FBI's 'Full Panic Mode' Search For Trump Mentions in Epstein Files Confirmed By Former Analysts: Report

Former members of the FBI have reportedly confirmed that the intelligence agency frantically searched for any mentions of President Donald Trump in the files on Jeffrey Epstein following a Senate Democrat's claims.

After Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin alleged that FBI personnel had been ordered to "flag" any mentions of Trump in thousands of pages of the files, legal analyst Allison Gill turned to BlueSky to ask any former members to confirm the report, she wrote on her Substack Mueller, She Wrote.

In response, a former analyst who had been designated as one of the reviewers of the files, as well as "several" other former members of the bureau led her to confirm Durbin's whistleblower-backed statement that about 1,000 FBI personnel had been assigned to comb through roughly 100,000 files totaling about 300,000 pages.

"Individual analysts were told to flag mentions of Trump by document and page number by logging them in an Excel spreadsheet, then they'd hand in their spreadsheet at the end of their (sometimes 24 or even 48-hour) shift. But it's important to note that the agents were not told to flag Trump until later in a process that began mid-March," Gill reported.

The legal analyst noted that, according to one source, typical restrictions on access to the files were not used, with the entire Information Management Division allegedly having access to the files through a shared drive.

Sources also alleged that the process was disorganized. Sometimes personnel were often waiting for new instructions and those instructions changed frequently. As one source told Gill, it was "full panic mode."

At first, FBI personnel were reportedly told not to redact anything, before that order was changed to mark any names of victims. Then analysts were told to add any identifying information to that list, before being ordered to document every time Trump was mentioned in a spreadsheet. Although the number of times Trump appeared in the files has not been confirmed, one source attested that he is in there at least once.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel had reportedly prepared to release the files once the redactions were finished, but ended up deciding against that plan.

The Trump administration has come under intense fire from both sides of the aisle following a July 6 memo declaring that Epstein had killed himself, did not have a client list and that there was no evidence of blackmail.

Scrutiny has only heightened after Trump pushed for his supporters to move on from the Epstein files, and insisted to reporters that there are better stories to cover.

Following a bombshell report by the Wall Street Journal alleging that Trump had wished Epstein a happy birthday with a drawing of a nude woman, Trump, who denied the outlet's claims, called for the Department of Justice to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony," though the timeline on that remains unclear.