The document behind the war-room story
Sarah Ransome’s 2016 email about Trump, and the dispute over whether it’s real.
Source of the allegation in the war-room reporting: a 2016 email from Epstein accuser Sarah Ransome to NY Post reporter Maureen Callahan, filed in Giuffre v. Maxwell (SDNY 15-cv-7433). The reporting paraphrases it:
Says it’s authentic
Sarah Ransome — the only person on the record about it. She wrote the emails, reaffirmed the underlying claim in 2024 (“it’s no secret that everything was recorded”), gave a sworn statement at Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentencing, and wrote a memoir (Silenced No More, HarperCollins, 2021). She also withdrew the claims in 2016 citing threats to her family, and told The New Yorker in 2019 she had invented the sex-tape part — then reversed that in 2024 (Pieces 3, 8).
Says it’s false
Alan Dershowitz — whose own court filing this is. He assembled Ransome’s emails to argue her testimony was “fabricated from whole cloth.” He is an accused party with a documented record of attacking these accusers: publicly calling one a “prostitute,” threatening to sue victims’ lawyers (Piece 9). The filing is advocacy, not a court finding.
Released twice: January 2024 court unsealing (CourtListener); 2026 DOJ Epstein Files (Court Records, EFTA02795303). Un-indexed in the DOJ release.
Reveal-redactions button flips the redacted and un-redacted filings. Sidebar / arrow keys move between exhibits; click any page to enlarge.
Names: only public, on-the-record accusers are named. The woman at the center appears in the record only as a first name, “Jen,” and has not come forward; the court’s redactions of other witnesses are left as filed.
Terms
Bates number (e.g. RANSOME_000296): a unique stamp on each produced page so it can be cited.
Protective order / de-designation: a court order marking documents secret; de-designation asks the court to un-secret them.
Intervenor: a non-party (Dershowitz) allowed into a case to protect his own interest.
AEO — Attorneys’ Eyes Only: the strictest secrecy tier; the deposition pages carry it.
Exhibit 6 — RANSOME_000296/297
Sarah Ransome → Maureen Callahan (New York Post), October 2016. Redacted: Doc 1296-17. Un-redacted: Doc 1332-16.
The passage
Redacted → recovered (1296 → 1332)
| In the redacted filing | Recovered |
|---|---|
| [ ] liked flicking and sucking her nipples | Donald Trump |
| casual ‘friendship’ with [ ] | Donald |
| sexual relations with [ ] at … NY mansion | Trump |
| I once met [ ] for coffee | Jen |
| going to meet [ ] and Epstein | Trump |
| introduced to Epstein by [ ] | Natalie |
| pictures of me with [ ] and his fiancée [ ] | Sergey Brin / Anne Wojcicki |
| email exchanges with [ ] (flights) / [ ] (girls) | Sarah Kellen / Lesley Groff |
The SugarDaddie.com man and his “code name” stay redacted in both filings.
Dershowitz letter, pp. 2–3 — redaction map
Doc 1296-17 (redacted) / Doc 1332-16 (un-redacted). The letter quotes six Ransome emails as bullet points.
Redacted → recovered
| Redacted | Recovered |
|---|---|
| sexual proclivities of [ ] | Donald Trump, Bill Clinton |
| neither that [ ] gets elected | “evil bitch Hillary or that Paedophile Trump” |
| [ ] must pay for what they did | Clinton and Trump |
| intercourse with [ ], [ ] and [ ] | Clinton, Prince Andrew, Richard Branson |
| approached by [ ] | “Special Agents Forces Men sent directly by Hilary Clinton herself” |
Letter dated 21 June 2017, filed under seal; unsealed January 2024.
Exhibit 1 — RANSOME_000521 (retraction)
Two emails on one page: the retraction (23 October 2016) and, a day earlier, the “hacked / Russians / Anonymous” email.
Retraction email, 23 October 2016
Good Morning Britain, 9 January 2024 (on why she withdrew)
Exhibit 2/5 — RANSOME_000295 (sex-tape claims)
Redacted: Doc 1296-17. Un-redacted: Doc 1332-16.
