The US Department of Justice has published thousands of documents, many heavily redacted, relating to the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, partially fulfilling a congressional order to release the files.
The documents include several images of high-profile men such as former US president Bill Clinton, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — formerly Prince Andrew, Virgin founder Richard Branson, and singer Michael Jackson, as well as testimony given to FBI investigators. Donald Trump is also pictured.
The limited disclosures, published on the department’s website on Friday, mark the latest chapter in a saga that has ignited a political firestorm on both sides of the Atlantic, amid questions about Epstein’s ties to rich and powerful figures, including the US president.
Trump, a one-time friend of Epstein, has sought to draw attention to the sex offender’s connections to top Democrats. The president did not comment on the publication of the documents on Friday. In a rare move he declined to take questions from reporters at a White House event shortly before the files were released.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (Image supplied by the House Oversight Committee)
“I really don’t want to soil it up by asking questions, even questions that are very fair questions that I’d love to answer. So I think we have to just stop right here,” he said.
But the DoJ’s heavily redacted disclosures are unlikely to silence critics who have accused the administration of blocking information about the Epstein case.
Deputy attorney-general Todd Blanche earlier on Friday acknowledged that the DoJ would not release all the materials in its possession right away. He told Fox News “several hundred thousand” would be published on Friday, and “several hundred thousand more” would be made public “over the next couple of weeks”.
Former US president Bill Clinton (Image supplied by the House Oversight Committee)
The release contained 3,951 documents, most of which were only a single page. The bulk release contains 8,408 pages in total.
The disclosures will nevertheless make uncomfortable reading for the lengthy list of high-profile figures from politics, business and entertainment who socialised with Epstein.
Friday’s release included several pictures of Clinton, including one undated photograph of the former president in what appeared to be a hot tub. Another showed Clinton in a swimming pool with a woman whose face had been redacted, and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s one-time girlfriend who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for child sex trafficking offences.
There was no suggestion that those pictured in the latest images released from the Epstein estate had committed any wrongdoing.
A spokesperson for Clinton did not immediately respond to comment. But the spokesperson posted on social media a screenshot of a statement that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles made to Vanity Fair in a magazine profile published earlier this week.
Redacted documents released by the Department of Justice © Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Wiles told the magazine there was “no evidence” Clinton had visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean.
Friday’s release came a day after Democratic legislators published a new batch of photographs from the Epstein estate, showing prominent figures such as Bill Gates and Sergey Brin. The House oversight committee is running its own investigation into Epstein, separate from the DoJ.
Trump and top Republicans on Capitol Hill had for months sought to block the release of the DoJ’s files, which include evidence gathered during multiple criminal and civil investigations into Epstein and his associates.
The strategy angered some parts of the president’s Maga base, given that on the campaign trail he had said he would release the so-called Epstein files.
But a bipartisan vote in Congress last month compelled the justice department to publish its files. The president signed the measure into law on November 19.
The legislation gave US attorney-general Pam Bondi 30 days to hand over the materials but allowed the department to withhold files that could jeopardise active federal investigations or pose national security concerns. Friday was the deadline.
Blanche on Friday told Fox News that some of the materials released would be redacted to ensure “every victim . . . is completely protected”.
Trump’s critics questioned the DoJ’s decision to hold back material and heavily redact certain documents. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, said the files released on Friday were “just a fraction of the whole body of evidence”.
He added: “Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law.”
White House officials and Trump allies said the redactions in the file were designed to protect the victims of sex trafficking.
“Why do the sickos in the liberal media want a document called “masseuse list”, which was clearly redacted to protect victims, to be public?” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said on X, referring to a file that was entirely blacked out with no names.
Questions remain about Trump’s links to Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Trump has acknowledged he and Epstein were once friends but said they had a falling out more than two decades ago. He has vehemently denied any involvement in Epstein’s criminal activities.
Still, questions about the federal government’s handling of the Epstein files, and the separate congressional investigation have piled political pressure on the president.
Last month, the House oversight committee published more than 20,000 previously unseen documents from the late financier’s estate, including a 2011 email in which he said Trump was the “dog that hadn’t barked” and “spent hours at my house” with a woman later identified as a victim of sex trafficking.
Undated photographs published last week by Democrats on the House committee also showed images of Trump, who appeared alongside the financier in one image.
The president dismissed the pictures, telling reporters there were “hundreds and hundreds of people that have photos with him”. A White House spokesperson accused Democrats of “selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative”.
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