Ranking member Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., arrives for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Dirksen building on Tuesday, June 17, 2025.
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FBI agents assigned earlier this year to review investigative files in the criminal case against notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were instructed to “flag” any documents that mentioned President Donald Trump, Sen. Richard Durbin said Friday.
Durbin’s claim came as the Illinois Democrat sent the Justice Department and FBI letters asking them to explain what his office called “apparent discrepancies regarding the handling of the Epstein files and findings from a July 7 Department of Justice (DOJ) memorandum and instructions reportedly received by FBI personnel.”
Durbin’s letters were addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino.
The senator’s description of instructions given to FBI agents regarding mentions of Trump’s name was made in the letter to Bongino.
“According to information my office received, the FBI was pressured to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division (IMD) … on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline,” Durbin wrote.
“This effort, which reportedly took place from March 14 through the end of March, was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily-protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests,” the letter said.
“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned.”
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