The Department of Justice released its biggest tranche to date Tuesday from the department’s investigative cases into the deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The more than 10,000 files show internal deliberations between federal prosecutors, attorneys for victims and attorneys for Epstein.
The files also include tips that the FBI and Justice Department received about possible wrongdoing by Donald Trump and other Epstein associates.
One of the DOJ emails references a photo of Trump with Ghislaine Maxwell that was found on a cell phone belonging to Republican political strategist Steve Bannon. The photo is blacked out and it is not clear when it was taken.
President Donald Trump speaks Monday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.
The documents, released overnight, also include a strange FBI report, redacted of names, that describes a tip the agency received from a limo driver who alleges that he overheard Trump talking about “Jeffrey” and that he also spoke to a woman who claimed that Trump raped her.
It is not known whether the FBI investigated the tip — or whether the tip was ever dismissed as a fraud — but the tipster followed up with the woman and she told him she did report the rape to police.
There is nothing in the documents so far indicating that Trump committed criminal wrongdoing, and the files do not show that he was under investigation. Trump repeatedly denied he was involved with Epstein’s crimes.
In a statement on social media Tuesday the DOJ said, “Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election."
This photo illustration taken Friday in Washington shows photographs, including of former US president Bill Clinton, Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger, Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson and Ghislaine Maxwell.
During a news conference at Mar-a-Lago Monday, Trump called the release of photos a “terrible thing,” saying they could “ruin” the reputations of “highly respected bankers and lawyers and others.”
“I don’t like the pictures of Bill Clinton being shown. I don’t like the pictures of other people being shown. I think it’s a terrible thing,” he told reporters Monday evening. DOJ released the additional photos of Trump with Epstein later that night.
“I hate to see photos come out of him, but this is what the Democrats, mostly Democrats, and a couple of bad Republicans are asking for. So they’re giving their photos of me too,” Trump added. “Everybody was friendly with this guy.”
The release comes in the wake of criticism about the department’s slow rollout of material so far. The release of the files was required by legislation called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that Trump signed into law in November.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York introduced a resolution Monday that would direct the Senate to initiate legal action against the Trump administration for “illegally refusing to release the complete Epstein files and heavily redacting the files that are released.”
An email that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Monday.
A group of Epstein’s victims also issued a letter Monday criticizing the Justice Department for failing to disclose more documents and for failing to redact the names of victims in some files while releasing others “riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.”
The law allows the department to withhold the release of documents that would impede active investigations and to redact material to protect the identity of victims.
The department was required to release all of its files by last Friday, according to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Epstein’s victims — believed by DOJ to number about 1,000 women — have long sought more accountability for Epstein’s powerful friends and accomplices and greater transparency from a department that kept them in the dark about a sweetheart deal Epstein negotiated in 2007 that allowed him to escape harsh punishment for sexually abusing children in South Florida.
A desk and photographs are pictured July 6, 2019, during a search of Jeffrey Epstein's home in New York.
The department’s initial release of files Friday — which consisted largely of photographs and heavily redacted documents — did little to satisfy victims, or the members of Congress who mandated that the files be released.
After its initial release Friday, the department subsequently removed some of the files, including a photograph that showed photos of both Trump and former President Bill Clinton from one of Epstein’s homes.
That photo, and several others, were subsequently put back online.
The department defended its removal of the photos in a fact sheet posted on social media, saying that it “received incoming from individuals alleging to be victims and their lawyers, requesting that certain information be removed.”
There were, however, some revelations from the material.
The files included an FBI form from 1996 showing that a woman — Epstein victim Maria Farmer — complained that Epstein stole naked pictures of her 12- and 16-year-old sisters that she took as part of her artistic work, confirming that Epstein’s sex crimes were on the FBI’s radar for a decade before the FBI investigated his alleged crimes in South Florida.
The department also later released files from grand jury investigations into Epstein in South Florida in 2007 and New York in 2019; and into his ex-girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in New York in 2020.
Epstein reached a remarkably lenient deal with federal prosecutors in South Florida in 2007 that allowed him to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges, one involving a minor, and serve 13 months in the Palm Beach County Jail, where he was allowed to leave regularly to work from a nearby office space in which he continued to abuse girls.
Epstein was charged again by the Southern District of New York in July 2019 and died in federal custody one month later in what has been ruled a suicide.
Maxwell was charged a year later for her role in recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein’s abuse and convicted of sex trafficking in 2021. She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, but is reportedly seeking a pardon.