Names recovered in the un-redacted email
Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Richard Branson; a payout “directly from the Clinton Foundation”; “Hilary Clinton’s Special Agent Officers.”
On the tape claims
No such tapes have surfaced.
Exhibit 3 — RANSOME_000368 (election)
Sent days before the 2016 election. Redacted: Doc 1296-17 / un-redacted: Doc 1332-16.
Recovered words
“evil bitch Hillary” and “Paedophile Trump.”
Exhibit 4 — RANSOME_000284
Ransome ↔ Maureen Callahan, 13 October 2016. Redacted: Doc 1296-17 / un-redacted: Doc 1332-16.
13 October 2016
Callahan: “the more girls who can come forward the better.”
Recovered words: Clinton, Trump.
Deposition (Doc 1335-7) — “Jen”
Sarah Ransome deposition, 17 February 2017. Highly Confidential — AEO.
What the deposition shows
“Jen” / “Jennifer” appears only as a first name. Asked her surname, Ransome answered: “I don’t know.” A name beside “Jennifer” on transcript p.45 is still redacted.
Ransome’s accounts, 2016–2024
What she said, when, and where — verbatim.
October 2016 — the emails
To NY Post reporter Maureen Callahan: sex tapes of Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, Branson; the Jen/Trump passage; Russian hackers; CIA cover-up.
23 October 2016 — withdrawal
2019 — The New Yorker
2021 — Silenced No More
June 2022 — Victim Impact Statement, Maxwell sentencing
9 January 2024 — Good Morning Britain
Sources: court exhibits; The New Yorker (2019); Silenced No More (HarperCollins, 2021); DOJ-OGR-00010677/10715; ITV Good Morning Britain (2024). The Jen/Trump claim itself: not separately addressed by Ransome.
The disputing parties
Who put the “not credible” case on the record.
Dershowitz (Doc 589-0)
He also “threatened to sue” the victims’ attorneys Edwards and Cassell (Doc 1090). His filing calls Ransome’s testimony “fabricated from whole cloth.”
Maxwell (US v. Maxwell, Doc 672)
The deposition was given under pressure (EFTA00145606)
Residual redactions
Names blacked out in both filings — not recoverable here.
Redacted in every released version
- The SugarDaddie.com man — both his real name and his site “code name.” The email: “a case I was going to open against [name]… he went under the name [alias]… [name] also tried to rape me with his friend… on his boat in Miami.” Blacked out in 1296 and 1332.
- The third “frightened girl” beside Jennifer and Natalya in the deposition (transcript p.45) — still sealed in 2024.
- “Jen”’s surname — not in the record; Ransome testified she didn’t know it.
- Personal identifiers — Ransome’s home address, parents, partner “Peter,” her Yahoo address and Callahan’s email.
Withheld for privacy and witness safety; not recoverable by comparing versions.
Provenance — released twice
These three documents are public in two official releases: the Jan 2024 court unsealing (CourtListener / RECAP) and the Jan 2026 DOJ Epstein Files release, where they sit in the Court Records sub-folder as EFTA-numbered PDFs.
Doc 1296-17 redacted emails
court: 447706.1296.17.pdf
DOJ: EFTA02790257
Doc 1332-16 UN-REDACTED emails
court: 447706.1332.16.pdf
DOJ: EFTA02795303
Doc 1335-7 deposition (469 pp)
court: 447706.1335.7_1.pdf
DOJ: EFTA02796020
DOJ path: …/2026-01-30 DOJ Epstein
Files/doj-disclosures/Court Records/
v. Maxwell, No. 115-cv-07433/
Caveat on “findability”: in the DOJ release these carry no descriptive names and were not OCR-indexed (absent from every full-text/search layer), so they’re effectively invisible to keyword search — the only keyword-discoverable trace in the indexed datasets is the defense lawyer’s letter (EFTA00805072). Present, but buried.