Trump administration begins releasing long-awaited Epstein files
The US justice department has begun releasing the long-awaited “Epstein files”, after months of political wrangling, a popular furor and repeated attempts to deflect scrutiny over Donald Trump’s links to the late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The release comes after deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said that the justice department would release “several hundred thousand documents” from the Epstein files on Friday but hinted that some may be held back – at least temporarily – citing the need to protect victims.
“I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks,” he added.
House Democrats, led by Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, condemned the Trump administration’s delay to release all of the Epstein files as a violation of federal law and vowed to pursue legal options.
The scandal has dominated Washington for months, dogging the US president since his return to the White House for a second term, splintering his conservative base and spurring accusations of an attempted “cover-up” from across the political spectrum.
Some of the most sought-after material will pertain to the president’s relationship with Epstein, who killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019. Trump and Epstein were close friends for years before falling out.
Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing. But concerns have been raised about how, why and when his relationship with Epstein broke down, and how much Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct. Trump and his allies have denied that he knew about Epstein’s conduct, and no evidence has suggested that he took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation.
Key events
Maria Farmer’s lawyer points to 1996 FBI report documenting her complaint about Epstein and Maxwell
Jennifer Freeman, a lawyer who represents the Epstein survivor Maria Farmer in her lawsuit against the federal government, just told our colleague Victoria Bekiempis that one new document in the partial release of Epstein files on Friday is this FBI report from 1996, documenting Farmer’s effort to report her abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 1996.
“What’s new today is finally getting the FBI report of Maria Farmer from 1996 – this is triumph and tragedy for Maria and so many survivors. Maria Farmer reported Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes in 1996. Had the government done their job, and properly investigated Maria’s report, over 1000 victims could have been spared and 30 years of trauma avoided. After several years of asking for her records, the gov[ernment] finally released at least some of them today,” Freeman wrote in an email.
“Maria told me that she is ‘shedding tears of joy for myself but also tears of sorrow for all of the other victims that the FBI failed.’”
The handwritten description of Farmer’s harrowing complaint, dated 3 September 1996, said that she told the FBI in a telephone interview “that she is a professional artist and took pictures of her sisters 12 and 16 [years old] for her own professional art work. Epstein stole the photos and negatives and is believed to have sold the pictures”.
Epstein, the complaint added requested that a person whose identity is redacted “take pictures of young girls at swimming pools.”
“Epstein is now threatening” a woman whose identity is redacted “that if she tells anyone about the photos he will burn her house down.”
Maria Farmer has previously said that after she was violently groped by both Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 1996, she discovered that partially nude photos she had of her two younger sisters for use in her work as a painter went missing.
Ro Khanna says this ‘document dump does not comply with’ law to compel full release of Epstein files
“The justice department’s document dump this afternoon does not comply with Thomas Massie and my Epstein Transparency Act,” Ro Khanna, the California Democratic congressman who co-wrote the law requiring full disclosure of all of the government’s investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein by Friday, said in a video statement posted on social media.
By way of example, Khanna noted: “They released one document from a New York grand jury of a 119 pages totally blacked out! This despite a New York judge ordering them to release that document, and our law requires them to explain redactions. There’s not a single explanation for why that entire document was redacted.”
“We have not seen the draft indictment,” Khanna added, “that implicates other rich and powerful men who were on Epstein’s rape island, who either watched the abuse of young girls or participated in the abuse of young girls.”
“It is an incomplete release, with too many redactions. Thomas Massie and I are exploring all options,” Khanna said, including the impeachment of justice department officials, finding them in contempt of Congress, “or referring for prosecution those who are obstructing justice.”
Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican congressman who co-wrote the legislation, shared Khanna’s video statement on social media, with the comment that the document release by Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who previously served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law” that Trump signed, “just 30 days ago.”
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor pictured in new files
Another photo shows Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, lying across five people whose faces are redacted. The only other identifiable person is Ghislaine Maxwell, who is standing behind them.
Andrew has been under scrutiny for many years over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied all accusations against him. In a statement from October after he was stripped of his royal titles, Andrew said he stood by his decision to step back from public life as the “accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family”. “With His Majesty’s agreement, we feel I must now go a step further. I will therefore no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me.”
What had already emerged about Trump’s links to Epstein?
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends for 15 years, with Epstein at one point believing himself to be Trump’s “closest friend”.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
The relationship eventually broke down, with the men falling out over a bidding war on a property in Florida. After Epstein was convicted of child sex offences in Florida in 2008, Trump distanced himself from the financier, claiming he was “not a fan”.
The most recent explanation of the relationship breakdown from Trump is that the friendship ended because Epstein repeatedly “stole” employees from the spa at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, which Trump deemed an “inappropriate” tactic. He has suggested one of the employees was Epstein’s most high-profile accuser Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April.
Other reports suggest that Trump barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after Epstein behaved inappropriately toward a club member’s teenage daughter, according to journalists from the Miami Herald and Wall Street Journal.
