Copies of handwritten FBI interview notes that the Justice Department has not officially released appear to have circulated online for months. Their emergence sharpens questions about the department’s handling of the Epstein files, but it does not authenticate the documents or substantiate the allegations against President Donald Trump.
A new round of reporting has focused attention on handwritten FBI notes from 2019 interviews with a woman who accused Jeffrey Epstein and Trump of sexually and physically abusing her when she was a teenager. Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing related to Epstein, and the woman’s allegations against him have not been corroborated or resulted in criminal charges.
The immediate development is not a new accusation. It is the apparent discovery of copies of records that journalists, lawmakers and a federal court have been pressing the Justice Department to release. The key questions now concern authenticity, chain of custody, victim privacy and why material described by DOJ as duplicative appears to contain information not included in the public interview summaries.
What surfaced online
On Aug. 22, writer and data researcher Rye Howard-Stone reported that two sets of purported FBI interview notes had been posted months earlier to Scribd, a document-sharing site, from an account that he linked to Washington Examiner Justice Department reporter Kaelan Deese.
Howard-Stone said the account contained 22 pages of the disputed handwritten material and that Deese acknowledged in messages that he operated the account. Howard-Stone also published screenshots of messages in which a person identified as Deese said most of the material had been sent by a source within the Justice Department and later provided a third PDF that had not successfully uploaded to Scribd.
There are important limits. Howard-Stone explicitly said the screenshots could not be definitively authenticated without further investigation. Amy Gabrielle, the researcher whose searches helped bring the Scribd documents to wider attention, also warned that she could not authenticate the files. She noted formatting differences between material downloaded from Scribd and a separate set later posted to Reddit.
Howard-Stone reported that Deese removed the Scribd material after an editor at the Washington Examiner was contacted. His article said Deese and the Examiner were asked for comment. The Examiner’s March reporting confirms that Deese had access to senior Justice Department sources, but that fact alone does not prove the provenance of any particular PDF.
The notes trace to four interviews
The records at issue stem from four FBI interviews conducted in 2019 after Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. The woman, referred to publicly as “Jane Doe 4,” contacted the FBI and described alleged abuse by Epstein dating to her teenage years. In later interviews, according to FBI summaries released this year, she also accused Trump.
An FBI Form 302 is an agent’s formal written summary of an interview. It is not a verbatim transcript and is typically prepared from notes and the agent’s recollection. That distinction is why the underlying handwritten notes matter: they can contain names, leads, wording or details that were condensed or omitted from the finished 302.
The Justice Department’s large Epstein-file release initially included only one of the woman’s four interview summaries. That first interview did not contain the later allegations involving Trump. NPR then used file numbers and gaps in the production to identify records that appeared to be missing from the public database.
In March, after the omissions drew scrutiny, DOJ published three additional interview summaries. The department said 15 documents had been incorrectly coded as duplicates. It also released an intake record tied to a call from a person who had relayed information about the woman’s claims.
How the 37-page dispute grew
NPR reported in March that, even after the additional records were posted, 37 pages associated with the matter still appeared absent from the public database. The remaining gap included underlying interview notes and other records connected to the FBI file.
That became more significant after journalists reported having seen handwritten notes that the public could not access. The Post and Courier in South Carolina said it reviewed roughly 30 pages of FBI agents’ notes and found names of people the woman identified as possible corroborating witnesses for parts of her account.
Those potential witnesses are important but easy to overstate. Reporting on the notes has not established that any witness corroborated the alleged encounter with Trump. Some details in the woman’s broader account have been matched to public records or to people and places she described, while other details have been disputed. Corroborating a biographical detail is not the same as corroborating an allegation of sexual abuse.
The online files now being circulated appear to overlap with the handwritten records at the center of that dispute. But until the FBI or Justice Department publishes the official versions, or the court confirms that the online copies match the records submitted to it, the public cannot reliably treat the PDFs as authenticated government documents.
What the allegations actually establish
The FBI summaries already made public show that the woman accused Trump of abusing her after she said Epstein introduced them when she was between 13 and 15 years old. The allegations are serious, but an allegation recorded by the FBI is not a finding that the conduct occurred.
