A photo featuring President Donald Trump that was included in one of the Justice Department files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been removed online.
Late Friday, the department published a trove of documents to meet a deadline mandated by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in Congress, though not all the Epstein files were released, and many that were made public have been heavily redacted.
But an image of a desk with several pictures on it included one showing Trump’s face. It was originally listed as EFTA00000468, but it no longer appears on the list of “data set 1” files and is not accessible online anymore.
“This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release,” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed out in a post on X on Saturday. “@AGPamBondi is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”
This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release.@AGPamBondi is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public. pic.twitter.com/3wYZAl2dse
The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It said on X that it hasn’t redacted any names of politicians, pointing to comments from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“The only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law — full stop,” he said. “Consistent with the statute and applicable laws, we are not redacting the names of individuals or politicians unless they are a victim.”
The administration’s failure to release all the files and the massive blackouts of many documents have already stirred outrage among congressional leaders of the effort to make them public.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Friday that the document dump doesn’t comply with the spirit or the letter of the law, and singled out one file from a New York grand jury where all 119 pages were blacked out.
Later, he said he and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., have already started working on drafting articles of impeachment and inherent contempt against Attorney General Pam Bondi, though they haven’t decided yet whether to move forward.
“Impeachment is a political decision and is there the support in the House of Representatives? I mean Massie and I aren’t going to just do something for the show of it,” Khanna told CNN.
The Justice Department released thousands of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, including photos featuring people like former President Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger. However, survivors are concerned with how much information was redacted from the files.
At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.
The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Justice Department did not say why the files were removed or whether their disappearance was intentional. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”
The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.
Scant new insight in the initial disclosures
Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.
Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.
The gaps go further.
The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability.
Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.
The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.
There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.
Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.
That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.
“I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.
Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked context
Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.
The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.
Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.
Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.
Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.
The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.
Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.
One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.
Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.
“For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”
The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.
Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.
He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.
“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.
“There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.
___
Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.
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Michael R. Sisak and David B. Caruso | The Associated Press
We are in a different time now. Most of AmericaFest, an annual gathering of the right thrown by the conservative youth group founded by Charlie Kirk, received the latest release of a trove of Epstein files with outright indifference.
“I didn’t see the new release,” said one attendee wearing a red MAGA hat. “The Friday before Christmas and no one cared,” joked another. “Oh, they did?” responded a third. When I explained the new revelations, they were dismissive. “Whoever died on Epstein island, who was taken advantage of, there’s more people in your neighborhood Planned Parenthood being put to death,” said one.
On Friday, Donald Trump’s Justice Department released more than 13,000 documents relating to investigations into Epstein, the notorious financier and sex criminal who died by suicide while awaiting trial for trafficking minors in 2019. The partial release, which was compelled by an order from Congress, was heavily redacted. It included a conspicuous number of photos of Clinton, with little sight of Trump, leading critics to accuse the administration of selective release and redaction. Epstein’s victims quickly expressed their fury over what they said was an inadequate disclosure.
Trump is mentioned in the dump. One document, which has been previously reported, details an alleged interaction between a child who accused Epstein of abuse and Trump. The girl, who is not identified, claimed that in 1994, when she was 14, Epstein brought her to Mar-a-Lago. “This is a good one, right?” Epstein told Trump when he introduced the two, according to the girl. Trump, she said, smiled and nodded in agreement.
The headliners at the TPUSA conference, held in Phoenix, Arizona this week, made no mention of the new documents. The only reference to the late sex criminal came Thursday night, when Ben Shapiro, in a diatribe against Steve Bannon, pointed out that he served as “a PR agent for Jeffrey Epstein.”
Eric Bolling, the conservative commentator and longtime Trump ally, told me the Trump base was tuning out of the Epstein story because “trust has been exhausted.”
“One side stopped trusting institutions a long time ago and the other keeps waiting for them to deliver,” he said. “Transparency was promised for years. What people got was a slow drip of useless distractions. Without trust and accountability, even explosive disclosures fall flat.”
The Justice Department released thousands of new records on Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, but at least 550 pages in the documents are fully redacted, CBS News has found.
The newly released files included photos of several prominent people in Epstein’s orbit, images from his homes and investigative records that detail disturbing allegations against the late sex offender. But the heavy redactions in many of the records have drawn criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, as the department defends its handling of the files.
One series of threeconsecutivedocuments — totaling 255 pages — is entirely redacted, with each page covered by a black box. A fourth 119-page document labeled “Grand Jury-NY” is also entirely redacted. It’s unclear what proceedings it stemmed from, but the document listed immediately before it is a transcript in which a prosecutor asks a grand jury in 2020 to consider evidence for a superseding indictment of Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
A fully redacted document released as part of the Epstein files
At least 180 blacked-out pages appear in files that are mostly but not entirely redacted. In some cases, a cover page, a photo of a folder or something else that isn’t fully redacted precedes several pages that are entirely obscured by a black box.
In other cases, the redactions were more sparing. For example, a 96-page police report on a Florida investigation into Epstein in the mid-2000s redacts the names of victims and other details, but leaves many other details in.
And some of the thousands of photos included in Friday’s release are partially redacted, with some people’s faces obscured by boxes. Photos that include former President Bill Clinton, pop star Michael Jackson and other notable people have partial redactions (though Clinton and Jackson themselves are fully visible).
Why was the DOJ allowed to redact Epstein files?
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress last month, requires the Justice Department to release the files in its possession related to Epstein and Maxwell.
Redactions are allowed for a handful of reasons, including to protect survivors’ personal information and to leave out violent photos and child sexual abuse material. Documents can also be withheld in a “narrowly tailored and temporary” manner if their release would “jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.”
Some of Friday’s redactions appear to black out the names of survivors, but it’s not clear in every case why information was blacked out. The government is required to give Congress a list of redactions within 15 days.
The law explicitly forbids the government from withholding records due to the risk of “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.” The Justice Department said on X that no politicians’ names were redacted from the files.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a letter to Congress earlier Friday that a team of more than 200 Justice Department lawyers scoured the documents in search of survivors” names and other things that needed to be redacted. He said the department is still going through the files and will release more of them on a “rolling basis,” though the law required them to be released by Friday.
