The FBI Believed Her
A civil jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse. The FBI interviewed Jane Doe #4 four times and found her credible. Thirty-seven pages are still hidden. David Shuster on why none of this goes away.
Cliff’s Note: Ellie Leonard joined Blue Amp as a contributing editor a few months ago. She reads every released page of the Epstein files — as a professional transcriptionist, she has the patience and precision to do it right — and reports only what she can prove.
The result has been some of the most important original journalism we’ve published. Important enough that David Shuster is now following her work with his own reporting. That’s what happens when someone is doing it right. The story gets bigger, not smaller.
There are still 37 pages of Jane Doe #4’s FBI file that the DOJ is withholding. We’re not moving on.
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by David Shuster
There are few spectacles these days in America more predictable than the reflexive absolution that MAGA world and most conservatives grant to Donald Trump. Accuse Trump of anything—fraud, corruption, or the mistreatment of women—and his defenders respond with speed and certainty. They insist the facts are irrelevant, the accusers are presumed liars, and the matter is settled before a single document has been read.
Against this background of ignorance, Ellie Leonard’s recent Substack investigation into the Epstein files “Jane Doe #4” stands out — precisely because it does the unfashionable and meticulous work of examining records instead of slogans.
Leonard’s comprehensive report digs through investigative material related to Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking network and highlights several things that should give all of us pause: a woman told federal investigators in 2019 that she was trafficked as a minor, introduced to powerful men, and allegedly raped by Donald Trump in the 1980’s. The FBI interviewed the woman four times. Investigators found her credible. And her credibility has now been bolstered by documents, business records, and other materials not in the Epstein files.
Let’s start with the basics. Jane Doe #4 told the FBI she met Jeffrey Epstein in the 1980’s in Hilton Head, South Carolina through a baby sitting service and was eventually abused by Epstein and then, in NYC, raped by Donald Trump.
In her 2019 interviews, Jane Doe #4 detailed to the FBI where she lived in South Carolina and beyond, her mother’s embezzlement convictions, her own bouts with drugs, divorces, and legal problems. She was transparent and hid nothing. And now, the mundane details Jane Doe #4 gave the FBI and detailed in the Epstein files have been corroborated.
As for the incendiary high profile allegations, Jane Doe #4 spoke to the FBI about being taken to NYC and sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.
As was reported weeks ago by several news organizations citing the document above released in the Epstein files, Jane Doe #4 alleges in one incident that she bit Trump’s penis and Trump responded by punching her in the head. Beyond the alleged abuse, Jane Doe #4 gave the FBI other details about Trump. She knew, for example, he had illegal building permits. Jane Doe also told the FBI she had confided in a friend in the 1980’s about Epstein and Donald Trump. The friend corroborated these assertions to the FBI.
Naturally, when the Department of Justice posted some of the FBI interview reports about Jane Doe #4, Trump partisans responded in their usual way: they attacked the witness, reporters, and anyone else within shouting distance. This ritual has been perfected over the past decade. Every woman who accuses Trump is declared unstable, dishonest, or politically motivated before her story is even examined. The accusation itself becomes proof of malice.
But this Trump strategy gets increasingly absurd when placed alongside Trump’s actual legal record.
In 2023, a civil jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. That verdict established a remarkable fact in American history: a U.S. president was adjudicated liable for sexual abuse.
The Jane Doe #4 story of alleged rape in the 1980’s matters because it places Trump within the dark orbit of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking operation earlier than previously acknowledged.
Jane Doe #4 also matters because she establishes that Trump allegedly acted in a pattern. While Jane Doe #4 alleges Trump raped in the 1980’s, a separate accuser known as Katie Johnson alleged that Trump raped her as a minor in the 1990’s.
Johnson pushed forward with a lawsuit in 2016 and then dropped it just before the 2016 presidential election.
Within that context, the reporting in Ellie Leonard’s Substack report can not be dismissed. Here we have yet another Epstein survivor who told investigators she was trafficked to powerful men and raped by Donald Trump Trump. The FBI found Jane Doe #4 credible. And there are still 37 pages from the FBI interview documents of Jane Doe #4 that are still being withheld.
It raises the obvious question: why are those documents being withheld? What other evidence might still exist that Attorney General Bondi has not released?
These are the sorts of question that Trump’s defenders keep trying to bury. Their method is simple. Instead of examining the record, they attempt to discredit anyone who dares to mention it. The accuser must be lying; the reporter must be biased; the old newspaper microfiche must have been doctored; the entire subject must be taboo.
But journalism, at its best, performs the opposite function. It insists on dragging uncomfortable facts into the daylight. Ellie Leonard deserves credit for doing exactly that—patiently assembling fragments of investigative history that many Americans would prefer remain scattered and forgotten.
Whether Jane Doe #4’s trafficking and rape allegations against Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell are ever proven or disproven is ultimately a matter for evidence, corroboration, and law. What cannot be denied is that her testimony exists, the FBI considered it important enough to document repeatedly, and details provided to the FBI and released in the Epstein files have now been corroborated. In other words, Jane Doe #4 was credible when she spoke to the FBI in 2019 and her credibility remains intact in 2026.
That reality alone punctures the fairy tale carefully cultivated around Donald Trump: the notion that every accusation against him is an obvious fabrication and every accuser is a political operative.
In truth, the pattern looks very different. Again and again, women have come forward with sexual abuse allegations against Donald Trump. Again and again, his defenders have responded not with inquiry but with fury. And again and again, the public has been urged to forget the matter entirely.
Relentless and fact based investigative reporting is a crucial antidote to that amnesia. By examining the record surrounding Jane Doe #4, we have been reminded that rape allegations against Donald Trump will not vanish simply because his supporters object loudly on cable tv news or because the mainstream media refuses to take a closer look.
If anything, a more troubling possibility has emerged: that the full history of the sexual abuse Donald Trump inflicted has yet to be told.
For those invested in protecting Trump’s reputation, that prospect is intolerable. For anyone interested in the truth, it is precisely why the work must continue. And thanks to the painstaking and exhaustive investigative journalism of Ellie Leonard and others, that work carries on.
Tomorrow — Wednesday, March 18, 11am to 11pm ET — we're going live for 12 straight hours with 20+ guests to make one thing clear: the 2026 midterms are happening, and we are going to fight like it. Steve Schmidt, Joy Reid, Malcolm Nance, Glenn Kirschner, Joe Walsh, and a lot more. Drop in for an hour or stay all day. See you there!
“Jane Doe #4 told the FBI she met Jeffrey Epstein in the 1980’s in Hilton Head, South Carolina through a baby sitting service …”
I have to point out that the statement ‘through a babysitting service’ is incorrect. JD#4’s Mother included a flyer with a folder of materials provided to new owners and/or tenants in the community.
The flyer advertised babysitting services [provided by her 13-year-old daughter]. Epstein allegedly arranged babysitting, but when JD#4 arrived at his home, there were no children and it was just her and Epstein.
It’s absolutely fantastic to see Ellie’s work making such a huge difference, being covered by other journalists, and going mainstream
I'm no lawyer, but EVERYTHING about this screams that the mango mussolini was given immunity for his sealed deposition against Epstein.