The Trump administration faces legal action and renewed claims of a cover-up after failing to release all the relevant material it holds relating to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his disgraced accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Many of the documents released on Friday were also heavily redacted or had also been public for years, and the department’s website crashed as soon as the files were released.
“Some of the library’s contents include descriptions of sexual assault. As such, please be advised that certain portions of this library may not be appropriate for all readers,” the website said.
More than six years after Epstein died awaiting trial for sex trafficking teenage girls, hundreds of thousands of files have finally been released relating to his heinous crimes, and what the government did or didn’t do to stop him.
The files include court records, DOJ disclosures, and details released as part of the Freedom of Information Act.
There were also several photos of Epstein with former president Bill Clinton; pictures of women doing yoga poses with Epstein watching on; and entirely black pages of redactions.
Epstein is also photographed posing next to Michael Jackson, and in another photo having dinner with Mick Jagger.
The administration came under fire earlier on Friday when Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed that some information would not be released by tonight’s deadline.
“I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks, so today several hundred thousand and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” he told Fox and Friends.
House Democrats committee ranking member Robert Garcia said this violated the Epstein Transparency Act, which mandated the full release of all of the department’s non-exempt Epstein information within 30 days. “We are now examining all legal options,” he said.
The files stem, in part, from two Justice Department investigations into Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls.
The first took place in Florida and led to a controversial plea deal in 2008 that allowed Epstein to avoid federal sex trafficking charges and receive a lenient sentence. The second was the Manhattan-based investigation, which led to his 2019 arrest and Maxwell’s prosecution.
But attorney John Marsh, who represented Epstein victim Maria Farmer, said it could take months to dissect the documents.
“Congress is not in session, nobody’s really going to be in Washington. So we’re really looking at, you know, the beginning of 2026, to see exactly where we need to go, how much material is missing,” he told CNN.
“And it’s obviously going to take many, many weeks, if not months, and years, to really process all these materials, to figure out what might be missing.”
The release of the files is the culmination of years of advocacy by victims and their support of wanting justice, as well as conspiracy theories by the MAGA faithful.
Those calls reached fever pitch when Trump and his team came to office promising to release the files, only to walk back his pledge and described the issue as a “Democratic” hoax.
But last month, in a stunning reversal, he finally signed new laws officially directing the DOJ to release all records and documents connected to the convicted sex offender, with exemptions. Exempt material includes records that personally identify individuals, materials showing child sex abuse, records that would “jeopardize an active federal investigation”
Trump’s about-face came only after it became clear that enough Republicans would break ranks with the president and vote in favor of releasing the files.
But despite the president repeatedly claiming the Epstein files were a hoax, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, confirmed in a jaw-dropping interview this week that he is in the Epstein files and travelled on the sex offender’s plane.
But she insisted “he’s not in the file doing anything awful,” telling Vanity Fair: “They were, you know, sort of young, single, whatever—I know it’s a passé word but sort of young, single playboys together.”
The issue has also been a political headache for Bondi, who MAGA acolytes such as Laura Loomer say should be fired for her handling of the Epstein saga.
Tensions escalated earlier this year when Bondi had organised a supposed “scoop” for MAGA social media influencers, who were called to the White House and presented with binders of Epstein-related documents.
But as it turned out, those binders contained hundreds of pages that mostly had been public for years – or Wiles put it in her tell-all Vanity Fair interview, “binders of nothingness.”
In another move that would come back to bite Trump’s chief law maker, Bondi also appeared on Fox News in February, suggesting she had possession of the convicted sex offender’s supposed black book of prominent figures who engaged in illegal sexual activities.
Four months later, in a bid to kill the issue, her Justice Department put out a memo saying there was no client list and that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”
Since then, there have been fewer issues that have split Trump’s MAGA base and shifted alliances in the president’s orbit than the Epstein firestorm.
The biggest break-up of Trump and MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, who joined the bipartisan effort to compel the Department to release all files related to Epstein.
Trump was “furious” about her stance, according to Greene, and later branded her a “traitor.”
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges involving underage girls.
Maxwell was subsequently convicted to 20 years in prison for helping him recruit and abuse underage girls. After an unorthodox interview with Blanche earlier this year, she was subsequently moved to a lower security jail.
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