In July 2025, a claim spread online that the FBI had a spreadsheet containing every mention of U.S. President Donald Trump within the agency's records of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The rumor spread on platforms such as X and Reddit amid backlash faced by the Trump administration in response to the Department of Justice's July 7 announcement that it found "no incriminating 'client list'" kept by Epstein after a "systematic review" of the financier's files.
"Not only does an Excel spreadsheet of Trump mentions in the Epstein files exist, but so do training videos explaining how to flag the files for Trump mentions. Plus, the number of people who had access is larger than previously known," one Facebook post said.
This allegation originated with letters sent by Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, to top officials from the Department of Justice and the FBI, in which Durbin said information his office reviewed indicated 1,000 FBI agents were instructed to "flag" documents related to Epstein that mention Trump. Following Durbin's letters, independent journalist Allison Gill corroborated the senator's account and said anonymous sources from the FBI told her they were directed to log mentions of Trump in the Epstein files in an Excel spreadsheet.
While Gill could not share the identities of her sources for verification purposes — nor could she share the purported Trump-Epstein log — she told Snopes via a phone call that she once worked in the Department of Veterans Affairs as a hiring supervisor, and said she used her knowledge from that work to review government employment documents in order to confirm her sources' legitimacy.
On July 21, 2025, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she did not believe the White House was aware of any efforts to flag Trump's name in the Epstein files and directed inquires about it to the FBI. The
Until Snopes can review the purported spreadsheet or spreadsheets in question, we cannot rate the truthfulness of this claim — but here's what we know about their reported existence: