Democrats ask ‘what else is being covered up?’ after Epstein photos are pulled

The deputy US attorney general has defended the removal of 16 photos from the Department of Justice’s webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein less than a day after they were posted, as the Trump administration faced a growing chorus of outrage over its apparent violation of a law mandating the near-complete disclosure of the Epstein documents by Friday.

- Edward Helmore Victoria Beklemis

Todd Blanche said the 16 removals - including a photo featuring Donald Trump - came at the request of a victim advocacy group and had “nothing to do” with the president.

“We don’t have perfect information,” Blanche told NBC on Sunday. “And so when we hear from victims’ rights groups about this type of photograph, we pull it down and investigate.”

Blanche said an investigation into the photos was under way, and they “will go back up”, the only question being “whether there will be redactions”.

The missing files, which were available on Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a sideboard and in drawers. In that image, in a drawer with other photos, was a photograph of Trump alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Democrats on the House oversight committee pointed to the missing image featuring Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

The victims’ rights advocate Gloria Allred told CNN the “system has failed the survivors”, including with the release of files that may have been “under-redacted”. “I saw a number of survivors’ names which should never have been published, because the whole point is to protect the survivors,” she said.

The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the justice department’s much anticipated document release.