After months of anticipation and occasional releases of smaller batches of files and photos related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday began to release a massive trove of documents known as the Epstein files.
Among the thousands of records released Friday are photos, call logs, grand jury testimony and interview transcripts. Many of the documents have been redacted and at least some have already been in the public domain.
Some of the photos and transcripts feature Epstein and his longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. Other photos show what appears to be Epstein’s office and close-up shots of computers and other electronic devices seized by investigators.
More than 80 per cent of the nearly 4,000 files released under a subset it described as “DOJ Disclosures” were photographs of FBI searches of Epstein’s homes in New York City and on Little St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2019, before and after Epstein’s arrest.
Several photos of former U.S. president Bill Clinton are included in the files. Some show Clinton on a private plane, including one with a woman sitting on his lap whose face is redacted from the photo. Another photo shows him in a pool with Maxwell and a person whose face is also redacted.
Another photo shows Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face is redacted. The files do not say when any of the photos were taken.
The released files include a small number of photos of U.S. President Donald Trump which appear to have been in the public domain for decades, including two in which the president and Epstein are posing with now-first lady Melania Trump at an event in 2000.
The files released Friday also included video clips from inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City from the day Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019. The video clips had already been released previously by the Justice Department and officials have said for years they showed no one else entering the area around Epstein’s cell before he was found dead.
The DOJ website set up a queue to regulate online traffic due to high interest in the files, which have entangled the Trump administration in political drama for months. The queue forced visitors to wait up to 10 minutes to access the home page of what the department calls “The Epstein Library.”
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The deadline for the DOJ files to be made publicly available in their entirety was Dec. 19, set by the passing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated that the department release all unclassified documents and investigative materials, including files relating to immunity deals and internal communications about whom to charge or investigate in relation to Epstein’s case.
The act was signed into law by Trump on Nov. 19, with the caveat that it also allows the DOJ to withhold files that it says could jeopardize an active federal investigation. The department warned in the past that the file release will not include everything uncovered during the Epstein investigation.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News he expected the department to release “several hundred thousand” records Friday and then several hundred thousand more in the coming weeks.
In a letter sent to Congress late Friday obtained by the Associated Press, Blanche acknowledged the release was incomplete and that the department expected additional disclosures by the end of this year, noting files were still being reviewed.
Blanche said the delay was caused by the time it took to redact witness names and identifying information. He told Congress the department was also withholding some documents under exemptions allowed in the law.
The Justice Department says more than 1,200 people were eventually identified as victims of Epstein or their family members, Blanche wrote.
Democrats vowed to investigate the delay.
“Instead of meeting the legally required deadline today to release all of the files, they have chosen to illegally disregard the law I led the fight in the Senate to pass,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said in a statement.
Merkley expressed frustration that the Trump administration had not taken steps to “appropriately redact the Epstein Files to prepare them for release” of their own accord over the last year.
“I’ll keep fighting to release all the Epstein Files and am exploring all avenues and legal tools to get justice for the victims and transparency for the American people,” he added.
The Justice Department said on the Epstein Library website that “all reasonable efforts have been made to review and redact personal information pertaining to victims, other private individuals, and protect sensitive materials from disclosure.”
In a notice posted with the files, the department warned that some may have been missed as it rushed to get records online. Because of the volume of information involved, the release “may nevertheless contain information that inadvertently includes non-public personally identifiable information or other sensitive content, to include matters of a sexual nature,” the notice said.
The department asked members of the public to notify it promptly of any information that should not have been posted “so we can take steps to correct the problem as soon as possible.”
There are more than 300 gigabytes of data within the FBI’s primary electronic case management system, including photos, videos, written records and audio recordings.
In the month since Trump signed the bill, numerous previously unseen documents have been shared — mainly photos, with some videos — providing a glimpse into the inner workings of the late sex offender’s life. The first, released by the House Oversight Committee on Dec. 3, showed Epstein’s home on his private island, Little St. James, where many survivors, including Virginia Giuffre, say they were repeatedly abused.
Another release from the House Oversight Committee on Dec. 12 included 19 photos, which it said were taken from a batch of 95,000 documents. Featured in the uncaptioned images were Trump, Clinton, Bill Gates, Steve Bannon and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, among others.
The House Oversight Committee released 68 photos the day prior to the 30-day deadline for the DOJ, with Gates, American professor Noam Chomsky and magician David Blaine appearing in the pictures, among others.
Ahead of the vote that mandated the release, a group of Epstein’s abuse victims, introduced by former MAGA mouthpiece Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, spoke outside the White House, where they urged lawmakers to pass the transparency act.
In September, a U.S. House Oversight Committee released a full copy of an alleged “birthday book” given to Epstein on his 50th birthday, among other personal effects that belonged to him.
The 238-page book was unsealed alongside a stack of Epstein’s private documents, including his will and address book, which contained the names of royalty, global politicians, models and celebrities.
The birthday book also contained photographs and notes sent to Epstein from friends, including a letter written between the hand-drawn outline of a woman’s body, allegedly penned and signed by Trump— claims he and the White House have denied.
—With files from the Associated Press
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