The late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein has been charged under the supervision of him, and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has released thousands more documents, including photos of famous people he once spent time with. But campaigners behind the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which compelled the Justice Department on Friday to release all files still sealed, say far too much information in them has been redacted.
Additionally, at least 16 of the files, which they claimed were made public after being released, have since “disappeared” from the site where they were made. The deleted files included a photograph showing President Donald Trump.
The government was required to release all unclassified material in its possession relating to Epstein and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases by the government’s passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed into law in November. Maxwell is currently serving 20 years in prison for her part in the scandal.
There are some fresh details about the powerful people who worked with the disgraced late financier, despite the extensive redaction of many of the documents. This has irritated Democrats and some Republicans.
The Justice Department said it will release more documents in the coming weeks.
What we know about the most recent releases is as follows:
What has been added to this set of Epstein files?
This is just the latest release of documents relating to the prosecution of Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019. Approximately 950 court documents, or 950 pages, were released in early 2024.
One document released this time around confirms that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was tipped off about the convicted sex offender’s crimes nearly a decade before he was first arrested.
Maria Farmer, a former Epstein patient, reported to the FBI that the late financier had been involved in child sex abuse in September 1996. Farmer said officials failed to take steps to investigate.
Farmer has confirmed that she made the complaint, even though the complainant’s name appears in the FBI complaint.
Now in her 50s, Farmer said in a statement via her lawyers after the release on Friday that she feels “redeemed” and this was “one of the best days of my life”.
She said, “I want everyone to know that I’m shedding tears of joy for myself and also tears of sorrow for all the other victims the FBI failed.”
Newly released transcripts of grand jury proceedings also include testimony from FBI agents who described interviews that they conducted with girls and young women describing their experiences of being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. According to local media, the youngest interviewee was 14 years old.
One woman, then aged 21, told a grand jury that Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and that she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.
He would give me $200 for every girl I offered, she said.
They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said, adding that she told them that if they were under age, “just lie about it and tell him that you are 18”.
After years of court proceedings and investigations, a large portion of the information published was already available online.
However, many of the new photos – some of them heavily blacked out – feature well-known public figures.
Who features in the newly released photos?
Photographs in a folder with the title “DOJ Disclosures” are included in the documents that were made public on Friday. Most of the photographs were seized by the FBI during various searches of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the US Virgin Islands.
In new photos, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross pose with Epstein, and occasionally with other people whose faces have been obscured.
In one image, Jagger can be seen sitting between Epstein and former US President Bill Clinton. In one image, Jackson is seen posing with Epstein in front of a painting in another place while Clinton is standing next to her.
Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Chris Tucker, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the actor who was previously known as Britain’s Prince Andrew, and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson are just a few of the famous people who appear in the newly released photos.
In one black and white image, Andrew can be seen lying across the laps of five people whose faces have all been blacked out while Maxwell stands behind them.
The Justice Department provided no information about the photos’ contents or context.
Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most well-known accusers, committed suicide in April, when she was 17 years old, and was charged with Mountbatten-Windsor of sexual abuse. He settled a lawsuit with her in 2022 but continued to deny the allegation.
Clinton is a more well-known character in the images. One photo shows him in a swimming pool with Maxwell and another person whose face has been blacked out. Another image shows a woman and the former US president soaking up a woman’s redacted face in another image.
Although Epstein’s crimes never led to any accusations of wrongdoing against Clinton, his spokesman claimed that the White House was using him as a scapegoat.
“This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. This is not about Bill Clinton, but they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they like. Never has, never will be”, the spokesperson said in a statement.
Prior to the late financier’s pled guilty to soliciting a minor in Florida, Clinton has previously claimed to have cut ties with Epstein.
Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files, right?
Trump hardly appears in the files at all. He has been featured in a few of the few images that have been in the public domain for decades.
According to one court document released on Friday, Epstein was alleged to have taken a 14-year-old girl to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and to have introduced her to the president.
Epstein elbowed Trump while introducing her, asking, in a way that he should be, “This is a good one, right”? Trump smiled and nodded in agreement, said the document from a case against Epstein’s estate and Maxwell in 2020.
The unnamed plaintiff herself doesn’t specifically accuse Trump in the court filing.
In response to media requests for comment about this court document, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Trump administration was “the most transparent in history” and by “recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have”, she added.
Have some of the files disappeared since they were published on Friday?
Apparently, the answer is yes. One image, originally labelled File 468, which showed the inside of a desk drawer, included a photograph of Trump alongside Epstein, US first lady Melania Trump and Maxwell.
Images of paintings with naked women and a collection of photos on a cabinet and in drawers were the other photos that were missing.
On Saturday, The Associated Press news agency reported that at least 16 files published on Friday had disappeared from the Justice Department’s webpage.
The department has not yet explained or commented on this, but it stated in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue to be reviewed and redacted with caution as we receive additional information.”
Democrats on the Oversight Committee in the US House of Representatives also released 68 photos, drawn from the 95, 000 photos and files the Oversight Committee has so far received from the Epstein estate.
Democrats on the committee claimed the photos, which were released on Thursday, were “designed to give the public a representative sample of the photos” and “to give insight into Epstein’s network and his incredibly disturbing activities.”
Following the Justice Department’s release on Friday, the committee’s Democratic members questioned in a post on X why the image featuring a photo of Trump, a Republican, was missing, stating: “What else is being covered up? The American public needs transparency, too.
Why was so much of the redacted information?
Among the thousands of documents published on Friday, at least 550 pages were reportedly fully redacted.
A set of three consecutive documents totaling 255 pages is completely redacted, including a 119-page document with the title “Grand Jury-NY.” Each page is fully blacked out.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act’s supporters said they hoped to learn more about how the sex offender had avoided serious federal charges for so long.
However, many crucial FBI interviews with Epstein’s accusers and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions are unreadable.
The deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, addressed a six-page letter to members of Congress outlining the redaction procedure. The law requires that the department refrain from making any references to victims or files that might put the course of action in jeopardize pending investigations or litigation.
Blanche explained that he had, therefore, instructed attorneys to redact or withhold material that contained personally identifiable information about victims, depicted or contained child sexual abuse materials, would jeopardise an active investigation or prosecution, or contained classified national defence or foreign policy information.
Blanche continued, without specifying which, that the department occasionally withheld or redacted information that was subject to deliberative-process privilege, work-product privilege, and attorney-client privilege.
When will the final files be made available?
The Justice Department has said the publication of thousands more documents concerning investigations into Epstein will be released in the coming days as the year-end holidays approach.
In contravention of the law that Trump signed in November and required a complete release within 30 days, the department missed its original Friday deadline to release all the information it had regarding Epstein.
After the drop on Friday, the department published two much smaller tranches on Saturday, which went beyond the initial redactions and featured identities of prosecutors, FBI case agents and other law enforcement personnel who appeared before two federal grand juries in New York state.
Numerous US lawmakers expressed anger over the White House’s failure to deliver all the documents required by the law within the set deadline.
Representatives Ro Khanna, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican – the duo who introduced the petition that eventually led to the passing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act – strongly criticised the partial release on social media.
According to Massie, it “grossly disregards both the spirit and the letter of the law.”
Khanna called the release so far “disappointing” and added: “We’re going to push for the actual documents”.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer reiterated that “breaking the law” amounts to “the Trump administration being hell-bent on hiding the truth” and reiterated that the Trump administration is “hell-bent on hiding the truth.”
Meanwhile, officials from the Trump administration have been publicising the photographs featuring former Democratic President Clinton and hailing the current government as “the most transparent in history”.
Can campaigners go further to obtain additional documents?
In a statement, Schumer said Senate Democrats are working “closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by]US Attorney General] Pam Bondi”.
After “the Department of Justice is now making clear that it intends defy Congress itself,” representatives Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, said they are looking into “all legal options.”
“Donald Trump and the Department of Justice are now violating federal law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long, billion-dollar, international sex trafficking ring”, Garcia and Raskin said in a statement.
Senator Ron Wyden, a top Democrat investigating Epstein’s financial ties, wrote on social media that the release of all the files was “a continuation of this administration’s coverup on behalf of a bunch of pedophiles and sex traffickers.”
The Associated Press reported that if Democratic lawmakers so choose, they could go to court to force the Justice Department to comply with the law. That process would likely be drawn out in great length, though.
Separately, the House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena for the Epstein files, which could give Congress another avenue to force the release of more information to the committee. Republicans would have to join them in the contempt of Congress proceedings against a Republican administration, though.
Source: Aljazeera
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