Trump's photo with bikini-clad women reportedly disappears from publicly released Epstein files, leading to speculations of a cover-up

A lot of documents from Epstein's files have recently been released, and several photos capturing popular faces, like Donald Trump, have surfaced. However, a lot of photos reportedly disappeared suddenly from the publicly available documents. A photo of Trump with a few bikini-clad women was one of the many photos that were made unavailable for public viewing.

Amongst the hundreds of photos that were revealed, some were clicked by the convicted sex offender. Meanwhile, others were captured by the FBI when they conducted raids at his properties. The apparent decision to remove the photos from public viewing fueled speculations of a cover-up. Many netizens shared a similar perspective on social media. One X user tweeted,

"So glad you are taking care to protect famous people and politicians—I meant victims, sorry."

Amid the chaos, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the decision to remove the aforementioned images, as per reports by The Daily Mail. Blanche spoke about the photo of Trump with the women and stated that there were concerns about the women's identities. He, however, also added that there was no suggestion that the women were Epstein's victims.

However, amid the backlash and speculations of a cover-up, the Justice Department stated that the photos were available for public viewing. The picture, which captured the photo of Trump with the bikini-clad girls, included another photo of Trump, Melania, Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell. In their explanation, the Department of Justice tweeted,

"The Southern District of New York flagged an image of President Trump for potential further action to protect victims. Out of an abundance of caution, the Department of Justice temporarily removed the image for further review." 

There has been criticism of the Epstein files not being properly redacted when necessary

On Saturday, victims' rights advocate Gloria Allred told CNN that the recently released Epstein files did not undergo redaction in places where there were requirements. Gloria claimed to see the victim's names being revealed in certain parts of the documents. She told CNN that the names had to be redacted since the purpose of redaction was to protect the victims.

"The other concern I have also has to do with the images of some of the potential victims and survivors, that some of those images were not redacted, should have been redacted, and in some cases, the images may be of women unclothed," said the victims' rights advocate.

The criticism did not just come from Gloria. An Epstein victim, who allegedly reported him back in 2009, recently wrote a letter to the Department of Justice. In the letter, the victim pointed out that her identity had gotten exposed in the recently released Epstein documents.

In the letter, the survivor even wrote that even though they reported Epstein to the FBI years back, the government could do nothing to stop him at the time. This criticism about the redaction surfaced around the time when the Trump administration was already facing scrutiny for the partial release of the files, instead of the entire one as decided earlier.

Meanwhile, a number of well-known faces could be seen in the photos obtained through the Epstein documents. This includes Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Chris Tucker, to name a few. However, it has been noted that the mere presence of these faces in photos does not automatically imply wrongdoing on their end.