Thousands of documents from investigations into Jeffrey Epstein have finally been released by Donald Trump’s administration after months of public pressure.
While an initial round of long-awaited documents includes a vast library of salacious images and photographs of high-profile figures, it remains unclear whether they shed any new light on Epstein’s crimes and his alleged connections to a sex trafficking ring implicating prominent officials who exploited and abused young girls.
Disclosures related to the Epstein Files Transparency Act include hundreds of photographs, including from inside Epstein’s Manhattan apartment and his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Photographs submitted by law enforcement investigating the inside of his New York property include sex toys and costumes, images of women exposing themselves, folders full of photographs of nearly naked women, and nude paintings and sculptures of women’s breasts.
Epstein, a wealthy and well-connected financier and convicted sex offender, is accused of trafficking women and girls as young as 14 years old. His death in jail awaiting trial on trafficking charges in 2019 was ruled a suicide.
Last month, after growing demands for a full public accounting of Epstein’s alleged abuse, the president reluctantly signed legislation compelling the Department of Justice, FBI and U.S. attorney’s offices to publish everything in their possession by December 19.
The Justice Department launched a public-facing website Friday afternoon. But Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that not all of the materials required under law have been released, and government lawyers are scrambling to make necessary redactions. More than 200 attorneys helped review the documents, Blanche wrote to members of Congress.
More than 1,200 names were identified as either victims or their relatives, according to Blanche. Those names are being redacted. “Protecting victims is of the highest priority” for the Trump administration, he wrote.
But the “final stages of review” remain ongoing and will be completed within “the next two weeks,” he said.
Democrats have threatened legal action to force the immediate release of all of the so-called Epstein files, which have consumed Trump’s second term thus far as he faces renewed scrutiny into his years-long relationship to the sex offender.
The latest batch of documents includes intimate photographs of Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as photographs with the pair alongside Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger, among others.
Former President Bill Clinton is captured in dozens of images, including in an undated photograph showing him lounging in a hot tub alongside someone whose face has been redacted.
He is also pictured on a private plane with a woman sitting on his lap. That woman’s face has also been redacted.
A painted portrait of Clinton in a blue dress, lounging in an armchair, also was photographed hanging in Epstein’s New York apartment.
