Democrats Investigate DOJ Over Epstein Files Involving Trump (w/ Roger Sollenberger)

Summary

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Bulwark Takes: Democrats Investigate DOJ Over Epstein Files Involving Trump

Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Roger Sollenberger
Date: February 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the resurfacing controversy regarding allegations against Donald Trump connected to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, focusing on DOJ documents, FBI interviews, and the recent push by House Oversight Democrats to investigate alleged DOJ withholding of key evidence. Investigative reporter Roger Sollenberger, who’s been extensively reporting on the story, breaks down the multi-layered developments, the underlying public records, and the implications for transparency and justice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How the Allegation Surfaced

• Sollenberger recounts how he discovered a claim in a DOJ slideshow: an underage accuser included rape allegations against Trump in her civil suit against Epstein.

• DOJ’s slideshow (collaborative effort with FBI Violent Crimes & Child Sex Trafficking Task Forces) specifically mentioned Trump twice—and included graphic allegations by a woman regarding incidents when she was 13-14 (1983-1985).

  "On that slideshow, there's a slide that says prominent names, and there are two bullet points for Trump... the very first one is citing a woman directly telling the FBI... has this, this claim of assault when, when she was a child, when she was between 13 and 14 years old."
  — Roger Sollenberger (03:10)

2. What’s Credible and What’s Not

• While there are numerous claims against Trump, Sollenberger clarifies that most were dismissed by the FBI as non-credible—except the first, which was pursued in interviews.

• Sollenberger’s reporting was unique in establishing that the FBI directly interviewed this accuser—something that was not previously public knowledge.

  "The FBI took this person seriously. This is. Regardless of whether the claim is true... It's not helpful either way to speculate."
  — Roger Sollenberger (07:06-07:23)

3. Details of the FBI Interviews

• The accuser didn’t know who Epstein was until 2019, when a friend (who later tipped off the FBI) sent her a photo of Trump with Epstein.

• The woman gave a detailed interview (nine pages long) to the FBI, primarily discussing Epstein, but when Trump’s name arose (through a photo, where someone was cropped out), her lawyer cited “fear of retaliation” from powerful individuals.

  "She wants to crop the photo. And she wants to crop somebody out of the photo... The lawyer says that she wants to do this because the client does not want to implicate anybody who's powerful out of fear of retaliation."
  — Roger Sollenberger (09:16)

• The FBI considered opening a criminal investigation related to Trump based on her account, but she ultimately refused to further cooperate.

4. Civil Lawsuit & Settlement

• The same accuser joined a lawsuit against the Epstein estate (as Jane Doe No. 4, represented by Lisa Bloom), supporting her claims in a sworn filing.

• She ultimately received a financial settlement, though not through the official Epstein victims fund.

  "...she includes the allegation about Trump. That's the same thing is clearly about Trump. It does not name him... she ultimately settled, reportedly received a financial payment." — Roger Sollenberger (11:55)

5. The Question of a DOJ (and FBI) ‘Cover-Up’

• The DOJ had pulled, then restored, a document showing which materials were given to Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense for her trial, including four FBI interviews with this accuser (only one is public).

• House Oversight Democrats, after reviewing evidence logs, now allege the DOJ may have illegally withheld full FBI interviews from public release as required by law.

  "Oversight Democrats can confirm the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor, the one we've been speaking about who accused President Trump of heinous crimes. Oversight Dems will open a parallel investigation into this." — Tim Miller (14:19-14:43)

• There exists at least 53 pages of interview material; only 9 pages are publicly available.

6. Congressional and DOJ Response

• House Democrats are opening a parallel Congressional probe into DOJ’s handling of these materials.

• DOJ claims all responsive documents were produced with three exceptions: duplicates, privileged documents, and those tied to an ongoing investigation.