Blanche’s letter also said “additional lawyers of review” were necessary when reviewing grand jury transcripts. Judges in New York and Florida have given the government permission to release grand jury transcripts from Epstein and Maxwell’s cases, but the judge overseeing the Maxwell case required the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan to “personally certify” that none of the documents contain victims’ personal information.
Democrats criticize the redactions in Epstein files
Some lawmakers have blasted the Justice Department for the redactions and for acknowledging that some documents will be released later.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who helped lead the effort to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, argued that Friday’s document release wasn’t in compliance with their law.
Khanna called it an “incomplete release with too many redactions” in a video posted to X. He said he’s “exploring all options,” including impeachment or referrals for prosecution. Massie said the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said: “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.”
CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department for comment on the criticism.
The Justice Department has defended its handling of the files. Blanche told Fox News Digital: “The only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law — full stop.”
“Democrat administrations in the past have refused to provide full details of the Jeffrey Epstein saga,” Blanche said in his letter to lawmakers. “But President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, and FBI Director Patel are committed to providing full transparency consistent with the law.”
The Justice Department released thousands of files Friday about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the incomplete document dump did not break significant ground about the long-running criminal investigations of the financier or his ties to wealthy and powerful individuals.
The files included photographs of famous people who spent time with Epstein in the years before he came under suspicion, including some candid snapshots of Bill Clinton, who flew on Epstein’s jet and invited him to the White House in the years before the financier was accused of wrongdoing. But there was almost no material related to another old Epstein friend, President Donald Trump, aside from a few well-known images, sparing the White House from having to confront fresh questions about a relationship the administration has tried in vain to minimize.
The records, consisting largely of pictures but also including call logs, grand jury testimony, interview transcripts and other documents, arrived amid extraordinary anticipation that they might offer the most detailed look yet at nearly two decades worth of government scrutiny of Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women and underage girls. Yet the release, replete with redactions, seemed unlikely to satisfy the clamor for information given how many records had yet to be released and because some of the materials had already been made public.
Democrats and some Republicans seized on the limited release to accuse the Justice Department of failing to meet a congressionally set deadline to produce the files, while White House officials on social media gleefully promoted a photo of Clinton in a hot tub with a woman with a blacked-out face. The Trump administration touted the release as proof of its commitment to transparency, ignoring that the Justice Department just months ago said no more files would be released. Congress then passed a law mandating it.
In a letter to Congress, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote that the Justice Department was continuing to review files in its possession, was withholding some documents under exemptions meant to protect victims and expected additional disclosures by the end of the year.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling-out, tried for months to keep the records sealed.
But bowing to political pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump last month signed a bill giving the Justice Department 30 days to release most of its files and communications related to Epstein, including information about the investigation into his death in a federal jail. The law set a deadline for Friday.
Limited details about Trump
Trump is hardly glimpsed in the files, with the small number of photos of him appearing to have been in the public domain for decades. Those include two in which Trump and Epstein are posing with now-first lady Melania Trump in February 2000 at an event at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump’s connection to Epstein is well-documented, but he has sought to distance himself from his former friend. He has said he cut off ties with Epstein after the financier hired young female employees from Mar-a-Lago and has repeatedly denied knowledge of his crimes.
The FBI and Justice Department abruptly announced in July that they would not be releasing any additional records, a decision that was supported by Trump. But the president reversed course once it became clear that congressional action was inevitable. He insisted the Epstein matter had become a distraction to the Republican agenda and releasing the records was the best way to move on.
The White House, meanwhile, has moved to shift focus away from Trump’s ties to Epstein, with Attorney General Pam Bondi last month saying that she had ordered a federal prosecutor to investigate Epstein’s connections to Trump’s political foes, including Clinton.
Neither Trump nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in the files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.
Among other prominent Epstein contacts is the former Prince Andrew, who appears in a photograph released Friday wearing a tuxedo and lying on the laps of what appear to be several women who are seated, dressed in formalwear. Pop star Michael Jackson also appears in multiple photos, including one showing him standing next to a smiling Epstein.
New photos of Clinton
Unlike Trump, Clinton is featured prominently in the files, though the records included no explanation of how the photographs of the former president related to any investigation or the context surrounding them.
Some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another shows him in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was also redacted. He is also seen in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.
This undated, redacted photo released by the U.S. Department of Justice shows Ghislaine Maxwell and former President Bill Clinton swimming with an unknown person.
U.S. Department of Justice via AP
Senior Trump White House aides took to X to promote the Clinton photos.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote “Oh my!” and added a shocked face emoji in response to a photo of Clinton in the hot tub.
“They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said in a statement.
“There are two types of people here,” he said. “The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships after that. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”
The Epstein investigations
After nearly two decades of court action, a voluminous number of Epstein records had already been public before Friday, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony and deposition transcripts.
Besides public curiosity about whether any of Epstein’s associates knew about or participated in the abuse, Epstein’s accusers have also sought answers about why federal authorities shut down their initial investigation into the allegations in 2008.
“Just put out the files,” said Marina Lacerda, who says she survived sexual assault by Epstein. “And stop redacting names that don’t need to be redacted.”
One of the few revelations in the documents was a copy of the earliest known concern about Epstein’s behavior — a report taken by the FBI of a woman in 1996 who believed photos and negatives she had taken of her 12-year-old and 16-year-old sisters for a personal art project had been stolen by Epstein. The documents don’t show what, if anything, the agency did with that complaint.
Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported being molested at his mansion. The FBI joined the investigation. Authorities gathered testimony from multiple underage girls who said they’d been hired to give Epstein sexual massages.
Ultimately, prosecutors gave Epstein a deal that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges involving someone under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Epstein’s accusers spent years in civil litigation trying to get that plea deal set aside. One of those women, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters, starting at age 17, with other men, including billionaires, famous academics, politicians and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Britain’s Prince Andrew.
Prosecutors never brought charges in connection with Giuffre’s claims, but her account fueled conspiracy theories about supposed government plots to protect the powerful. Giuffre died by suicide in April.
Federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest. Prosecutors then charged Maxwell, his longtime confidant, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse. She was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
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Michael R. Sisak, Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer, The Associated Press
The records were released in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed last month and required the government to release virtually all Epstein-related files within 30 days.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said more files will be released “over the next couple of weeks,” even though the law required the documents to be disclosed by Friday. He later told lawmakers that the Justice Department needed more time to pore through the records and redact victims’ names.
Congressional Democrats have accused the Justice Department of failing to comply with the law, arguing the documents are too heavily redacted and should have been released in full on Friday.
Where to find the Epstein files
The files that were disclosed Friday under the Epstein Files Transparency Act are available on the Justice Department’s website, broken into five different data sets. The total number of files is roughly 3,900, nearly all of which are PDFs.
Thousands of the files are images, including photos that were seemingly taken in Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan or his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Those include photos of his bedroom in New York, his risque wall art and a taxidermied tiger.
Many photos show Epstein socializing with his convicted associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. Former President Bill Clinton also appears in several of the images — in some cases, the former president is posing with celebrities like Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger. A spokesperson has acknowledged that Clinton traveled with Epstein on several occasions, but says he was not aware of Epstein’s crimes, and accused the Justice Department of trying to scapegoat Clinton on Friday.
Some of the photos are redacted — in certain cases, they show Epstein posing with people whose faces are obscured.
There are also a number of investigative documents, some of which have heavy redactions. In a few cases, documents are almost entirely redacted.
Why were some of the Epstein files redacted?
The law that requires the Justice Department to release the files only allows redactions under narrow circumstances, including to take out Epstein survivors’ personal information, violent images or child sexual abuse material. The government is also allowed to temporarily withhold records that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.”
Records cannot be withheld solely because they would cause “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
Some redactions in the documents released Friday appeared to omit victims’ names, but the exact reasons for every redaction are unclear. The law also requires the department to give Congress a list of its redactions within 15 days.
What was Epstein investigated for and charged with?
The files that were released Friday are expected to stem from the litany of investigations surrounding Epstein and Maxwell, stretching back at least 20 years.
Allegations about Epstein’s conduct appeared to emerge on the government’s radar as early as the 1990s, when survivor Maria Farmer says she reported to the FBI that Epstein had abused her. In a lawsuit, she has accused the government of failing to look into her allegations.
Epstein was investigated by local police in Florida and federal prosecutors starting in the mid-2000s. That probe ended with a controversial 2007 deal in which federal prosecutors in Miami agreed not to charge him, in exchange for a guilty plea on prostitution charges in state court.
More than a decade later, Epstein was charged in New York federal court with abusing and trafficking dozens of underage girls. Maxwell was charged with sex trafficking conspiracy the following year, and was convicted at trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Files from several other probes could be made public. The government has investigated the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019, officially ruled a suicide. And it has investigated Miami prosecutors’ decision to cut a non-prosecution deal.
Why the Epstein files are being released now
The files are being released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed and President Trump signed into law in November. The legislation gave the attorney general 30 days to publicly release documents related to Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, the government’s investigations into both and internal records about the cases.
The legislation was the result of years of pressure from Epstein and Maxwell’s survivors, who pushed lawmakers for more transparency about how the government handled both of their cases. Epstein’s death fueled conspiracy theories about his connections to high-powered figures in government and the business world.
The calls for transparency reached new heights over the summer. The Justice Department conducted a review of the Epstein files in the government’s possession, and concluded that there was no “client list” or evidence that he had blackmailed prominent figures. The findings infuriated many of the president’s supporters who had been calling for the release of the Epstein files for years, and opened the door for a bipartisan push to unveil the records.
California Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat, was the lead sponsor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. He introduced the bill in July, and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky filed a discharge petition aimed at forcing a vote on the measure. The push was delayed by opposition from House Speaker Mike Johnson and the government shutdown in the fall. But in November, the petition received the final signature required to bring the bill up for a vote.
It passed the House by a vote of 427 to 1 and the Senate unanimously approved it. President Trump signed it into law on Nov. 19, despite spending months pressuring Republicans to oppose it, starting the clock on the 30-day deadline.
In the wake of Congress’ passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, three separate judges approved Justice Department requests to unseal grand jury transcripts from investigations into Maxwell and Epstein. One of those rulings stemmed from grand jury proceedings in South Florida in 2005 and 2007. Epstein ultimately escaped federal charges there and instead agreed to plead guilty to state prostitution charges.
The other two courtorders came from judges in New York, where Epstein and Maxwell were charged in 2019 and 2020, respectively.
When will the next group of Epstein files be released?
It’s unclear. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News earlier Friday that the department would release more files “over the next couple of weeks.”
“We are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce making sure every victim — their name, their identity, their story, to the extent that it needs to be protected — is completely protected,” Blanche said.
That timeline does not comply with the law, which required the release of all eligible files by Dec. 19. The department’s office of public affairs said before Friday’s release that the “initial deadline is being met as we work diligently to protect victims.”
Blanche’s comments, and the department’s failure to release all of the files, angered many Democrats who have harshly criticized the administration for its handling of the documents. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, accused the Trump administration of violating the law and suggested they could take legal action.
“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,” Raskin and Garcia said in a joint statement. “For months, Pam Bondi has denied survivors the transparency and accountability they have demanded and deserve and has defied the Oversight Committee’s subpoena. The Department of Justice is now making clear it intends to defy Congress itself, even as it gives star treatment to Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Raskin and Garcia said they are “examining all legal options” given Blanche’s earlier admission.
“The survivors of this nightmare deserve justice, the co-conspirators must be held accountable, and the American people deserve complete transparency from DOJ,” they said.
The Justice Department released a new batch of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday. Epstein survivor Sharlene Rochard joins with her reaction. Then, Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who represents some Epstein survivors, provides further analysis.
The Department of Justice began releasing final documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein Friday, with a massive trove of documents that predominantly shows photos and heavily redacted materials categorized into four different sections.
The DOJ on Friday afternoon released four different data sets of thousands of photos, New York grand jury material and evidence related to investigations surrounding Epstein. The documents and photos were released on the DOJ’s official website.
