The Epstein Cover-Up at the FBI

Inside the chaotic review process of the Epstein and Maxwell files at the Bureau

As many of you know by now, Senator Dick Durbin penned a letter to Pam Bondi two days ago asking questions about information his office received from a protected whistleblower. The letter read, in part:

According to information my office received, Attorney General Bondi then pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division (IMD), including the Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), which handles all requests submitted by the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Privacy Act, on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline. This effort, which reportedly took place from March 14 through the end of March, was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily-protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests.

My office was told that these personnel were instructed to "flag" any records in which

President Trump was mentioned.

Despite tens of thousands of personnel hours reviewing and re-reviewing these Epstein-related records over the course of two weeks in March, it took DOJ more than three additional months to officially find there is "no incriminating 'client list," and the memorandum with this finding includes no mention of the whistleblower or additional documents, the existence of which Attorney General Bondi publicly claimed on February 27.

This letter was made public right after I had filed a FOIA request for all the Epstein and Maxwell Grand Jury testimony (see my last post on Substack.) When I saw that over one thousand people had been put to work reviewing the Epstein files, I put a call out on my BlueSky account:

In the 24 hours since, I’ve received several messages, including from a former analyst that was assigned to review the files, and a few things stood out to me.

First, approximately 1,000 personnel in the Information Management Division (IMD) and the FBI New York Field Office were assigned to this task, confirming the whistleblower account made to Senator Durbin’s office. I can also confirm that a log exists tracking the mentions of Donald Trump in the files, and that there were approximately 100,000 files containing roughly 300,000 pages. 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. But it’s important to note that the agents were not told to flag Trump until later in a process that began mid-March.

The process of reviewing the Epstein and Maxwell files was chaotic, and the orders were constantly changing - sometimes daily. 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. But here’s what caught my attention: the files were stored on a shared drive that anyone in the division could access. Normally, access is only granted to those working on a project, but because of the hurried nature of the exercise, the usual permission restrictions were not in place. Additionally, the internal SharePoint site the bureau ended up using to distribute the files toward the end did not have the usual restricted permissions. This left the Epstein and Maxwell files open to viewing by a much larger group of people than previously thought.

Regarding the ever-changing nature of the instructions, which one source described as “full panic mode,” there were at least four different review instructions. Keeping in mind that the Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) are trained in FOIA redactions but many in the IMD are not, there were multiple video training sessions that went out on an unclassified network on what to mark for redaction, what not to mark, and how to record things that needed to be flagged. That means that video exists of trainers explaining the process of flagging instances of Donald Trump appearing in the files, and those videos went out on unclassified networks within the bureau. It’s also of note that the trainers toward the end were folks from the Department of Justice, and not the FBI.

At first, the analysts were told to mark nothing. This was roundly rejected by the analysts, who were then told to not think about it as releasing the information - including victims names - to the public, but to think about it as releasing it to the Attorney General. It was assumed that Bondi and Patel wanted all the information, including the victim’s names and information. Analysts were told that what would be released would be solely up to Pam Bondi. Many feared that the victim’s information would be released or used for nefarious purposes. Eventually, lawyers from the Department of Justice were assigned to the project to oversee what was being flagged for redaction.

That changed pretty quickly and the analysts were next told to mark the victim’s names for redaction. Then soon after that, they were told to mark all other Personal Identifiable Information (PII) such as social security numbers and addresses. Then they were told to mark all descriptions of illicit acts for redaction. Then finally, they were instructed to keep a spreadsheet of instances when Trump was mentioned. After the spreadsheets of mentions of Trump were handed in, they were stitched together in one master list. I was not able to learn how many mentions of Donald Trump were on that master list.

As far as content, there was one confirmed mention of Donald Trump in the files reviewed by an analyst who again spoke on the condition of anonymity. Beyond that, there were other instances of Trump appearing in the files, but the number of times and to what extent is unknown.

But the log exists.

Something else that stands out is the potential stress and possible trauma created by the review of the files. They included photos of yacht parties and photo shoots that some analysts weren’t prepared for. The photos accompanied victim testimony, and in one instance, Epstein had instructed a group of young girls, many safely assumed to be minors, to remove their clothes and pose nude on the beach. “It was the casual coercion of it that hit me,” one analyst said.

After the review was complete, the DoJ and FBI decided not to release anything. That surprised analysts who thought for sure that a scrubbed version of the files would be released. From March 14th until its completion, the analysts assigned to review the files at IMD were told not to leave the building - working long shifts under chaotic and ever-changing conditions with exposure to disturbing materials. They did end up letting some analysts go home for short periods of time, but then they’d be right back in the office reviewing files. Morale was abysmal.

But there is a log of instances Donald Trump is mentioned in the files, there are video and PDF trainings instructing analysts to flag Trump, there were multiple instances of Trump appearing in the files, Patel and Bondi wanted victim information and PII, and sloppiness means that more people than previously known had access to the Epstein and Maxwell files. And while there was no indication of a ready-made, A to Z client list beyond the little black book that’s already public, “to say there’s nothing or to say it’s a hoax? Bullshit.”

If you are one of the people who reviewed these files or took the training, please feel free to reach out to me on Signal at Muellershewrote.23; I will keep you anonymous. And while all my content is always free, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber to support independent media.

~AG

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