Jeffrey Epstein files release: U.S. President Donald Trump named by accuser todayheadline

It was the summer of 1996 when Maria Farmer went to law enforcement to complain about Jeffrey Epstein. At the time, she said, she had been sexually assaulted by Epstein and his longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Farmer, then in her mid-20s, had also learned about a troubling encounter that her younger sister — then a teenager — had endured at Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico. And she described facing threats from Epstein. Farmer said that when she discussed her concerns with the New York Police Department, then with the FBI, she also urged them to take a broader look at the people in Epstein’s orbit, including Donald Trump, then still two decades from being elected president. She repeated that message, she said, when the FBI interviewed her again about Epstein in 2006. Her account is among the clearest indications yet of how Trump might have come to be named in the unreleased investigative files in the Epstein case, a matter that has generated another political uproar in recent weeks.

Donald Trump, Bill Clinton

In interviews over the past week about what she told the authorities, she said she had no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Epstein’s associates. But she said she was alarmed by what she saw as Epstein’s pattern of pursuing girls and young women while building friendships with prominent people, including Trump and President Bill Clinton.

Investigations like the ones that targeted Epstein often explore a wide range of tips, evidence, recollections and relationships, little of which ends up being used in court records or as the basis for criminal prosecution. Epstein’s voluminous investigative file contains many records that have not been made public, but that became the focus of claims, long stoked by Trump’s allies, that authorities might have covered up the involvement of other rich and powerful men.

Now, after his attorney general and FBI director abruptly abandoned their earlier promises to reveal everything about the Epstein files and said, in effect, that there was nothing to see, Trump’s ties to Epstein are under renewed scrutiny, leading to questions about what so-far-undisclosed appearances he might have in the investigative record.

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Farmer said she has long wondered how law enforcement agencies handled her complaints in 1996 and 2006.And she said she has been wondering in particular whether federal authorities did anything with her concerns about Trump. She said that she raised his name both times, not only because he seemed so close to Epstein but because of an encounter, which she has previously described publicly, that she said she had with Trump in Epstein’s New York office.Clean Chit to Donald Trump

The story of Farmer’s efforts to call law enforcement attention to Epstein and his circle shows how the case files could contain material that is embarrassing or politically problematic to Trump, even if it is largely extraneous to Epstein’s crimes and was never fully investigated or corroborated.

And it underscores the complexities of opening up to scrutiny all the leads that investigators pursued, the evidence they gathered and the interviews they conducted, little of which ever went before a judge or jury.

Law enforcement agencies have not accused Trump of any wrongdoing related to Epstein, and he has never been identified as a target of any associated investigation. Trump last week called for relevant grand jury testimony in the prosecution of Epstein to be publicly released, and has repeatedly dismissed any notion that he has something to hide. Even if that testimony is released, it is unlikely to shed much light on the relationship between the two men, which did not figure prominently in Epstein’s criminal cases.