Epstein was a well-connected financier who rubbed elbows with those at the highest echelons of government and private industry. He was convicted of sex trafficking minors in 2008 and served just more than one year of incarceration, which also included a controversial work-release arrangement under a plea agreement.
He was arrested again in 2019 on charges of sex trafficking before he was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell from suicide that same year, officials reported.
The Department of Justice released a trove of Epstein documents Dec. 19, 2025, following President Donald Trump’s signature on the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November. (Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
DATA SET ONE:
The first data set shows thousands of photos of the interiors and exteriors of Epstein’s properties, including in New York and on his private island, Little St. James.
DATA SET TWO:
The second data set released shows Epstein in personal photos with high-profile individuals, including former President Bill Clinton. The photos in the second data set show Epstein shirtless while sitting on a sofa, standing near a helicopter and many photos of him on boats.
A photo in the set included Clinton shirtless in a hot tub.
When asked about the photo, Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena directed Fox Digital to a statement he posted to X in response to the Epstein drop.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” he wrote. “This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be. Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton.”
Urena said there are “two types of people” involved in the Epstein scandal: those who did not know of Epstein’s crimes and cut him out of their lives upon his conviction and a second group of people who “continued relationships with him after” his crimes came to light.
“We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that,” the Clinton spokesman continued. “Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.”
The third data set released by the Department of Justice included heavily redacted photos of potential victims, documents from Epstein’s 2019 grand jury records that were also heavily redacted, and potential victim exhibits.
Documents from the Epstein drop’s third data set show heavily redacted photos, including blacking out potential victims. (Department of Justice )
DATA SET FOUR:
The fourth data set in the document drop mostly showed evidence and exhibits from the investigations into Epstein, including documents dated 2005 and 2006, when the Palm Beach, Florida, Police and FBI began investigating Epstein over tips of potential sex trafficking.
President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan law in November that required the Department of Justice to release all “unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials” within 30 days of Trump’s signature.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday morning during an appearance on Fox News that the Department was set to “release several hundred thousand documents today,” while adding that the DOJ anticipates releasing “more documents over the next couple of weeks.”
The Epstein Files Transparency Act specifically directs the Justice Department to release all unclassified records and investigative materials related to Epstein and his longtime partner Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as files related to individuals who were referenced in Epstein previous legal cases, details surrounding trafficking allegations, internal DOJ communications as they relate to Epstein and any details surrounding the investigation into his death.
When thousands of new documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation were released on Friday evening, journalists and citizen investigators across the nation were greeted by one of the most reassuring phrases in the English language: “CSAM NOT SCANNED.” CSAM, an abbreviation for child sex abuse material, is the current law enforcement term for what might previously be known as child pornography. Seeing the term dozens of times across the 3 gigabytes of new Epstein material is a sign that the FBI has more specific documentation of the late abusers’ crimes, but the bureau will not be disseminating it.
The remaining array of photographs and heavily redacted documents provide more insight into Epstein’s relationships with celebrities, along with detritus from the FBI’s years-long investigation. The 2019 searches of his townhome on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and compound on Little Saint James Island in the Caribbean yielded hundreds of pictures, and those have been made public with very few redactions. In these images, the framed photos presumably showing victims are obscured.
The releases also contain hundreds of photos from Epstein’s own personal collection, including photos from a Rolling Stones concert and one that shows Epstein posing with Micheal Jackson. There are photos that show him cuddling with Ghislaine Maxwell as they visit haute locations like St. Tropez and Brunei, and others that show him shooting guns on his Zorro Ranch property in New Mexico. The CSAM disclaimer appears most frequently in these sections, along with a few photos of disembodied female buttocks, presumably belonging to known adults.
And while the FBI withheld the worst of its Epstein material, there are still plenty of unpleasant sights to be seen for anyone with the stomach to dig through. Here, Vanity Fair looks at them so you don’t have to:
A phrenology head
Epstein had an abiding interest in race science, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that a desk at his home on Little Saint James Island prominently displays the sort of white phrenology bust you would find in the possession of a 19th century eugenicist.
Former President Bill Clinton in a hot tub
When the DOJ gave Fox News an early selection of files, the department led with photos of the former Democratic president—including one where Clinton is shirtless, reclining in a hot tub. Political motivations aside, it’s not hard to tell why the Trump administration might have wanted to foreground this image. There are hundreds of pictures in Friday’s drop, but it really is one of the strangest.
(In response, Clinton’s spokesperson, Angel Ureñasaid that the Trump Justice Department’s political aims explain the inclusion of the photo. “There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light,” he said. “The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”)
Weird art featuring children
There may be no CSAM, but the drop still includes plenty of figurative art featuring children. Epstein’s townhouse had a lifesized bronze sculpture of a little boy on a stairwell landing. He had a Henry Darger-esque painting of other nude children frolicking in a bedroom.
Epstein doing a mud mask
You can’t find the energy to run an unimaginably large sex trafficking scheme without indulging in a bit of self care every now and then. There are a few photos showing Epstein as he kicks back and indulges in a spa day. The nastiest one of them is a close up of his face slathered in a bile-green mask.
A taxidermied tiger and a (potentially) taxidermied dog
Epstein’s townhouse, which was constructed to the 19th century, had very little inside that referenced the opulence of the Gilded Age. But one sitting room was decorated with period details. The decor looks nice enough that you might miss its creepiest touches—like a taxidermied tiger in repose, and what definitely looks like a stuffed dog in an active pose.
A phone message from Jean-Luc Brunel about sexual problems
One piece of paper in the files shows notes from a message that Brunel left for Epstein on April 4, 2005. “He spoke to the doctor about your symptoms,” it read. “It can be cured but you have to move.” The message ends with a stern warning—failure to heed this might lead to results “which can shorten your sex life.”
Maxwell putting Epstein’s toes in her cleavage
The erstwhile couple seemed to have plenty of downtime on Epstein’s private jet while they traveled from place to place. There are plenty of photos that show them getting a little silly, but the weirdest one is a closeup of Maxwell grabbing Epstein’s feet and stuffing his toes down the front of her blouse.