  "...the DOJ put out a response... [stating] all responsive documents have been produced. So three exceptions. One is a duplicate document. Right. Two is documents protected by privilege, and three is documents that are related to an ongoing federal investigation." — Roger Sollenberger (18:05)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the significance of the FBI’s seriousness:

  "The FBI took it seriously enough that they at least considered opening a criminal investigation into Trump based on this woman's account."
  — Roger Sollenberger (10:34)

• On document transparency and the Epstein Files Transparency Act:

  "They have them and they can produce them. So, yeah, there are duplicates, but they also should fall under the EFTA, Right. The Epstein Files Transparency Act."
  — Roger Sollenberger (19:07)

• On congressional mandates being ignored:

  "It's against the law and they're required by law. It was basically a unanimous vote of the Congress to release that information."
  — Tim Miller (17:27)

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:14 | Introduction of Sollenberger; context for story | | 02:21 | Details on DOJ slideshow, prominent names, Trump allegation | | 05:05 | How tip came into FBI, DOJ response to allegations | | 06:54 | FBI interviews accuser; importance of 302 form | | 09:16 | Photo of Epstein & Trump; fear of retaliation | | 10:34 | FBI considered opening criminal investigation | | 11:55 | Civil suit, settlement, and the accuser’s participation | | 14:19 | House Oversight Dems statement on withheld evidence; investigation launched | | 14:43 | Multiple FBI interviews supplied to Ghislaine Maxwell; most not public | | 17:27 | Legal requirements to release information | | 18:05 | DOJ response on withheld/privileged/ongoing investigation documents |

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Additional Context and Side Notes

• Accuser’s Brother: The accuser’s brother was arrested in connection with the January 6th Riot (13:54), a detail included as part of broader context.
• Ongoing Transparency Battle: The episode underscores the challenge in achieving full transparency regarding high-profile abuse investigations—especially when they touch on politically sensitive figures.
• Parenting Interruptions: Sollenberger juggles parenting while appearing on the podcast, adding a human touch to the episode.

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Conclusion

This episode pulls back the curtain on the complex, slow-unfolding process of how the Trump-Epstein file is dealt with by federal authorities, how Congressional oversight is stepping in, and what persistent investigative journalism is surfacing. Listeners come away with a nuanced understanding of what has—and hasn’t—been made public, and the stakes for accountability at the highest levels.

For further reading:

• Roger Sollenberger’s Substack (linked in show notes per the episode)

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Transcript

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[Roger Sollenberger]

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[Tim Miller]

Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with my buddy Roger Sullenberger who has a substack called Roger Sollenberger. Clever substack title. And he has been all over a very important story about a Trump accuser that was in the Epstein files and the effort to cover up information about her. So Roger, thanks for jumping on.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Hey, thanks a lot for having me, man.

[Tim Miller]

There are a lot of layers to this story, so let's just like start from square one. Kudos to you by the way. You've been on this and since your kind of series has started on your sub stack, we've now had NPR jump on this. We've had the House Oversight Dems put out a formal statement on this. Obviously there's a lot of evidence here and I appreciate that you were relentless. Really, let's just be honest and driving the story. So folks who haven't been following it initial story was basically there's this underage accuser who included Trump rape allegations in her lawsuit against Epstein. Tell us what we know about that.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Yeah, so it started because I found this claim in DOJ slideshow and you know, the reporting has always bothered me that it's it seemed too deferential. Like Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing, not credibly accused of wrongdoing. And in my mind, it does seem like even before this, like, you know, there's, there's plenty of stuff.

[Tim Miller]

