President Trump’s sudden reversal on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files has reignited a controversy his team hoped had faded away — a report claiming the FBI worked overtime to scrub his name from those very documents.
After months of resisting the push for disclosure, Trump jumped onto Truth Social Sunday night and declared, “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”
That about-face came only when it became clear the House was moving ahead with or without him. Every Democrat and four Republicans had already signed a discharge petition to force the vote. Trump and his allies quietly leaned on Reps. Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert to withdraw their signatures, but those efforts went nowhere. With dozens more Republicans likely to back the measure on the floor, Trump’s opposition was losing its power by the hour.
It was a jarring shift from the same president who, after campaigning on transparency in 2024, later dismissed the Epstein issue as a Democratic “hoax.” Now he says it’s “time to move on.”
But the political whiplash coincides with something even more explosive: renewed attention to reporting that the FBI had already redacted Trump’s name — along with others — from the files during a massive internal review.
The Redaction Report Returns to Center Stage
According to Bloomberg’s reporting, an FBI FOIA team tasked with preparing the Epstein documents for potential release had blacked out Trump’s name before DOJ leaders concluded last month that “no further disclosure” would be “appropriate or warranted.” The sources said:
“We know from news reports that Trump’s name was in the Epstein files. But what hasn’t been reported is that an FBI FOIA team redacted Trump’s name—and the names of other prominent public figures—from the documents.”
The review was unusually intense — involving up to 1,000 FBI agents and staff pulling all-nighters, combing through more than 100,000 documents. They found numerous references to Trump, according to individuals familiar with the process, but applied privacy exemptions because he was a private citizen when the federal investigation began in 2006.
They used Exemption 6, which protects against “a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” and Exemption 7(C), shielding personal information in law-enforcement files if releasing it could cause an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
It’s a standard government tactic in FOIA reviews, even for well-known public figures. But politically? The timing is combustible.
The White House declined to answer questions about the redactions, deferring to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. DOJ didn’t respond at all.
In July, DOJ and the FBI put out a joint statement saying that while they had collected “more than 300 gigabytes” of Epstein-related evidence, “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.” That decision infuriated Trump’s base. Joe Rogan accused the administration of “trying to gaslight” its own supporters. Online, the response was even sharper.
Trump’s reaction was to blame Democrats and call the uproar “fake,” but the fallout kept intensifying.
The Epstein files fight even blew up Trump’s relationship with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of his most loyal allies. After she signed the discharge petition, Trump slammed her publically, calling her a “ranting Lunatic” who does nothing but “COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” He withdrew his endorsement and encouraged a primary challenge, saying challengers would have his “Complete and Unyielding Support.”
Now the House is expected to overwhelmingly approve releasing the files. The Senate will need 60 votes — a tougher climb — but Rep. Thomas Massie says as many as 100 Republicans could join the effort in the House.
Meanwhile, Trump insists Republicans should shift back to economic issues. “Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used,’ and we can’t let that happen,” he wrote on Sunday, warning that Epstein is a “TRAP.”
So Why Flip Now?
That’s the real question. Trump shifted positions at the exact moment fresh reporting suggests his name might not appear in the documents anyway — because the FBI already stripped it out.
If his name is redacted, supporting release comes at no personal cost, while allowing him to claim transparency and pivot away from months of backlash.
For now, the resurfaced report — and Trump’s timing — fuel one unavoidable impression: the administration worked overtime to remove certain names from the Epstein files, and now the president is publicly calling for the release of the very records that may no longer contain his own. And that only deepens the suspicion rather than quieting it.