A letter from a supporter
The FBI search of the townhouse uncovered a letter from someone named Steven from Buffalo, New York, which reads like a perverted pep talk to cheer Epstein up before he faces consequences for his crimes.
Many familiar faces and names are mentioned or pictured in the redacted documents, among them former President Bill Clinton, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly known as Prince Andrew, until he was recently stripped of his royal titles in connection with the Epstein scandal), and even Winnie the Pooh and Piglet (one victim claimed that Epstein took her to Disneyland, and photos are included in the data dump).
Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and Diana Ross.Department of Justice.
The highly anticipated Epstein files have so far landed with a thud as page after page of documents have been blacked out, with many nearly totally redacted.
While hundreds of thousands of documents have been released so far on the Justice Department’s site housing the information, there isn’t that much to see.
“Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “For example, all 119 pages of one document were completely blacked out. We need answers as to why.”
That appeared to refer to a document titled “Grand Jury NY.”
The data dump came late Friday, the deadline that Congress established last month for disclosing the trove of files, though other documents had already been released earlier by the DOJ, Congress and the Epstein estate.
Numerous celebrities were also in that document, such as Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger and the late pop idol Michael Jackson, who also appeared in photos with Epstein.
Former Senators John Kerry and George Mitchell were on the list as were Jes Staley, a former JPMorgan and Barclays executive, and Leon Black, a cofounder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management.
Appearing in the files doesn’t necessarily imply any wrongdoing as Epstein mingled in wider social circles and was ofter asked for charitable donations.
But Staley said he had sex with a member of Epstein’s staff, and Black was pushed out of Apollo over his Epstein ties, which Black maintains were for tax- and estate-planning services.
Numerous hotels, clubs and restaurants are listed too, plus locations simply described as “massage.” Banks included the now defunct Colonial Bank as well as Bear Stearns and Chemical Bank, which both eventually became part of JPMorgan.
Other entries fell under country categories like Brazil, France, Italy and Israel. Former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak were on the list.
The Justice Department on Friday released thousands of documents from its files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the massive document release was heavily redacted, incompleteand shed little new light on his crimes.
It did, however, contain some celebrity cameos.
Here’s a look at what is — and what is not — in the “Epstein files” so far.
Many of the files had already been released
Many of the materials that were released had been made public through various lawsuits and court filings, including the reports from the Palm Beach police that led to the initial state criminal probe in 2005. Some records were also previously released as part of the House Oversight Committee investigation into the Epstein case.
Among the documents released were already public filings from the criminal cases against Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, including filings from Maxwell’s appeal for her conviction and 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges. It also includes various civil complaints filed against Epstein over the years.
But not all of it was old news. One of the files released was Maria Farmer’s 1996 complaint to the FBI alleging Epstein stole photos she had taken of her 12 and 16-year-old sisters and sold them. She sued the federal government earlier this year in federal court over alleged failures to protect her and other Epstein victims.
Farmer said in a statement Friday, “I feel redeemed.”
Her legal team said in a news release that the document “proves that if the FBI had simply done its job in 1996, Epstein’s decades-long sex trafficking operation could have been stopped at the outset.”
Farmer’s suit is still pending and the government has yet to file a response to her allegations.
Lots of records are still missing
The Epstein Files Transparency Act gave the attorney general 30 days to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” involving Epstein, “including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters.”
That clock ran out Friday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that the release was several hundred thousand pages short of “all” and that it could take a “couple of weeks” for the rest to come to light.
He attributed the delay to the need to redact information about the victims. “What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim — their name, their identity, their story — to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected,” he told Fox News.
The law’s co-author, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said the department needs to give a detailed timeline on when those documents will be released, and also noted that some documents appeared to be overly redacted.
“Some of the documents I’ve just been scanning them have very heavy redactions,” Khanna said, and under the law, “they owe the Congress and the American public an explanation for every redaction.”
Khanna’s co-author, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said in a video on X Thursday that he’d been told by victims’ lawyers that “there are at least 20 names of men who are accused of sex crimes in the possession of the FBI,” but no such names were evident in the release.
Few mentions of Trump in the DOJ release
President Donald Trump’s past friendship with Epstein is well known — and his chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that he appears in the files— but there were only a few passing mentions of him in the documents released Friday.
Trump has said he had a falling out with Epstein before he ever faced criminal charges, and has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump was in the files but he’s “not doing anything awful.” She said he and Epstein had been “young, single playboys together.”
In a statement following the DOJ release, the White House said, “The Trump Administration is the most transparent in history. By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have.”
Bill Clinton makes numerous appearances
Former President Bill Clinton, however, made numerous appearances in photographs that were released with the files. In one, he’s standing with Epstein as they smile while looking at something that’s not shown in the photo. In another, he’s in a hot tub. In a third, he’s photographed swimming in a pool with Maxwell.
In two others, Clinton is shown with his arm around a woman whose face is blacked out, and in a third, he’s shown sitting at a table with a woman sitting on his leg.
The pictures are undated and it’s unclear where they were taken. Clinton traveled on Epstein’s plane four times in 2002 and 2003 on trips for his Clinton Foundation, according to his spokesperson, Angel Ureña.
Trump has called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Clinton’s ties to Epstein, although the former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Nothing in the photos suggests any wrongdoing.
Ureña said in a post on X that the “White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”
Wiles told Vanity Fair that “the president was wrong” to suggest that there was anything incriminatingabout Clinton in the Epstein records.
More celebrity sightings
Clinton wasn’t the only well-known person whose picture appeared in the files. Appearing with the former president in another picture was Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, with a woman whose face is blacked out standing between them.
A representative for Jagger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In another shot, Epstein was photographed standing next to the late pop star Michael Jackson, in front of a painting of a naked woman reading on the beach.
Others showed actor Kevin Spacey standing with Epstein. None of the photos are dated, so it’s unclear when or where any of them are from. Spacey told journalist Piers Morgan last year that he traveled on Epstein’s plane as part of a humanitarian mission with the Clinton Foundation but that “he never spent time with him.”
