Eric Tucker, Michael Sisak and Alana Richer
New York: The US Justice Department has released many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.
The files, which were being posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.
The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Lawmakers complained when the Justice Department made only a limited release last month, but officials said more time was needed to review an additional trove of documents that was discovered and to review the records to ensure no sensitive information about victims was inadvertently released.
“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a US news conference announcing the disclosure.
The disclosure is likely to represent the largest document dump about a saga that the Trump administration has struggled to shake and that has long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting, demands that even Blanche acknowledged might not be satisfied by the latest release.
“There’s a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don’t think will be satisfied by review of these documents,” he said.
After missing a December 19 deadline set by US Congress to release all of the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. But it denied any effort to shield Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago despite an earlier friendship, from potential embarrassment.
Among the materials being withheld from release is information that could jeopardise any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of potential victims of sex abuse. All women other than Maxwell have been redacted from videos and images being released, Blanche said.
“We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect — or not protect — anybody,” Blanche said.
The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to roughly six million, including duplicates, the department said.
Tips to investigators and printed-out emails
The latest batch of records shows that prosecutors over the years received tips from people with wild stories about being sexually abused by famous figures. In some instances, FBI investigators diligently reached out to these tipsters and alleged victims and listened to their implausible-sounding stories — some involving the occult and human sacrifice — and then wrote dry reports summarising what the people had to say and sent them to their superiors.
The cache also included email correspondence between prosecutors, printouts of thousands of emails that Epstein either sent or received, news clippings and reports written by FBI agents summarising their interviews with witnesses and alleged victims in the investigation.
As was the case with many previous releases of documents related to Epstein, much material was blacked out. Some of the reports on FBI interviews had entire pages blacked out, along with the name of the person who was being interviewed.
Building on the earlier release
The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.
Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.
Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his home in Palm Beach, but the US attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.
US prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.
Among the people she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after the scandal led to him being stripped of his royal titles. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia last year at age 41.
