Trump administration begins release of Epstein files
Treasure trove includes celebrity photos, redacted files
THE US Justice Department released thousands of pages of pictures, phone records and notes from investigations into notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, revealing new details about the late financier’s relationships with prominent business leaders and politicians.
But the Justice Department’s actions didn’t mark the end of the saga.
The department said more files will be released in coming weeks because the volume of material was too much to process by the Friday deadline set by Congress, sparking rebukes from many Democrats.
The tranche included heavy redactions, a step intended to comply with the provisions of the law including protections for survivors and accomodations for ongoing investigations.
As with previous disclosures, the documents included images of celebrities and politicians in Epstein’s orbit. Former President Bill Clinton featured prominently in some, and Trump administration officials took to social media to highlight pictures of him with the late musician Michael Jackson, who faced his own allegations of sexual abuse.
Another photo shows Clinton swimming with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. A Clinton spokesperson accused the administration of releasing photos of the ex-president as a diversionary tactic.
The disclosure came after Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation in November compelling the department to make the files public. President Donald Trump had long resisted the move but relented and signed the bill as pressure from Republican lawmakers forced his hand.
At least one photo of Trump and First Lady Melania Trump with Maxwell was also part of the disclosure, though an initial review of the files revealed relatively few mentions of the current president.
Other celebrities and business leaders including Richard Branson, Kevin Spacey and Bill Gates appear in images within the collection. A Bank of America statement for private equity titan Leon Black and his wife Debra, appears in the tranche.
Epstein’s ties with Black have been well documented, with Black paying at least US$158 million to Epstein between 2012 and 2017 for tax advice. Aside from his role as Black’s wealth adviser, Epstein had called him one of his closest friends.
The unexpected plan to gradually release the files may do little to quell the conspiracy theories and political attacks that ruptured parts of Trump’s base and animated Democrats. Congressional Democrats accused the administration of protecting Trump with the incomplete release.
“The Justice Department’s failure to fully comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act not only violates the law, it continues this administration’s pattern of protecting President Trump and other perpetrators and perpetuating the ongoing Bondi-Patel cover up at the expense of Epstein’s survivors.” Josh Sorbe, a spokesman for Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel.
The White House hit Democrats over their ties to the disgraced financier following the release of the documents.
“The Trump administration is the most transparent in history,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
“By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have.”
The Justice Department organised a team of more than 200 lawyers to work on determining which materials were responsive to the new law, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote in a letter Friday to lawmakers.
“This process resulted in over 1,200 names being identified as victims or their relatives,” Blanche wrote in a letter. The department redacted references to their names and any materials that could result in their identification, Blanche said.
However, Blanche also told lawmakers that “the volume of materials to be reviewed” meant it wasn’t possible to meet the law’s requirement to release all files by Friday.
He specifically cited requirements imposed by a federal judge on prosecutors in Manhattan to minimise the risk of inadvertently releasing victim’s information.
“I anticipate this ongoing review being completed over the next two weeks,” Blanche wrote.
Blanche also said officials went beyond the law’s guidance in deciding what to release, citing what he called other “common law” limits on public disclosure.
“In addition to the bases for withholding or redacting under the act, the department has withheld or redacted a limited amount of information otherwise covered by various privileges, including deliberative-process privilege, work-product privilege and attorney-client privilege.”
Blanche concluded the letter saying that “the department will continue to follow the Review Protocol and add to the public website materials that are responsive under the Act, and the Department will inform Congress when that review and production are complete by the end of this year.”
The website on Friday placed users in a queue before they were able to access the material, a signal of intense interest in the documents.
The Justice Department included a search feature, but conceded it was of limited use, saying that “due to technical limitations and the format of certain materials (e.g., handwritten text), portions of these documents may not be electronically searchable or may produce unreliable search results.” Many documents were published without context or captions.
The disclosure included personal and mundane details, from Epstein’s membership card to an adult video store to his phone records. The release also included new images of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, a brother of King Charles III, who was recently stripped of his title as prince and evicted from his royal residence due to his ties to Epstein.
Andrew has denied allegations from one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, that she was forced to have sexual encounters with him. Giuffre died by suicide in April, her family said.
Not yet clear was how the release would resonate with Trump allies who have fixated on the case, demanding greater transparency from the federal government as conspiracy theories have swirled about his associates in politics, business and academia as well as the circumstances surrounding his death.
A convicted sex offender, Epstein was facing federal charges of trafficking underage girls when he died in jail in 2019. Authorities have ruled it a suicide.
The focus back on Epstein risks creating another political headache for Trump, another former Epstein associate who is already grappling with voter dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy.
Trump, 79, was once friends with Epstein but maintains he cut ties with him around two decades ago and that he was not aware of his sex offences.
As a candidate, Trump pledged to release files related to Epstein. The Justice Department in February put out a first tranche of documents that were largely public already. In July, the department and FBI asserted that no further disclosures were appropriate or warranted. That prompted a furious reaction from many of the president’s supporters. Trump complained over the summer that the situation was a “hoax” designed by Democrats to damage his presidency.
“Donald Trump and the Department of Justice are now violating federal law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long, billion-dollar, international sex trafficking ring,” Democratic Representatives Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin said Friday in a joint statement.
Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden called the department’s decision an “insult to the intelligence of the American people,” saying the administration has had “plenty of time” to redact files in compliance with the law.
But the additional releases and heavy redactions also pose a risk for Trump, who could continue to battle questions about his involvement with Epstein as the calendar turns to 2026 and the midterm elections near.
Trump has previously requested the Justice Department investigate Epstein’s ties to a number of high-profile Democrats, including Clinton, onetime Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman.
Jay Clayton, US attorney for the Southern District of New York, was selected to lead the probe. Critics have questioned whether the investigation could allow the administration to refuse to release some documents.
Summers has said he regretted his relationship with the disgraced financier and that he would step back from public commitments. That includes his role as a paid contributor to Bloomberg Television, a Bloomberg News spokesperson confirmed.
Hoffman has also expressed remorse over his association with Epstein but said their dealings did not extend beyond fundraising for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A message left at Elysium Management, Leon Black’s family office, wasn’t immediately returned.
Friday’s disclosure also included many previously released documents, such as the 345-page report by the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility on the non-prosecution agreement that Epstein received in 2007 to avoid federal charges for sex crimes. The 2020 report concluded that then-US Attorney Alexander Acosta did not engage in professional misconduct but he showed poor judgment in arranging the deal.
The disclosure included a report by the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General on the circumstances of Epstein’s death in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center while awaiting trial in 2019. The report found significant failures by MCC staff before he was found dead.
Justice Department officials also released previously disclosed materials relating to Blanche’s jailhouse interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, the Epstein confidant serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking. She was moved from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security facility in Texas after that interview this summer. BLOOMBERG
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