At a Greenwich Village rally built around a truck stacked with printed Epstein records, the two-time Oscar winner accused President Trump of blocking the rest of the files — and asked the crowd, again and again, what the president is hiding.

NEW YORK — Robert De Niro has spent the better part of a decade as one of Donald Trump's most unsparing critics in Hollywood. On Monday night in Washington Square Park, he turned that fire on the issue that has shadowed the president's second term more stubbornly than almost any other: the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Flanked by women who say Epstein abused them, and standing beside a box truck loaded with roughly 3.5 million pages of government records printed and bound into volumes, the 83-year-old actor branded Trump Epstein's "protector-in-chief" and demanded that the administration make public every document it is still holding back.

His central charge rested on a single number. Pointing to references to the president, his family and his Mar-a-Lago club in the records the Justice Department has already released, De Niro told the crowd that Trump turns up some 38,000 times in what he described as only the first half of the files. By comparison, he said, Jesus is mentioned fewer than 1,000 times in the entire New Testament. Then he posed the question that became the refrain of the night: "What is he hiding?"

The Oct. 5 event — one stop on a national tour by a traveling exhibit called the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile — came less than a month before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Speakers made little secret of their hope that anger over the files would carry into the voting booth.

Trump has consistently denied any knowledge of, or role in, Epstein's crimes, and the Justice Department has said the released material does not justify further investigation of the president. Appearing in the files is not, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing.

"Its own category of evil"

The truck that served as De Niro's backdrop is wrapped in a large photograph of Trump and Epstein, printed beside a timeline of the two men's friendship. De Niro, a longtime Democrat and fixture of lower Manhattan, looked grim as he studied the timeline before taking the microphone, according to British press accounts of the evening.

In remarks that drew sustained applause, he saluted the survivors for their courage and placed blame not only on Epstein but on what he called the financier's protectors — the president, Republicans in Trump's cabinet and Republicans in Congress. The continued refusal to release the remaining files, he said, was "its own category of evil."

De Niro said crimes against children belong in the lowest circle of hell, and he reserved equal contempt for anyone who shields those responsible. The thousands of volumes on the truck, he argued, tell only part of the story, and one man stands between the public and the rest of it: the president of the United States.

It was a characteristically blunt performance from an actor who has rarely bothered with nuance when the subject is Trump. But the setting gave it unusual weight. A few feet away, survivors waited to tell their own stories.

Survivors at the center

Some of the evening's most wrenching moments came not from celebrities but from the women whose abuse is documented in the records.

Sharlene Rochard, who has said she was sexually abused and trafficked as a girl, told the crowd that she would no longer lower her voice when describing what happened to her, and that the shame belonged to her abuser, not to her, according to amNewYork.

Several survivors stressed that demanding accountability should not be a partisan cause. They nonetheless urged listeners to back candidates in November who support releasing the files in full.

Rosie O'Donnell, the comedian and longtime target of Trump's insults, was far less measured. She told the crowd that democracy itself would be on the ballot on Nov. 3, cast the political moment as an emergency, and vowed to stand with the survivors until powerful men — the president among them, she said — are in prison.

Alva Johnson, a former Trump campaign staffer who has accused Trump of sexual misconduct, broke down in tears as she spoke. She said she and other women had tried to warn voters before the 2016 election and were not heeded. Trump has denied her allegation.

Where the 38,000 figure comes from

The number De Niro invoked traces back to a New York Times review of the roughly 3 million pages the Justice Department released on Jan. 30. The Times counted more than 38,000 references to Trump spread across more than 5,300 files.

The figure needs context, and analysts who have combed through the documents have supplied it. A large share of the hits come from news clippings, alerts and forwarded articles that Epstein collected about his onetime friend's political ascent — he remained fixated on Trump long after the two reportedly fell out. The count also sweeps in references to Melania Trump and Mar-a-Lago, which is why De Niro framed it as mentions of the president, his family and his club. The Times reported finding no direct correspondence between the two men in the records.

Some passages, however, have drawn sustained attention. They include a sworn account from Epstein's former Palm Beach house manager, Juan Alessi, who told investigators that Trump had attended dinners and events at Epstein's home. They also include a handwritten note from a woman who said she was a minor when Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell introduced her to Trump. And in a 2019 email released by House Oversight Committee Democrats in late 2025, Epstein asserted that Trump knew about "the girls," without explaining what he meant. None of these documents accuses Trump of a crime, and the email is Epstein's own uncorroborated claim.

The department's handling of the material has fueled suspicion of its own. The New Republic reported that officials blacked out an image of the president that appeared in a text exchange between Epstein and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon — even as some nude photographs of young women were released without adequate redaction.

On the bookmobile, the Trump-related material gets its own shelf: 53 red volumes, each holding the pages that reference the president, according to the Manchester Ink Link, which covered an earlier stop on the tour.

The fight over "the other half"

De Niro's claim that the public has seen only half the record is not just rhetoric. It reflects a dispute that has run for nearly a year between the administration and a bipartisan bloc in Congress.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed with support from both parties and was signed by Trump in November 2025, gave the Justice Department 30 days to publish its unclassified Epstein records, with narrow exceptions to protect victims, active investigations and national security. The department missed the Dec. 19 deadline and released material in waves. When it published roughly 3 million pages on Jan. 30, Todd Blanche — then the deputy attorney general — said the release completed the department's review and satisfied the law.

Critics were not persuaded. The department itself had identified more than 6 million pages as potentially relevant. Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who co-wrote the law, has argued that more than 3 million files are being unlawfully withheld. In July, he and Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico introduced a follow-up bill, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, meant to give survivors, state attorneys general and prosecutors stronger tools to force disclosure. Massie said this month that a discharge petition to force a floor vote had 216 signatures, two short of the 218 needed.

Massie has kept up the pressure in public. On Oct. 12, after a White House social media post touted "zero releases" over the past 16 months — an apparent reference to another policy area — he replied that he had mistaken it for a boast about holding back the remaining Epstein files.

The battle has also moved into the courts. Journalist Katie Phang has sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing the department's withholdings violate the transparency law; after a setback in court, the Justice Department has asked U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the case. On Oct. 1, a federal judge ordered the department to expedite Freedom of Information Act requests from the watchdog group Democracy Defenders Fund for records concerning Epstein, Maxwell and Trump, including material tied to Mar-a-Lago. And on Tuesday, Law360 reported that the department had rebuffed New Mexico's request for unredacted files for the state's investigation into possible crimes at Epstein's Zorro Ranch, saying disclosure would hinder law enforcement work.

The White House line

Published accounts of Monday's rally did not include a White House response to De Niro's remarks. But the administration's position on the files has been consistent.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson has said Trump was "totally exonerated" on matters relating to Epstein, and has pointed to his signing of the transparency law, the release of thousands of pages of documents, the administration's cooperation with a House Oversight Committee subpoena and the president's calls for investigations of Epstein's associates. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said Trump cut ties with Epstein years ago and threw him out of Mar-a-Lago because Epstein "was a creep." Trump himself has dismissed the controversy as a hoax manufactured by Democrats and has said it is time for the country to move on.

The issue has nonetheless split Trump's own coalition. Prominent voices in the MAGA movement — many of whom spent years promising that the files would expose a powerful network of abusers — have accused the administration of breaking faith with them.