Feds Discovered Steve Bannon’s Photo of Trump and Ghislane Maxwell

The government found a photograph of Donald Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Steve Bannon’s phone. So, why did they redact it?

Buried in the latest trove of documents released by the Department of Justice Monday, one email appeared to be from a federal investigator who said they’d discovered something while digging through Bannon’s iPhone 7.

“As I was going through the images from that phone, I found an image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Bannon’s phone,” the email stated, passing it forward “in case it was of any importance” to someone handling “both cases.”

“Thanks very much for flagging—no need to do anything on this one,” the person responds.

Despite the fact that the Epstein Files Transparency Act only required the Trump administration to redact identifiable information of survivors—something that the government failed to do—the photograph of Trump and Maxwell was redacted in its entirety in the DOJ’s release. The sender and recipients’ names have also all been redacted.

So, what is it about this photograph in particular that warranted redaction?

Over the course of his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, Trump was photographed several times with Maxwell. The two attended parties and fashion events, and even traveled together.

It seems that Trump may be receiving some special treatment. In other photographs released as part of the government’s document dumps, former President Bill Clinton’s face remained visible while the faces of some other individuals were redacted. The DOJ even went so far as to release a statement to get ahead of the “untrue and sensationalist claims” about Trump contained in their own release.

The batch of files released Monday contained multiple disturbing revelations, including one email that suggested Trump flew on Epstein’s jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” and Epstein’s apparent suicide note that mentioned Trump’s love of “young, nubile girls.”