titles in 2025 and arrested in February 2026 on suspicion of misconduct in public office; he denies wrongdoing, and the High Court quashed the search warrants used before his arrest on 8 October 2026. After King Charles removed his titles, Trump expressed sympathy for the royal family, the report says.

What the department holds

The FBI's FD-302s from Farmer's 1996 and 2006 reports, the agents' handwritten notes from Jane Doe 4's interview, the documents filed under case number 31E-HQ-C1461253 and the unredacted Goldberger email are in Justice Department hands, by the report's account. So are the "Prominent Names" deck and the emails between the FBI director's office and agents from 10 to 24 July 2025, which would show who ordered the deck and whether Blanche saw slide 18 before he flew to Florida.

The bureau's internal search that linked Trump and Epstein under 31E-HQ-C1461253 would show which documents sit under that case number and why Trump's name returned it. Jane's full FD-302, which members of Congress can read without redaction, would show what she told agents about the 1994 introduction at Mar-a-Lago and when she told them.

The FBI may open a full investigation when "activity constituting a federal crime … may have occurred", under the Attorney General's Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations. The report says the 11 accounts and the documents behind them "indisputably" meet that standard. The July 2025 memo found the files did not.

The witness tampering statute, 18 USC 1512, makes it a crime to corruptly influence a person's testimony in an official proceeding or to hinder the communication of information about a federal offence to law enforcement. 18 USC 1505 bars corruptly obstructing a pending proceeding before Congress, which the report says covers House Oversight's inquiry. Whether Blanche's interruptions meet either threshold turns on intent, and the briefing papers prepared for his Tallahassee interview, his office's correspondence with the FBI in July 2025 and any contact between his office and Maxwell's lawyers before 11 August would bear on it.

House Democrats see "little reason" to expect the administration to appoint a special counsel, the report says, the Daily Beast reported. Blanche, who would make the appointment, represented Trump in two criminal cases before joining the department.

3 November

Voters choose a new House and a third of the Senate on 3 November. Under a Democratic majority, Raskin would be in line to chair the Judiciary Committee and Garcia the Oversight Committee, and Democrats have vowed to use that power to investigate the president. The subpoenas they have described would reach the department's unreleased Epstein files, the FBI deck, the Bureau of Prisons' paperwork on Maxwell's transfer to Bryan and the 31E-HQ-C1461253 case file, and Garcia has said they would reach Donald and Melania Trump.