Well, there's plenty of credible adult accusations. That's what I always kind of want to chime in. And anytime people like, oh, there's no credible accusations of wrongdoing, I'm like, well, I mean, he admitted to sexual assault of women on tape, and he's in the civil trial, has been adjudicated for sexual assault. And, you know, like, he palled around with absolute Right. So there's a lot of evidence of certain types of wrongdoing, but it's this specific question about, about underage girls.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Yeah. And, you know, to be completely honest, like the, the White House's, you know, statements and Trump's bizarre back and forth statements and DOJ statements, it just seems like that stuff doesn't match, like the public reporting, just about his, like his friendship with Epstein. He sues the Wall street journal for 10 billion bucks, right? Yeah. So I was just wondering, like, well, maybe, you know, like, what if there is something in the files like everybody else on the planet, and there is this slideshow, and it's from the doj. It's an FBI child Sex Trafficking Task Force slideshow that they put together, together with the Violent Crimes Task Force, and it was last summer, and there were several drafts of this that are in the files that again, all this reporting comes, it comes straight from the files. I don't have any secret documents, any secret sourcing or whatever. You can, you can piece this together. Right? And on that slideshow, there's a slide that says prominent names, and there are two bullet points for Trump. There's a bunch of Harvey Weinstein's on there, Jess Staley, Bill Clinton, Bill Barr, whatever, Howard Ludnick, Prince Andrew. Tons of names. And then the first two, though, are Donald Trump. And the very first one is citing a woman directly telling the FBI. Right. Says it's her. And it has this, this claim of assault when, when she was a child, when she was between 13 and 14 years old. It's a pretty graphic accusation. Would have dated back to between 1983 and 1985. So an early accusation as well, especially when it comes to, you know, when it comes to Epstein. That's an early right. But she also claimed to be a victim of Epstein. And this accusation matches a tip that got called in to the FBI. And the way the DOJ Rolled this stuff out is we got the tip

[Tim Miller]

that got called in death, the FBI. When, like at the time or also recently, in 2019. Yeah, 2019.

[Roger Sollenberger]

We didn't know that previously, but so in December, we saw this, that sheet that has all these allegations against Donald Trump, right? And the Justice Department preempted that release saying, like, hey, these are, you know, false claims that have no merit. You know, and they're like, just be warned. And you know, to be sure, like, a lot of the claims on there are pretty outrageous. And the FBI actually notes that on the sheet they say source deemed not credible. They look into all of them. They tried to call people back, the people they got in touch with. They say, not credible, not probative. You know, like, it's documented on there, except for one, and it's the first one on the sheet. That's the claim that is later on this DOJ slideshow, right? Where this woman apparently tells the FBI. And I was like. When I saw that, I was like, what? She told the FBI did talk to somebody, right? The FBI. And that had never been reported. Now, to be clear, people have, you know, cited this in different ways, but I seem to be the first person to put it together that the FBI talked to her. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And again, to your point, like, just, it is just important to say, right? Especially at this point, 2019, like, Trump is president, he's famous. Like, sure, it's possible that somebody would report, do a false report to the FBI, right? Like, people like crazy people call the FBI and say crazy things all the time, Right? That's just like the nature.

[Roger Sollenberger]

We see it, you know.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we see that. So, you know, in this case, it's notable, I guess, let's say, in part because there's this other tip and in part, I guess, talk a little bit more about how, you know, basically she didn't want to cooperate against Trump.

[Roger Sollenberger]

They followed up, and I wasn't just like, hey, there's this slideshow and here's this tip sheet. You know, there's a 302, a 302 form, which is a FBI write up of the interview with this woman who lawyered up. Right. Immediately. Right? So she meets the FBI about two weeks or so, maybe three weeks after the tip was first called in by her friend, right, Whose first name is on the fucking sheet that they released, by the way. And the. They have this long interview and it's like nine pages and it's highly detailed. And she gives, you know, it's all focused on. On Epstein. We have other Stuff from this woman that I saw, like photographs that she provided. There are back and forth between this woman and her attorneys. You know, there are several files associated with her that seeing all this together, I'm like, oh, the FBI took this person seriously. This is. Regardless of whether the claim is true. And I'm not going there at all. I don't think anybody. Anybody can. Right, right. Speculate. But it's. It's not helpful either way to speculate. I don't think. And I mean, absolutely be skeptical of the claim.

[Tim Miller]

Right, sure.

[Roger Sollenberger]

But the FBI took it.

[Tim Miller]

But in that interview, they took it seriously. But in that interview, she's focused on Epstein.

[Roger Sollenberger]

On Epstein. And then Trump comes up in the interview, and this is how know. She explains how I. I learned how she learned about Epstein, right? She's like, I didn't know. Basically, I did not know who Jeff Epstein was until he got arrested in 2019. And my friend, the one who called the tip and sent me this photo of Jeff Epstein next to Donald Trump, right. Who this person had also told the friend about. So she was like, is this. Is this the Jeff, you know, and she's like, oh, my God, that's the guy who made my life a nightmare. She tells the FBI, right, with her lawyer, president under penalty of prison if she lies to the FBI. And the photograph comes up, and the FBI hears them talking about this photograph, and they say, hey, hey, what's this photograph? What is this? And the word president comes up in their conversation. Her and her lawyer, they hear that, oh, president, what do you mean? And she kind of like, freezes. And she's like, well, she wants to crop the photo. And she wants to crop somebody out of the photo.