A representative for Spacey did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a post on X earlier this year, Spacey wrote, “Release the Epstein files. All of them. For those of us with nothing to fear, the truth can’t come soon enough.”
Nothing in the photos suggests any wrongdoing by any other figure. In a letter to Congress on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the records “did not reveal credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals, nor did it uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Hayley Walker, Chloe Atkins, Gary Grumbach , Brennan Leach, Justin Goldman, Daisy Conant, Maya Rosenberg, Tom Winter and Michael Kosnar contributed.
President Donald Trump was asked about a possible pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell after the Supreme Court rejected the appeal of her criminal conviction.
The Justice Department on Friday released thousands of documents from its files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the massive document release was heavily redacted, incompleteand shed little new light on his crimes.
It did, however, contain some celebrity cameos.
Here’s a look at what is — and what is not — in the “Epstein files” so far.
Many of the files had already been released
Many of the materials that were released had been made public through various lawsuits and court filings, including the reports from the Palm Beach police that led to the initial state criminal probe in 2005. Some records were also previously released as part of the House Oversight Committee investigation into the Epstein case.
Among the documents released were already public filings from the criminal cases against Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, including filings from Maxwell’s appeal for her conviction and 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges. It also includes various civil complaints filed against Epstein over the years.
But not all of it was old news. One of the files released was Maria Farmer’s 1996 complaint to the FBI alleging Epstein stole photos she had taken of her 12 and 16-year-old sisters and sold them. She sued the federal government earlier this year in federal court over alleged failures to protect her and other Epstein victims.
Farmer said in a statement Friday, “I feel redeemed.”
Her legal team said in a news release that the document “proves that if the FBI had simply done its job in 1996, Epstein’s decades-long sex trafficking operation could have been stopped at the outset.”
Farmer’s suit is still pending and the government has yet to file a response to her allegations.
Lots of records are still missing
The Epstein Files Transparency Act gave the attorney general 30 days to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” involving Epstein, “including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters.”
That clock ran out Friday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that the release was several hundred thousand pages short of “all” and that it could take a “couple of weeks” for the rest to come to light.
He attributed the delay to the need to redact information about the victims. “What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim — their name, their identity, their story — to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected,” he told Fox News.
The law’s co-author, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said the department needs to give a detailed timeline on when those documents will be released, and also noted that some documents appeared to be overly redacted.
“Some of the documents I’ve just been scanning them have very heavy redactions,” Khanna said, and under the law, “they owe the Congress and the American public an explanation for every redaction.”
Khanna’s co-author, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said in a video on X Thursday that he’d been told by victims’ lawyers that “there are at least 20 names of men who are accused of sex crimes in the possession of the FBI,” but no such names were evident in the release.
Few mentions of Trump in the DOJ release
President Donald Trump’s past friendship with Epstein is well known — and his chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that he appears in the files— but there were only a few passing mentions of him in the documents released Friday.
Trump has said he had a falling out with Epstein before he ever faced criminal charges, and has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump was in the files but he’s “not doing anything awful.” She said he and Epstein had been “young, single playboys together.”
In a statement following the DOJ release, the White House said, “The Trump Administration is the most transparent in history. By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have.”
Bill Clinton makes numerous appearances
Former President Bill Clinton, however, made numerous appearances in photographs that were released with the files. In one, he’s standing with Epstein as they smile while looking at something that’s not shown in the photo. In another, he’s in a hot tub. In a third, he’s photographed swimming in a pool with Maxwell.
In two others, Clinton is shown with his arm around a woman whose face is blacked out, and in a third, he’s shown sitting at a table with a woman sitting on his leg.
The pictures are undated and it’s unclear where they were taken. Clinton traveled on Epstein’s plane four times in 2002 and 2003 on trips for his Clinton Foundation, according to his spokesperson, Angel Ureña.
Trump has called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Clinton’s ties to Epstein, although the former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Nothing in the photos suggests any wrongdoing.
Ureña said in a post on X that the “White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”
Wiles told Vanity Fair that “the president was wrong” to suggest that there was anything incriminatingabout Clinton in the Epstein records.
More celebrity sightings
Clinton wasn’t the only well-known person whose picture appeared in the files. Appearing with the former president in another picture was Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, with a woman whose face is blacked out standing between them.
A representative for Jagger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In another shot, Epstein was photographed standing next to the late pop star Michael Jackson, in front of a painting of a naked woman reading on the beach.
Others showed actor Kevin Spacey standing with Epstein. None of the photos are dated, so it’s unclear when or where any of them are from. Spacey told journalist Piers Morgan last year that he traveled on Epstein’s plane as part of a humanitarian mission with the Clinton Foundation but that “he never spent time with him.”
A representative for Spacey did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a post on X earlier this year, Spacey wrote, “Release the Epstein files. All of them. For those of us with nothing to fear, the truth can’t come soon enough.”
Nothing in the photos suggests any wrongdoing by any other figure. In a letter to Congress on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the records “did not reveal credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals, nor did it uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Hayley Walker, Chloe Atkins, Gary Grumbach , Brennan Leach, Justin Goldman, Daisy Conant, Maya Rosenberg, Tom Winter and Michael Kosnar contributed.
President Donald Trump was asked about a possible pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell after the Supreme Court rejected the appeal of her criminal conviction.
CBS News reporters and producers are poring through thousands of newly released documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. CBS News justice reporter Jake Rosen joins with the latest details.
Undated photograph of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and model Ingrid Seynhaeve from the Epstein estate’s document production to the House Oversight Committee.
House Oversight Committee Democrats
After nearly two decades, the Justice Department on Friday finally released a small a portion of its voluminous criminal case files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The documents, which were heavily redacted, spanned four presidential administrations, starting with George W. Bush, who was in office when the first underage girl, 14, reported to the Palm Beach Police Department that she was molested by Epstein in his Palm Beach mansion in 2005. By 2025, the government estimated that Epstein had sexually assaulted or abused more than 1000 victims.
