The Trump administration estimates there are still 700,000 files in the Jeffrey Epstein case that need to be reviewed and released, which could take another week.
So far, approximately 750,000 documents in the late convicted sex offender’s case have been reviewed and released by a team of 200 people, a Trump administration official told Axios, which reports a “palpable sense of exasperation” over the crisis behind closed doors.
It follows Tuesday’s document dump by the Justice Department, the largest yet, consisting of hundreds of emails and other correspondence from law enforcement and prosecutors investigating Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein in the wake of his death in prison in 2019, which was ruled a suicide.
President Donald Trump, who had a years-long relationship with Epstein until the early 2000s, was referenced many times in the documents released Tuesday.
Trump is not accused of wrongdoing in connection with his crimes, and a person’s appearance within the files does not suggest wrongdoing. The Justice Department immediately leapt to his defense, claiming the files contain “untrue and sensationalist claims” that they suggested were used to influence the 2020 presidential election.
The administration continues to be dogged by the controversy, hindered further by the heavily redacted files and its “clumsy” and partial release of the documents.
There was immediate outcry when the Justice Department failed to release all of the long-awaited files in its possession, despite federal law signed by Trump requiring the administration to publicly disclose everything it had by December 19.
“There’s a palpable sense of exasperation and annoyance in the administration about all of the headlines pertaining to Trump and Epstein and the inability to explain everything and just get the disclosure done,” Axios noted.
Officials are growing “frustrated” with the saga as it shows few signs of abating. “It’s a combination of extreme frustration at everything: at what Congress did, at our response to it, and a concern that it won’t go away,” an official told the outlet.
“This will end soon,” another official told Axios. “The conspiracy theories won’t.”
Many of the 700,000 documents due to be reviewed are duplicates, according to the outlet, and so not all of them will be disclosed, but thousands more are anticipated to drop in the next week.
The Justice Department released around 30,000 files Tuesday, and so far, the release of materials — which are heavily redacted and mostly shared without any context — has not advanced the public’s understanding of the scope of Epstein’s crimes and connections to an alleged sex trafficking ring accused of exploiting and abusing young girls.
References to Trump were prominent in the latest batch, which prompted the department to issue a statement claiming some of the evidence is “fake.”
“There has been lots of sensationalism and even outright lies these past few days about the ‘Epstein Files,’” deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Monday night in a statement on X. “But let’s separate fact from fiction. Document production is just that. We produce documents, and sometimes this can result in releasing fake or false documents because they simply are in our possession because the law requires this.”
Blanche pointed to a letter from “J. Epstein” from “Manhattan Correctional” to Larry Nassar, the former women’s gymnastics team doctor convicted of exploiting and sexually assaulting hundreds of young athletes, that was among documents released by the Justice Department.
The letter is postmarked August 13, 2019, three days after Epstein’s death. It was marked “return to sender” and discovered in a mailroom more than a month later.
“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls,” the letter read. “When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.” However, hours after publishing the document, the Justice Department determined the letter is “fake.”
The writing does not appear to match Epstein’s and was postmarked from Virginia, not New York, where Epstein was jailed, according to the Justice Department.
”The so-called Epstein Nassar letter is clearly FAKE,” Blanche continued in the statement. “Wrong handwriting, wrong return address, and postmarked three days after Epstein died. These are not reality. We will continue to produce every document required by law. Let’s not let internet rumor engines outrun the facts.”
Other revelations unearthed Tuesday included one message from January 2020 from a federal prosecutor in Manhattan who claimed that flight records showed Trump “traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).” It included the period where prosecutors were preparing to charge in the case against Maxwell.
Trump has previously said he was “never on Epstein’s Plane.”
There were at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996 in which Trump was a passenger, according to the message. Maxwell was also present on at least four of those flights, according to an assistant U.S. attorney, whose name is redacted.
In addition, the documents include several tips collected by the FBI about Trump’s involvement with Epstein and parties at their properties in the early 2000s. The messages do not state whether any follow-up investigations were pursued or if the allegations are corroborated.
A message from an investigator in June 2021 reported an image with Trump with Maxwell that was discovered on Steve Bannon’s phone.
Investigators also identified at least 10 co-conspirators in Epstein’s sex trafficking case in 2019, none of whom have been publicly revealed, according to the newly released documents. That finding is despite testimony from FBI Director Kash Patel, who told senators earlier this year there was “no credible information” that Epstein trafficked women and girls to anyone but himself.
Three of those alleged co-conspirators lived in Florida and were subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. There were others in Boston, New York City and Connecticut, according to emails from July 2019. One is a “wealthy business man in Ohio,” according to one message.
After Epstein’s death in 2019, prosecutors produced several memos determining whether to charge alleged conspirators in his case, according to the documents.
But the files released by the Justice Department only reference the memos — not the documents themselves.
Speaking from Mar-a-Lago in his first public remarks about the documents Monday night, the president said Epstein was “all over Palm Beach” and many people crossed paths with him.
“You probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago,” Trump said. “A lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein, but they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruin the reputation of somebody.”
