It Is Time To Subpoena Trump Over The Newly Released Epstein Files

The Justice Department’s latest Epstein release has blown a hole through the White House’s favourite talking point. For months, Donald Trump’s allies acted as though the files had somehow cleared him. Now, newly released FBI interview summaries show that federal investigators documented allegations from a woman who said Jeffrey Epstein took her to meet Trump when she was between 13 and 15 years old, and that Trump then allegedly assaulted her. The allegations remain unverified, no charges were brought, and the White House has dismissed them as baseless. But that is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a more urgent one. Why were these records missing in the first place, and why should the public accept yet another round of official shrugging where Trump is concerned? 

What the newly released files allege

The newly released documents are FBI interview summaries from 2019. According to reporting by The Telegraph, the woman told agents that Epstein abused her as a teenager and on one occasion took her to meet “someone with money,” whom she identified as Trump. She alleged that Trump tried to force oral sex on her, that she bit him, and that he responded by pulling her hair and hitting her. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the accusations “completely baseless,” while the Justice Department admitted it mislabeled the files as duplicates and withheld them from the release. The allegations have not been verified and the FBI never brought charges related to them. 

The woman alleged that when she was aged between 13 and 15, Epstein drove her to meet Trump in either New York or New Jersey. She told the FBI that Trump “didn’t like that I was a boy-girl,” got her alone in a room, and attempted to force her to perform oral sex on him. According to the interview summary, she said she bit him, after which he allegedly pulled her hair and punched her on the side of the head. The White House has denied the claims and no charges were filed. 

Why this demands more than another denial

Trump’s defenders will hide behind the same script they always use. The allegations are unverified. No charges were filed. The accuser has been smeared. End of story. But that is not good enough, especially when the documents were missing from earlier public releases and only surfaced after outside pressure and scrutiny over the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. The House Oversight Committee has already moved to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi over the department’s handling of the records, after criticism from both Democrats and some Republicans. 

That alone should end the fantasy that this is all settled. If the administration had handled these files cleanly, transparently and consistently, there would be no room for suspicion. Instead, the public got delayed disclosures, explanations about duplicate coding, and a fresh batch of allegations against the sitting president arriving only after investigators and journalists kept pushing. 

And this is where the media often fails. Some headlines call a 13-to-15-year-old accuser a “woman” instead of identifying her for what she was at the time: a child alleging abuse.

Trump is treated as if every new allegation is just another bad headline in a very crowded news cycle. But these are allegations involving a minor. They sit within a wider Epstein scandal that has already exposed systemic abuse, institutional cowardice and elite protection. A president named in newly released FBI summaries concerning alleged sexual abuse of a child should not be protected by partisan spin or buried under the next foreign policy crisis. That is precisely when scrutiny should intensify, not fade. 

Subpoena Trump and make him answer

At this point, it is not enough to subpoena Bondi and ask bureaucratic questions about document handling. Trump should be asked directly about the allegations contained in the FBI summaries and about the delayed release of records mentioning him. That does not mean presuming guilt. It means treating the office of the president as subject to scrutiny rather than exempt from it.

Because this is the real issue. Trump and his allies have spent years benefiting from a two-tiered culture of accountability. Everyone around the story gets questioned except him. Everyone else is expected to explain timelines, records and omissions while Trump gets to wave the whole thing away as a hoax. That pattern has gone on far too long. Especially now, as the war with Iran escalates and a devastating strike on a girls’ school in Minab killed more than 160 children, an attack critics say reflects the brutal realities of Trump’s military campaign.

If these files matter when they implicate other powerful men, such as Prince Andrew, they matter when they implicate Donald Trump. If congressional subpoenas matter, they should reach further than the attorney general. And if the White House insists there is nothing here, then Trump should have no problem answering questions under oath.

That is what accountability looks like. And after everything that has surfaced around Epstein, anything less looks like protection.