The FBI interviewed the woman four times. That demonstrates that agents documented and followed up on her account to some degree. It does not, by itself, show that the FBI concluded her accusations against Trump were true. NPR reported in March that the newly released files did not explain how investigators ultimately assessed the claims or why the allegations appeared in an internal Justice Department presentation.
There is no public record of criminal charges arising from the woman’s accusations, and no public indication that Trump is currently under criminal investigation over them. The Guardian reported in June that the FBI brought no charges against anyone in connection with her allegations and that there was no indication agents continued investigating after the 2019 interviews ended.
That is the evidentiary line the new online discovery does not cross. If authentic, the notes could clarify what the woman told agents, what follow-up names she supplied and how the 302s were prepared. They would not automatically prove the underlying accusations.
Trump has denied wrongdoing
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing connected to Epstein. After the additional FBI interview summaries were released in March, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the accusations “completely baseless” and said the president had been “totally exonerated” by the Epstein-file releases.
The latter is a White House characterization, not a judicial finding. The released files contain allegations, investigative records and raw tips of varying reliability. The Justice Department and White House have warned that the archive includes material that may contain false or sensational claims.
Trump and Epstein were socially acquainted for years, a relationship documented through photographs, video and earlier reporting. That established association does not prove the woman’s allegations. The proper standard is narrower: the claims must be assessed on evidence specific to the alleged events, not simply on the fact that Trump and Epstein knew each other.
The same caution applies in the other direction. The absence of charges is significant, but it is not equivalent to a factual adjudication that every allegation in an investigative file was false. No court has tried the woman’s claims against Trump.
The court fight changed the stakes
The handwritten notes are also part of an active federal lawsuit brought by journalist and lawyer Katie Phang against Attorney General Todd Blanche. Phang argues that the Justice Department has failed to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law Trump signed in November 2025 requiring broad public release of unclassified Epstein-related records with limited exceptions.
On June 25, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan granted Phang a preliminary injunction. His opinion ordered the attorney general either to produce specified materials or show cause why they should remain withheld. One category was the underlying FBI interview notes used to prepare the four 302s.
DOJ later argued that the handwritten notes were properly withheld as duplicative of material already released. Separately, the department has defended redactions intended to protect victims, law-enforcement personnel and identifying information. Victim privacy is a legitimate concern, but the transparency law sharply restricts the grounds for withholding responsive records.
At an Aug. 13 hearing, Sullivan pressed government lawyers over the handwritten notes, foreign-language records and the department’s redaction explanations. CNN and ABC News reported that the judge warned DOJ attorneys that contempt could become an issue if court orders were not followed and demanded firmer answers about compliance.
The privacy problem is now larger
If Howard-Stone’s account is accurate, the newly discovered uploads raise a second issue beyond government transparency: the handling of a victim’s identifying information.
Howard-Stone said the Scribd versions were unredacted and included the woman’s name, biographical details and names of friends and family members. Those are precisely the kinds of details the Justice Department has sought to protect in its public releases.
That creates an uncomfortable contrast. The public dispute has centered on whether DOJ can release the notes while protecting victims, yet copies of the purported notes may have been accessible on a public document platform for months without those protections.
It also complicates responsible reporting. Even when source material is publicly accessible, publication of a sexual-assault accuser’s identity or identifying details can create additional harm and may expose people who never chose to enter a public controversy. The news value lies in the records, their provenance and the government’s compliance with the law—not in amplifying private identifying information.
What would resolve the dispute
The simplest way to answer the authenticity question is an official comparison. If DOJ releases properly redacted copies of the underlying notes, reporters and the court can compare page numbers, handwriting, identifiers and content against the versions that circulated online.
The court process offers another route. Sullivan has already required the department to justify contested withholding and has used private, in-camera review for disputed Epstein materials. That procedure allows a judge to inspect sensitive records without immediately placing protected information in the public record.
For now, the strongest verified conclusion is narrower than the viral headline. Copies of what appear to be withheld FBI interview notes have surfaced online, and reporting links at least some of them to a document account said to be operated by a Justice Department reporter who allegedly received material from a DOJ source. The documents’ authenticity has not been officially confirmed.
If authenticated, the notes could undercut a broad claim that the withheld material contains nothing beyond what is already public. They could also illuminate why investigators recorded certain leads and how the formal summaries were produced. What they cannot do on their own is convert an uncorroborated accusation into a proven fact.
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