[Tim Miller]

Right?

[Roger Sollenberger]

And the lawyer says that she wants to do this because the client does not want to implicate anybody who's powerful out of fear of retaliation. Not like, oh, we want to crop this person she doesn't have any idea about out of the photo. Some innocent person. So.

[Tim Miller]

Right, right, right, Got it.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Right. So it's out of fear of retaliation. That's the one time he comes up and that's all we have as far as her. Her interviews go. But I reported that first story, like, hey, yeah, the FBI did talk to somebody, and they did take her seriously, and seriously enough that that claim was not only there, but, like, it survived. And they put it at the top of this slideshow last summer. And there's like an email chain about this slideshow. It's pretty serious. And there's another email from last summer that says, you know, it's a also in preparation for this leisure on the same time. And there's a list of these prominent names and it's for positive hits in the Epstein case. And only one name has anything written next to has any notes next to it. And it's the first name Donald Trump. And it says paraphrasing here, a victim reported abuse by Trump when she was a minor but ultimately refused to cooperate.

[Tim Miller]

It.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Now I don't want to put like too much emphasis on like the word like refused. Like she's like, no, I don't want to. Whatever. What that, what that tells me is the FBI took it seriously enough that they at least considered opening a criminal investigation into Trump based on this woman's account. Based on what she may have been able to corroborate, by the way. We don't know. You know, it seems unlikely based on what she's told us that yeah that there's anything to corroborate this claim. But that's not true necessarily because she has friends. Maybe at the time the FBI might be able to find another way around it. Right. But that's what is she refused to cooperate with the investigation. Later there's a civil lawsuit against the Epstein estate that this victim joins as Jane Doe number four, represented by Lisa Bloom. And in that in her section of the complaint she includes the allegation about Trump. That's the same thing is clearly about Trump. It does not name him. But that's it appears in there as well that lawsuit she ultimately settled reportedly received a financial payment. The Post Courier posting courier in South Carolina reported that she had been, you know, got some sort of money out of it. She did not qualify for the the Epstein victims fund and we don't know why. Right. Because there are also just, you know, different levels of information that you have to be able to provide. We, we don't know. Right. So none of this is probative or

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[Tim Miller]

Couple other things and I appreciate that you're doing this dogged reporting while parenting and we appreciate that.

[Roger Sollenberger]

I'm sorry about that.

[Tim Miller]

No, we love, we love kids. You're, you're. I've been there, baby. I've been there. We're just lucky that it's not happening outside the door right now. The, the brother, I just want to mention briefly since you also had a story about this. The accuser's brother was part of the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

[Roger Sollenberger]

I can't say any more than that, but he was arrested.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Roger Sollenberger]

In connection with the riot.

[Tim Miller]

I think that's just a notable data point. The then we get to the COVID up part of this and that is that they've already, as you mentioned, kind of removed some of the information related to this victim. We had a statement today by Robert Garcia, who's part of the House Oversight Committee on the Democrats, who said yesterday he reviewed the unredacted evidence logs at the Department of Justice Oversight. Democrats can confirm the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor, the one we've been speaking about who accused President Trump of heinous crimes. Oversight Dems will open a parallel investigation into this. So yeah, this is where I think

[Roger Sollenberger]

all the focus should be. Right. Right now. It's she didn't speak to the FBI just once. Right. We have one of those interviews. She spoke to them four times, you know, and all of those. So this is my reporting last week too. Like all of those interviews, all four that we know of. There could be more, we don't know. Right. But four that were, they were handed over to Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021 as part of the discovery process in her to prepare for her trial. Right. And there were non testifying witness statements. Right. So there's a just a ton of these Documents that were provided to her. And there's nothing, you know, untoward about that. That's just normal CYA stuff for any prosecution. Right, but that means that. So I found this document that the Justice Department deleted from the websites they restored after I reported it. Right. They put it back up, but they pulled it down right after it was released. And this document is that evidence manifest. And it says like, okay, she got all four interviews. She got notes associated with three of those interviews. There may be notes with the fourth. We don't know. And we don't have any of those things. We only have one. And there are three that Ghislaine Maxwell has.