The DOJ was forced to unseal the documents under the newly passed Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required they publish the material by Friday. A little more than 4,000 documents, many of them photographs, were released on the DOJ website by Friday evening, among them entire 100-page reports completely redacted with no explanation. In some cases, the faces of what appear to be older men were also blacked out.
Later Friday, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote a letter to members of Congress, obtained by the Miami Herald, telling them that files were under additional review, which he expected to be completed in the next two weeks. In the 6-page letter, he said that in addition to victims’ names being protected, he claimed other redactions were being made under “various privileges” such as “attorney-client privilege” and “work-product privilege.”
As part of the law, the attorney general has to provide all reasons for each of the redactions within 15 days of the release. The law explicitly prohibits redactions for reasons of “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
Lawmakers said the roll-out fell far short of following the law.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, a co-sponsor of the Epstein files legislation said the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law,” on social media Friday, and that a future DOJ could prosecute the Attorney General. His co-sponsor on the bill, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, called it “an incomplete release with too many redactions,” in a video statement.
The photographs included images of famous people, Epstein’s mansions, sexual material such as sex toys, and hundreds of photos of naked or nearly naked young women — some clearly young girls — in sexual poses. At least one showed a small girl with her hair tied back, her face shadowed, laying in bed, nude. There were also paintings and photographs of naked young men and women.
Also filling space were hundreds of mundane photos of interior spaces of Epstein’s residences – his laundry room, closed closet doors, piles of electrical wiring, ductwork, furniture, appliances, even his mops and brooms.
Victims were disappointed.
“For survivors, this deadline is not symbolic; it’s a test of whether transparency will finally outweigh the protection of powerful interests,” said survivor Liz Stein. “This staggered release falls far short of the transparency that was intended with the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”
There were few documents, other than reports that had long been in the public record, such as flight logs, police reports and pages from the DOJ’s investigation into the case previously revealed in the 2021 trial of Epstein’s accomplice and ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
Among the files was also a 1996 complaint filed with the FBI – in which someone said that Epstein was selling photos of her sisters, ages 12 and 16, and threatened to burn down her house.
The new material included several photographs of former President Bill Clinton: in a pool with a woman whose face is blacked out, with Michael Jackson, and posing with Epstein. A framed photo shows Epstein and a woman holding a check, the signature line reading “DJTrump.” In another photo, former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is laying across the laps of a group of girls, with Maxwell behind him.
An undated photo released by the Department of Justice as part of the Epstein files shows former President Bill Clinton in a pool with a figure whose face has been blacked out. Department of Justice
The law that required the files to be made public was authored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and signed by President Donald Trump on Nov. 19. The president has criticized the intense focus on the documents, calling the files a “hoax” amid scrutiny into his friendship with Epstein.
Early Friday, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News that he expected several hundred thousand files would be released first, then “several hundred thousand more” in following weeks.
Later, on X, Blanche added that additional material would be released, “as our review continues, consistent with the law and with protections for victims.”
Top Democrats threatened legal action if DOJ failed to comply with the law.
In a joint statement, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote that Donald Trump and the Justice Department 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.”
“We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law,” Garcia and Raskin wrote.
The act does not specify any penalties for violations of the law.
Unsealing the Epstein Files capped years of intense political debate in Washington which began in 2018, when the Miami Herald published an investigation into the case that raised questions about whether the deal prosecutors gave Epstein was legal.
Seven months later, Epstein was arrested by prosecutors in New York. He died a month later in federal prison. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.
In the wake of the scandal, the U.S. Attorney in Miami who signed off on the deal, Alex Acosta, resigned as labor secretary under President Donald Trump.
The DOJ opened a probe into the deal in 2019, concluding that while Acosta had executed “poor judgment” neither he nor any of the prosecutors committed professional misconduct. A federal judge, however, ruled that the deal Epstein was given violated the federal Victims’ Rights Act.
The case continued to attract more scrutiny in 2021 as the DOJ successfully prosecuted Epstein’s accomplice Maxwell. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Then, as Trump campaigned to return to the White House in 2024 he and his supporters made the case part of the campaign. Trump indicated he would release at least some of the case files, and his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised full transparency.
But Bondi failed to fulfill that promise, causing a public outcry that only grew after she and FBI Director Kash Patel reversed course in July in a memo and closed the case, noting that there was no “credible” evidence that Epstein had blackmailed prominent individuals, or evidence to investigate anyone, other than Epstein, for committed crimes.
Trump confidant Elon Musk then abruptly announced on his social media platform X that the reason the files weren’t being unsealed was because Trump’s name was in them. Trump tried to distance himself from Epstein, denying he had much of a connection to the sex trafficker, other than in passing at parties and events.
A photo of Jeffrey Epstein released by the Department of Justice on Dec. 19, 2025. Department of Justice
Those statements seemed to fall flat after the House Oversight Committee earlier this year opened an investigation and began requesting files from the late financier’s estate. Among the files was a “Birthday Book,” that contained an intimately worded drawing and poem, purportedly written and signed by Trump in 2003. Trump has denied the drawing – and the signature – were his.
“Our government conspired with him and, in doing so, failed to protect hundreds of girls who would never have been harmed had our government simply done its job,” a group of over 20 survivors wrote in a November letter to Congressional representatives.
Miami Herald reporters Shirsho Dasgupta, Ana Claudia Chacin, Linda Robertson and Churchill Ndonwie contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 19, 2025 at 3:29 PM.
Julie K. Brown is a member of the Miami Herald’s Investigative Team. Her 2017 probe into Palm Beach sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein won multiple journalism awards, including a George Polk Award. She was also a member of the Herald’s 2022 Pulitzer-Prize-winning team recognized for its coverage of the Surfside condo collapse. Support my work with a digital subscription
Claire Healy is an Esserman Investigative Fellow at The Miami Herald. Prior to her current role, she wrote for The Washington Post, where she was a 2024 Pulitzer Finalist for “Searching for Maura.”
When Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019, he left behind an estate worth about $100 million in property and assets, along with years worth of physical and digital evidence. For most of this year, the House Oversight Committee has been releasing dribs and drabs from this vast cache, from a bizarre birthday gift including the distinctive signature of future president Donald Trump (Trump has denied writing the letter) to a set of emails documenting his tense interactions with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and emotional conversations with former Harvard president Larry Summers.