After the president spent the summer batting away questions over his relationship with Epstein, on 8 September a 238-page scrapbook given to Epstein for his 50th birthday was made public by House Democrats.
Featuring letters suggesting the sex offender’s lecherous exploits were an open secret, the book included a message bearing Donald Trump’s signature.
Inside a sketch of a woman’s torso, the message depicts an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein, concluding:
Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.
Trump’s name and distinctive signature appear below.
The White House claimed the signature was not Trump’s, despite it appearing identical to numerous public examples. Trump dismissed the letter as “FAKE”.
(Here is our explainer of who is in the “birthday book” and what they said.)
Then in November, Democrats released three of Epstein’s email exchanges that suggest Trump knew about the disgraced financier’s conduct.
In a message sent to Ghislaine Maxwell on 2 April 2011, Epstein described Trump as “that dog that hasn’t barked”. Epstein wrote that Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of his sex-trafficked victims, and noted that Trump had “never once been mentioned” in connection with his crimes. Maxwell replied: “I have been thinking about that … ”
In a separate message, sent to the journalist Michael Wolff in January 2019, Epstein wrote: “of course [Trump] knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”
The third released email exchange, from December 2015, shows Wolff advising Epstein that if Trump claimed to have not visited Epstein’s house or flown on his plane, “then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency”.
Maxwell, the daughter of the media tycoon Robert Maxwell, was Epstein’s one time girlfriend and was convicted of sex trafficking crimes as his accomplice.
Group photos including Trump seen in latest Epstein file release
We’re very much still combing through all the files, but one image so far has featured Donald Trump. On a desk with many photographs of Epstein and various people including Bill Clinton and Mohammed bin Salman, is a photo in which Trump stands with several women and another that has been previously released with Melania Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein.
A quick recap: how did we get here?
Trump and his allies long stoked conspiracy theories around Epstein and he and vice-president JD Vance promised the release of the files on the campaign trail. Pam Bondi also told Fox News in February that a list of Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk ready to review”.
The Department of Justice gave a group of conservative commentators binders labeled “The Epstein files: phase one” later in February. But the files contained little new information, leaving conspiracy theorists disappointed, prompting Bondi to describe the documents as the “first phase of files”. In a statement, the DoJ said it “remains committed to transparency and intends to release the remaining documents upon review and redaction to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims”.
But in an abrupt U-turn in July, the DoJ walked that back, announcing there was no client list and that it would not be making public any more files related to the sex-trafficking investigation.
The fallout was significant, with the saga dramatically plunging Trump’s Maga base into turmoil and igniting an intense backlash amid accusations of a “cover-up”.
Republican lawmakers moved to block a Democratic effort to force the release of the Epstein files on 14 July. But the next day, House speaker Mike Johnson, a fierce Trump ally, called for the Epstein documents to be released.
“It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it,” Johnson told a rightwing podcaster, joining a small but growing number of Republicans demanding the documents be made public. Chip Roy, Thomas Massie and Ralph Norman, Republican members of the House, demanded more information be released.
Trump, meanwhile, dismissed the uproar and went on the attack, calling the issue a “hoax” and railing against those who wanted to make the documents public. The Epstein files, he said, were “boring” and anyone who cared about them – though many of them are his own supporters – were “bad people”.
As the issue refused to go away, four dissident Republicans in the House, and all Democrats, banded together to force a vote on a bill to release the files, over Johnson’s objections.
The House overwhelmingly approved the bill on 19 November in a 427-1 tally. The Senate agreed to pass the bill, and it was sent to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
The law required the justice department to release the files within 30 days, though it is permitted to hold back records that identify victims, including images of child sexual abuse, or documents that have been deemed classified.
It also has discretion to withhold records that could prejudice a federal investigation. Trump last month ordered a criminal investigation into Epstein’s links with prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton.
Ex-Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson seen in photos released by DoJ
Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, can also be seen sitting on a sofa next to a person whose identity has been shielded, and standing next to a woman in another photo whose face is also redacted.
There is no context provided and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing.
Mick Jagger and Bill Clinton appear in photos released by DoJ
Another photo shows Ghislaine Maxwell, Mick Jagger, Bill Clinton and others around a table. There is no context given and appearing in these photos is not a suggestion of wrongdoing.
Schumer decries ‘heavily redacted’ files as ‘just a fraction of the whole body of evidence’
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has condemned the justice department for “releasing just a fraction of the whole body of evidence” on Epstein.
“Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law,” he said in a statement.
The law Congress passed calls for the complete release of the Epstein files so that there can be full transparency. This set of heavily redacted documents released by the Department of Justice today is just a fraction of the whole body of evidence.
Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law. For example, all 119 pages of one document were completely blacked out. We need answers as to why.
Senate Democrats are working to assess the documents that have been released to determine what actions must be taken to hold the Trump administration accountable. We will pursue every option to make sure the truth comes out.
Here Jeffrey Epstein is pictured with Peter Mandelson. Again, there is no context and no suggestion of wrongdoing.