The Justice Department on Friday began releasing its files on Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender and wealthy financier known for his connections to some of the world’s most influential people, including Donald Trump, who as president had tried to keep the files sealed.
The total volume was not immediately clear, though Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a Fox News Channel interview that he expected the department to release “several hundred thousand” records Friday and then several hundred thousand more in the coming weeks.
The release included photographs, call logs, grand jury testimony and some documents and records that have already been in the public domain.
The records could contain the most detailed look yet at nearly two decades’ worth of government investigations into Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women and underage girls.
For live updates, see NBC News’ coverage.
US & World
Their release has long been demanded by a public hungry to learn whether any of Epstein’s rich and powerful associates knew about — or participated in — the abuse. Epstein’s accusers have also long sought answers about why federal authorities shut down their initial investigation into the allegations in 2008.
Bowing to political pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump on Nov. 19 signed a bill giving the Justice Department 30 days to release most of its files and communications related to Epstein, including information about the investigation into his death in a federal jail. The law’s passage was a remarkable display of bipartisanship that overcame months of opposition from Trump and Republican leadership.
What’s in the files?
One photos shows former President Bill Clinton in a hot tub alongside someone whose face has been redacted, NBC News reported.
It’s not clear when or where this photo was taken, or who the other person was, NBC News noted. There are no indications of the person’s gender or age.
Angel Ureña, a spokesman for Clinton, defended the former president in a statement posted on X Friday evening.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be,” Ureña said.
NBC News reported that the format does not appear to be functioning in line with what is required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The law directed the attorney general to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United 6 States Attorneys’ Offices,” relating to Epstein and Maxwell, it noted.
While the files are downloadable, the search function does not appear to be working. A search for the terms “Epstein” and “Maxwell,” for example, came up with no matches, according to NBC News.
Actor Kevin Spacey was also included in several photos from the release. He is pictured alongside Jeffrey Epstein and many other unidentified men. NBC News reached out to Kevin Spacey’s team.
Another photo shows the late pop star Michael Jackson and Epstein standing together, but the context and date of the photo are unknown.
Jackson has on a pair of sunglasses and a suit jacket, while Epstein is wearing a zip-up hoodie with his hands in his pockets. They are standing in front of a piece of artwork.
In another photo, Epstein standing with a woman whose face is blacked out, and they’re both holding a giant novelty check with a Trump signature on it, NBC News reported. The picture is in a frame that says “Once in a blue moon.”
It’s unclear when and where the picture was taken.
The check appears to be the same one Epstein was photographed holding in a birthday book Maxwell assembled for his 50th birthday, according to NBC News. That page included a message from a Mar-a-Lago member joking about selling a ‘fully depreciated’ woman to Trump for $22,500.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What the law allows
That law allows for redactions about the victims or ongoing investigations but makes clear no records shall be withheld or redacted due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Nov. 14 that she had ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate Epstein’s ties to Trump’s political foes, including former President Bill Clinton. Bondi acted after Trump pressed for such an inquiry, though he did not explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men Trump mentioned in a social media post demanding the investigation has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.
In July, Trump dismissed some of his own supporters as “weaklings” for falling for “the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.” But both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., failed to prevent the legislation from coming to a vote.
Trump did a U-turn on the files once it became clear that congressional action was inevitable. He insisted that the Epstein matter had become a distraction to the Republican agenda and that releasing the records was the best way to move on.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News this morning that “several hundred thousand documents” would be posted today, with more coming “over the next couple of weeks.”
The law required the Justice Department to make public “all unclassified records” related to Epstein with limited exceptions, including to protect the identity of victims, within 30 days. President Donald Trump signed the law on Nov. 19 — exactly 30 days ago, according to NBC News.
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats accuse DOJ of failing to comply with Epstein Files Transparency Act, NBC News reported.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a statement with other committee Democrats saying the Justice Department had failed to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
“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 spokesperson for Durbin and Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized the Justice Department’s incomplete release of the Epstein files this afternoon, NBC News said.
“This set of heavily redacted documents released by the Department of Justice today is just a fraction of the whole body of evidence,” Schumer said.
“Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law,” he added.
Schumer pointed to a 119-page document in the files that was “completely blacked out,” and said that Democrats are looking into actions to ensure the Trump administration’s accountability.
The Epstein investigations
Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at his mansion. The FBI joined the investigation, and authorities gathered testimony from multiple underage girls who said they had been hired to give Epstein sexual massages.
Ultimately, though, prosecutors gave Epstein a deal that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges involving someone under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Epstein’s accusers then spent years in civil litigation trying to get that plea deal set aside. One of those women, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters, starting at age 17, with numerous other men, including billionaires, famous academics, U.S. politicians and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Britain’s Prince Andrew.
All of those men denied the allegations. Prosecutors never brought charges in connection with Giuffre’s claims, but her account fueled conspiracy theories about supposed government plots to protect the powerful. Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia in April at age 41.
Federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail a month after his arrest. Prosecutors then charged Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse.
Maxwell was convicted in late 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed over the summer by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Her lawyers argued that she never should have been tried or convicted.
The Justice Department in July said it had not found any information that could support prosecuting anyone else.
Lots of Epstein records were already public
After nearly two decades of court action and prying by reporters, a voluminous number of records related to Epstein is already public, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony and transcripts of depositions of his accusers, his staffers and others.
Yet the public’s appetite for more records has been insatiable, particularly for anything related to Epstein’s associations with famous people including Trump, Mountbatten-Windsor and Clinton.
Trump was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling-out. Neither he nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.
Mountbatten-Windsor denied ever having sex with Giuffre, but King Charles III stripped him of his royal titles this year after Giuffre’s memoir was published after she died.
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Sisak reported from New York.
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