But on Thursday, as the deadline for the release of the government’s full Epstein files drew near, the committee released some of the most disturbing photos yet—a cache that includes a set of abstract portraits of a young girl with the opening lines of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita written on her body in pen. (To underline the lack of creativity, one image includes an out-of-focus copy of The Annotated Lolita, a scholarly edition of the midcentury ode to kidnapping a young girl and forcing her into sexual slavery.)
House Oversight Committee.
Though less viscerally offensive, the rest of the images—there are 68 in total—are still loaded with information, giving us a clearer view of Epstein’s life in the decade after his 2008 conviction for sex crimes. Before his 2019 arrest and subsequent suicide, the financier’s reputation was suffering. Yet his wealth and supposed charm still gave him convening power. From a gathering that included New York Times columnist David Brooks to royal audiences in Saudi Arabia, Epstein was still hobnobbing with public figures, even if the meetings took place in private. (In a statement, the Times said that Brooks met Epstein at a 2011 event “with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns,” adding, “Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”)
But the images also reveal the decrepitude of Epstein’s surroundings during this period. The Lolita photos show the commercial-grade bedding you might expect to find at a short-stay hotel, while a conference room in one photo sports chalkboards scribbled with calculus, and a dingy kitchenette. His private airplane, the so-called Lolita Express, was drab and cramped. In one image, Epstein is flanked by young women, faces redacted, as they sit in a room with gold-painted walls and dirty red banquette seating. His photos with Steve Bannon show that his office is decorated with an ornate credenza, a Romantic-era painting, and a few quartz paperweights—ugly, tawdry trinkets.
Six years after his death, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein still makes headlines.
He stars in conspiracy theories and falsehoods — about what government files reveal about him, the island where he trafficked girls and women, important men he knew, including Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
Social media users and politicians across the political spectrum engross themselves in stories — true and imagined — about Epstein’s world of sex, power, connections and wealth.
Epstein received lenient treatment from the criminal justice system until the Miami Herald published a 2018 extensiveinvestigation into his case. He was arrested in July 2019 on federal charges for recruiting dozens of underage girls to his New York City mansion and Palm Beach, Florida, estate from 2002 to 2005 to engage in sex acts for money. He was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell Aug. 10, 2019, and investigators concluded he died by suicide.
In November, Congress passed and Trump signed a law that requires the Justice Department to release unclassified government investigative files related to Epstein. In the lead-up to the White House’s anticipated Dec. 19 documents release, PolitiFact looked back at our coverage of Epstein-related falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
Falsehoods about the Epstein files, Trump’s involvement
Trump told reporters in July that the Epstein files “were made up” by former FBI Director James Comey and former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. That’s Pants on Fire.
The files are not “made up” — they collectively represent investigative evidence and findings from law enforcement documents, victims’ testimonies and court cases.
Neither Obama nor Biden were in office when the FBI investigated Epstein; George W. Bush and Trump were. Comey worked in the private sector during those investigative periods. Epstein was arrested on federal charges during Trump’s first administration.
Some Trump critics have pointed to his past links to Epstein. Trump’s former adviser Elon Musk wrote on X that Trump “is in the Epstein files.” Being mentioned in the files is not akin to criminal wrongdoing. It is well-documented that Trump and Epstein knew each other although they had a falling out some time between 2004 and 2007.
The 2024 release of court documents in an Epstein-related lawsuit led to false social media claims about a 166-name list that alleged Epstein was connected to famous politicians, musicians and actors.
Seventy-eight percent of the people on the list were not mentioned in the court documents. Looking through other documents, including Epstein’s private jet flight logs and his address book, PolitiFact found that the majority of the names on the list were not in those records either. Although some of the people listed had well-documented relationships with Epstein, only two had been charged with crimes.
Falsehoods about Epstein’s island
After 2024 election results showed Trump won the presidency, an Instagram post falsely claimed Trump had visited the island Epstein owned. But there is no documented evidence that Trump visited Epstein’s Little St. James in the Virgin Islands.
Flight logs show Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane at least seven times in the 1990s between Palm Beach and New York, but there’s no documented evidence showing Trump visited the island. A supposed photo of a teenager dancing with Trump on the island was fabricated.
Social media posts previously said Clinton was photographed with young women on the island and appeared in 26 Epstein flight logs. In November, Trump made a similar statement, saying, “Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times.”
Clinton took four trips in 2002 and 2003 on Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with Clinton Foundation work, a Clinton spokesperson said. It’s unclear how many individual flights Clinton took for those trips.
Vanity Fair in December published an article based on multiple 2025 interviews with Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff. Wiles said “there is no evidence” that Clinton visited the island. Wiles said in an X post that “significant context was disregarded” in the article but included no examples and cited no errors of fact.
Additional falsehoods about Trump
Social media posts this summer falsely said Trump “made 4,725 wire transfers” to Epstein, totaling nearly $1.1 billion. The posts included as proof a clip of Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., talking about 4,725 wire transfers, but he wasn’t referring to Trump. Wyden said Senate Finance Committee investigators reviewed a Treasury file on Epstein and found 4,725 wire transfers “flowing in and out of just one of Mr. Epstein’s bank accounts.”
In November, a Democrat used newly-released documents from Epstein’s estate to assert that Trump and Epstein remained friends after Trump was elected in 2016.
Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., highlighted one email exchange and said in an X post: “Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected President with Jeffrey Epstein. 2017.” That exaggerates what records show.
In an email exchange dated Nov. 23, 2017, Epstein discussed his Thanksgiving plans with Faith Kates, cofounder of the New York-based modeling agency NEXT Management. When Kates asked who else was “down there,” seemingly referring to Florida, Epstein mentioned several names including Trump.
It is possible Epstein was not foretelling a specific Thanksgiving Day plan but commenting about who else would be in the Florida area at that time.
News reports, photos, videos and White House news releases show Trump spent Thanksgiving 2017 at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. PolitiFact found no proof he met with Epstein that day.
