The public release of the long-awaited Jeffrey Epstein files has been rocked by the sudden disappearance of at least 16 documents from the official US Department of Justice (DOJ) website, including a photograph featuring former President Donald Trump. The missing materials have ignited a political firestorm, with senior Democrats alleging a potential cover-up.
Mysterious Disappearance of Key Evidence
Central to the controversy is the vanishing of file number 468, which contained a photograph of a cabinet inside Epstein's Manhattan townhouse. The image showed the cabinet's drawers stuffed with piles of other photos depicting a wide array of celebrities, friends, and associates. Crucially, one of the visible pictures showed Donald Trump with his wife, Melania, standing alongside the convicted paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Another photo from the same missing file captured Trump posing with four women, one of whom was wearing a swimsuit. The DOJ's online file list now conspicuously jumps from "EFTA00000467" directly to "EFTA00000469," completely omitting the reference to file 468. The documents were uploaded on Friday, 19th December 2025, but were no longer accessible by the following day.
Political Outcry and Demands for Transparency
The unexplained deletions have triggered immediate and fierce reaction from prominent figures in the US government. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to social media platform X to state, 'this could be one of the biggest cover-ups in American history'. He connected the removal to previous comments from Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, about the two men being "young, single playboys together."
Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee publicly called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to provide an explanation. In a post on X, they demanded: "This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release. @AGPamBondi, is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public."
Context of the File Release
This first major dump of documents was made possible by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by Donald Trump in mid-November 2025. The legislation mandated the DOJ, FBI, and US Attorney’s offices to release all unclassified records related to Epstein within 30 days, by the deadline of 19th December.
The released cache, though heavily redacted in parts, included a vast array of materials such as contact lists, flight logs, business records, court documents, emails, and photographs. Among the revelations were insights into the Justice Department's past decision to drop a federal investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing him of stealing photographs of children.
While the files contained several never-before-seen photos of figures like former President Bill Clinton, there were notably few of Trump. Neither Trump nor Clinton has been accused of any criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the photos were not indicated to play a role in the criminal cases. Other powerful figures long linked to Epstein, such as the now-former Prince Andrew, were also largely absent from the released files.
The disappearances have profoundly undermined the promised transparency of the process, leaving more questions than answers about the full extent of Epstein's network and what information the public is entitled to see.
