In mid-March 2026, a rumor spread online that U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York, delivered a speech on the House floor that included an allegation that President Donald Trump once sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl. The allegation reportedly was contained in a file released to the public through the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the federal government to make public its collection of documents related to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Posts about Goldman's speech circulated on social media sites such as Facebook, and Snopes readers wrote in asking us to investigate.
Our research confirmed that Goldman did discuss the allegation that Trump had sexually assaulted a teenage girl during a speech he gave on the House floor. However, the documents Goldman cited claimed that the purported victim was 13 to 15 years old, not specifically 13 as posts claimed. (In his speech, Goldman correctly described the alleged victim as "between 13 and 15 years old.") Because of this, we've rated the claim mostly true.
We contacted both the White House and Goldman's office for comment. Neither had responded by time of publication.
It's important to point out that this fact-check neither confirms nor refutes the narrative Goldman cited; we have rated only whether he gave such a speech. Below, we document the allegation as it was presented in the Epstein files, and later by Goldman.
In his speech, which he posted to X on March 18 (archived), Goldman cited the accusation as coming from Epstein files documents EFTA_00057737-8 and EFTA01660639:
Because the Epstein files search on the Department of Justice's website does not allow users to search by file number, Snopes instead searched for key terms within the statement. Searching for the phrase "Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be," revealed one result. Though that document did not match either of the numbers Goldman cited, it did contain the same interview Goldman read aloud in his speech:
[REDACTED] could not recall the identities of the other individuals present; however, they all exited when TRUMP asked everyone to leave the room. TRUMP mentioned something to the effect of, "Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be." TRUMP unzipped his pants and put [REDACTED] head, "down to his penis". [REDACTED], "bit the s*** out of it." TRUMP struck [REDACTED] and said words to the effect of, "get this little b**** the hell out of here." [REDACTED] advised she bit TRUMP's penis because he disgusted her. "He had money, it reeked off of him."
By searching Google for the second document, EFTA 01660639, Snopes found a letter co-written by Goldman and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., that cited and linked to the document (archived). That document was a slide deck (Goldman claimed it was created by the FBI for prosecutors) providing a brief overview of Epstein's crimes. Trump's name was listed on a slide titled "Prominent Names," along with a paragraph containing the same statement detailed in the previous document.
Also on the slide were Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Britain's Prince Andrew, who was arrested over his connections to Epstein in early 2026, Harvey Weinstein, the former film producer who was convicted of multiple sex crimes, and former President Bill Clinton.
(It is important to note that a person's name appearing in the Epstein files does not necessarily establish any wrongdoing.)
In his speech, Goldman claimed the FBI considered the accusation against Trump credible because the agency had included the accuser's statement in its presentation to prosecutors. Snopes contacted the FBI to ask whether it considered this accusation credible and how it chooses which accusations to include in presentations; the agency declined to comment.