FBI’s Process to Check Epstein Files for Trump Mentions Was Pure Chaos

Analysts tasked to review the Epstein files allege that there was a “log” to track mentions of Donald Trump.

Allison Gill, a legal analyst known for her work covering Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump, reported Sunday that some of the 1,000 personnel from the Information Management Division and the FBI New York Field Office who were instructed to review documents pertaining to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein noticed Trump’s name in the fold. Anonymous sources toldGill that a “log” related to Trump’s repeat mentions was drafted.

The liberal legal blogger had put out a call on social media hoping to interview former analysts and, within “24 hours,” she said she “received several messages.”

“Individual analysts were told to flag mentions of Trump by document and page number by logging them in an Excel spreadsheet, then they’d hand in their spreadsheet at the end of their (sometimes 24 or even 48-hour) shift,” Gill wrote, underscoring that agents were directed not to flag Trump “until later in a process that began mid-March.”

Analysts that spoke with Gill alleged that the process was “chaotic,” with instructions and orders “constantly changing,” even on a daily basis.

“One person I spoke to on the condition of anonymity said that many agents spent more time waiting for new instructions than they did processing files,” Gill wrote.

She noted that, due to the crazed nature of the operation, the files were stored on a “shared drive” that anyone within the division could access, with the “usual permission restrictions” not in place.

“This left the Epstein and Maxwell files open to viewing by a much larger group of people than previously thought,” Gill wrote.

Staff were additionally instructed that Attorney General Pam Bondi would have sole discretion over what would be released to the public.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin challenged the administration last week about the operation. In a letter addressed to Bondi on Friday, Durbin accused the Justice Department chief of pressuring FBI staff to review “approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline.”

“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned,” he said.

Trump has a well-documented history with the New York financier. Prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together several times; Trump allegedly penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the pedophile’s 50th birthday; and the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, the “Lolita Express.”

After defending Bondi for several weeks, deriding his Epstein-conscious supporters as “stupid,” and claiming that there was no evidence of Epstein’s so-called “client list,” Trump now seems content with allowing his attorney general to take the fall for the cataclysmic fiasco.

“One thing that’s been clear is his feelings about it,” an unnamed White House official told NBC News. “This now resides within the DOJ.”