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[Roger Sollenberger]

Right. That they did not release to the public. So the idea there being like, okay, well Ghislaine has this information. I don't know what's in those. You know, Stephen Fowler at NPR reported he deduced that that adds up that material. If you just cross check different identifiers on those documents, that that adds up to 53 pages of information from their conversations with this accuser. 53 Pages is a lot because that first interview was just nine pages. Right. So nine times four is 36. This is 53. Those other interviews, it certainly looks nine times six.

[Tim Miller]

We can just. I'm doing. I'm doing second grade math now. So it's six times. Right.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Four interviews. Right. If they're all nine pages like the first one, I'm saying those other interviews, some of them must be way longer. Right?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, got it.

[Roger Sollenberger]

And so we don't know what was discussed in any of that stuff. And the Justice Department, again, by not giving it to the public in the release, allowing Ghisain, you know, she keeps it. She still has it. That is still, you could say as I reported, potentially blackmail material depending on what is in his interviews. We don't know. But like that seems. Seems pretty relevant to me.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we should know. And it's part of the COVID up. And I guess the other thing is one thing we also know is that it's against the law and they're required by law. It was basically a unanimous vote of the Congress to release that information.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Is it Troy Nels? Is that who they.

[Tim Miller]

It wasn't Troy. It was my buddy down here in Louisiana, Clay Higgins. Clay Higgins who is the one who wanted to protect the Epstein co conspirators for whatever reason. You can go read his own rationale. All right, this is big. Obviously you're still on this. We'll keep following it. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you think is relevant to get off.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Yeah. I do want to say that the doj, on Tuesday, when all this, you know, the mainstream started picking it up, the DOJ put out a response in response to that, that the House oversight statement, actually, and they said that all responsive documents have been produced. So three exceptions. One is a duplicate document. Right. Two is documents protected by privilege, and three is documents that are related to an ongoing federal investigation. So if that is the explanation. Right. Then one, these documents this DOJ determined were, for some reason, not responsive, even though they were handed over to Ghislaine as part of her trial. That certainly makes them responsive.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Right. Okay, so then let's go on from there. So it's all right. With duplicates. Okay, well, we know that they're duplicates because the DOJ actually said, prosecutors told this judge in SDNY in December, they said, hey, the stuff we gave Ghislaine, we also have copies of all of it, obviously, in our FBI files, and those are not subject. Subject to this protective order that Ghislaine is fighting. Right. But the DOJ took the hard route in releasing those documents. Releasing them. The ones that were under the protective order, not the actual FBI case files. And they say in that filing that those case files are not subject to the protective order or whatever. Like, they have them and they can produce them. So, yeah, there are duplicates, but they also should fall under the efta, Right. The Epstein Files Transparency Act. All right, so that's a duplicates issue. The other two possibilities, Right, are it would have to be an executive privilege. Right, the privilege argument. I don't see how any of this could fall under attorney, client or. Right. So they would have to cite that, or they'd have to cite an ongoing federal investigation. Which brings me back to Trump's old Bill Clinton tweet back in December. And who knows, right? Did they open up a sham investigation to say, well, these are part of that, or whatever, or is there an ongoing investigation? We don't know their explanation. Just what I'm saying is. Does not add up unless it's executive privilege or if there's an ongoing investigation. To my. To my eye.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, I appreciate your reporting on this. We'll keep an eye on it. Everybody that wants more can follow you on Substack. Roger Sullenberger will put a link in the show notes here, and we'll stay in touch. All right, brother, you go do some parenting, my man.

[Roger Sollenberger]

Yeah, he's calling.

[Tim Miller]

All right, we'll see you later, brother.

[Roger Sollenberger]

See you, dude.

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