Photo: Department of Justice
President Trump does not seem to be furious at Attorney General Pam Bondi or anyone else at the top of the Justice Department for the Epstein-files debacle. But he probably should be! Once again, DOJ bungling has made evidence linking the president to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — this time an image of Trump we’ve seen many times — look way fishier than it needed to.
Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the DOJ was required to release all files related to its Epstein investigations by December 19. The DOJ complied (sort of) by posting several thousand pages of documents on its website on Friday night. But by Saturday, a handful of files had disappeared from the website, as the AP reported:
At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.
The image that features Trump, File 468, shows an array of photos on Epstein’s desk. Buried in the open drawer is the infamous photo of Trump with then-girlfriend Melania, Epstein, and Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell at a party. Another blurrier photo in the drawer shows a man who appears to be Trump surrounded by four women, one of whom is in a bathing suit.
Following allegations that the administration removed the image in an attempt to conceal evidence of Trump’s friendship with Epstein, the DOJ republished the image with no alterations and tried to blame the Southern District of New York for its sudden disappearance:
The Southern District of New York flagged an image of President Trump for potential further action to protect victims.
Out of an abundance of caution, the Department of Justice temporarily removed the image for further review. After the review, it was determined there is no…
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) December 21, 2025
It’s not totally clear what this means. As CNBC noted, “SDNY can refer both to the federal judicial district that includes Manhattan, New York, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in that district, which prosecutes federal criminal cases.”
Sunday on Meet the Press, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the idea that this image was being pulled to protect Trump is “laughable.”
“We learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down,” he said. “It has nothing to do with President Trump. There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public seeing him with Mr. Epstein. He has said that in the ’90s and early 2000s he socialized with him. So the absurdity of us pulling down a photo, a single photo, because President Trump was in it, is laughable.”
Blanche is right. While it’s not great that Trump was good friends with a prolific sex offender, we already know this; there’s nothing particularly incriminating about File 468, and there’s still no smoking gun linking the president to Epstein’s crimes. So why make this photo seem suspicious by pulling it down with no explanation?
This latest controversy could have been largely avoided if the DOJ left the file up during the review or even put up a note saying the image would be republished pending a redaction request. By temporarily making the photo disappear, the Justice Department just drew attention to the fact that Trump appears repeatedly in the Epstein files.
Beyond this one Trump photo, the DOJ has also ensured that the scandal will continue apace by failing to fully meet the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Friday’s release included 3,900 files, and more than 680 pages were entirely redacted. On Friday, Blanche said it would take “a couple weeks” for the DOJ to release the remaining hundred thousand pages of Epstein materials.
Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who wrote the Epstein legislation that Congress passed near unanimously, said on Sunday that they will seek to find Bondi in contempt for failing to release all the documents by the deadline.
“The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way, to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi,” Massie said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “Ro Khanna and I are talking about and drafting that right now.”
At this point, it’s hard to tell if DOJ officials are actually trying to cover up some damning Epstein information or if they’re just spectacularly bad at their jobs.
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