Jeffrey Epstein’s victims began the day believing they might finally get something they’d been requesting for years: a direct conversation with the nation’s top law-enforcement official before the Justice Department made public a full trove of long-buried documents and photos. The release of the Epstein files, as the department’s hundreds of thousands of investigative materials have come to be known, might finally provide clarity on what the government knew about Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme and when it knew it. The victims sat by their phones waiting anxiously—but also, they told me, with a bit of hope.
Just over 24 hours earlier, on the eve of the deadline for the files’ release, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had placed a call to a group that supports survivors of Epstein’s abuse, according to multiple people briefed on the outreach. On the call, the officials previewed what would and wouldn’t be in the disclosure: photographs, yes; videos, no. Victims’ names would be redacted. At one point, according to a person familiar with the conversation, the officials suggested that if video exists, it may still be in the possession of the Epstein estate—an assertion that raised alarms among survivors who have long believed that recordings were used as leverage and blackmail.
This morning, the Justice Department indicated via email to the group that Bondi would speak with survivors and expressed support for them, according to people familiar with the correspondence. But soon after, they were told that the attorney general would not be available after all, due to a medical appointment. One DOJ official familiar with Bondi’s schedule told me the attorney general “was at Walter Reed today for a prescheduled routine appointment,” and emphasized that “no call was missed” because “that meeting was never scheduled.”
Meanwhile, Blanche appeared on Fox News and announced that the administration wouldn’t be hitting its deadline from Congress. Some files would be released, but many would not—at least not yet. Survivors were left with familiar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment, as well as unresolved questions: Why did the Trump administration change course last month on its promise to release all of the Epstein files if it wasn’t going to actually follow through? What was the government holding back—and why?
[Read: Circles of Epstein hell]
Sharlene Rochard first met Epstein in New York in the mid-1990s, when she was still a teenager. She told me that she has taken additional security precautions in and around her home in recent days, not knowing what would be released or whether she would be mentioned. She and other victims had asked the DOJ for advance notice and preparation for what was coming, she said, so that they didn’t find out what was in the files on television or social media. But she didn’t get that.
“I feel really disappointed,” Rochard said. “America is getting a look tonight into how we have all felt for years.”
The collapse of the call with victims was only one piece of a broader, frantic rush inside Donald Trump’s Justice Department as it approached the final hours of its congressionally mandated deadline. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by Trump on November 19, requires the attorney general to make public, within 30 days, “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” in the DOJ’s possession that relate to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. The cache was believed to include flight logs, internal DOJ communications, and even records concerning the “destruction, deletion, alteration, misplacement, or concealment” of Epstein-related evidence.
The law tries to preempt a possible work-around by the DOJ. It explicitly bars the department from withholding, delaying, or redacting records because of “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity,” even for “any government official [or] public figure.”
Members of Congress and staff for the House Oversight Committee told me that they were alarmed by the DOJ’s silence in the days and hours before the release. Staff for Senator Jeff Merkley and Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie had repeatedly sought guidance from DOJ officials on what would be released and how the department was preparing. The lawmakers never got a response.
[Read: How to read the Epstein files like an expert]
Victims said Bondi’s failure to talk with them prior to one of the most significant releases to date made them feel that those most harmed by Epstein’s crimes were just an afterthought. Marijke Chartouni was among the victims who had been hoping to talk with the attorney general before the files were made public. “Today marks a long-awaited moment for many of us,” Chartouni told me. “This is about truth, accountability, and confronting law-enforcement failure.”
When she learned of Bondi’s medical appointment, Chartouni said she was disappointed: “I wish her a speedy recovery. The timing is unfortunate and will only add to the arsenal of conspiracy theories.”
Khanna, a California Democrat, said that he and members of his staff had been in contact with victims last night, describing hopeful text messages and relief that there were efforts to pull together a meeting, even at the last minute. But Bondi’s failure to follow through with a meeting, he said, “shows her total callousness to the survivors’ trauma. She just doesn’t get it.”
A spokesperson for the Justice Department told me in a statement that, “within 24 hours of requesting a meeting, the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General responded and made time to speak to this group for Epstein survivors. Who this group decided to put on that call is not up to the AG and the DAG. The DOJ will not be disclosing the private details of the call out of respect for survivors.”
The brother of Virginia Roberts Giuffre—one of the most prominent Epstein survivors, who died by suicide in April—described the day as “huge” but heavy with dread. Sky Roberts tried to distract himself with Christmas shopping while he waited for the files to be released. His voice broke when describing his family’s pain during their first Christmas without his sister. He told me that he worried about what he called “smoke and mirrors”—a partial release dressed up as transparency. He said his sister had been very clear in her conversations with law enforcement about names of alleged co-conspirators and participants. He believed that the DOJ has in its possession evidence that “brings everything together.”
He said he hoped his sister’s decades-long efforts to hold accountable men who she and others alleged had participated in or enabled the sex-trafficking scheme would matter. “If those names aren’t coming out, then the whole exercise is just a cover-up,” he said.
When Blanche appeared on Fox News this morning, he confirmed that the DOJ would be releasing some of what it had. But it would not meet the deadline for making public all of the files, Blanche acknowledged, citing the need to protect victims’ identities and make the appropriate redactions in all documents. That, he said, could take more weeks of work by Justice Department lawyers.
Late this afternoon, the DOJ began posting on its website what it calls the first batches of records. It was a convenient moment: near the end of a Friday as Washington, D.C., emptied out for the holidays, and neither the House nor the Senate was in session. The files that were released appear to be a combination of some new material from prior investigations of Epstein, combined with documents and photographs that were already in the public domain. Some whole pages were redacted.
[Read: The Ghislaine Maxwell emails]
There were multiple new photographs of former President Bill Clinton, including an undated image that appears to be taken on a private plane with a blond woman sitting on his lap, her face redacted. The DOJ’s public-affairs department seemed intent on highlighting Clinton’s inclusion–-one post on X read, in part, “Do you not see Clinton’s face??”
Clinton has long denied any wrongdoing, and in a statement, his spokesperson emphasized that the former president was among those who “knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light.”
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” the statement said. “This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever.”
In a series of posts on X this evening, Representative Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said that the day’s release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law” that Trump signed last month. When I talked with him late this evening, he told me, with reference to the Justice Department, “I can’t believe how badly they botched this.”
Roberts said he and his family were still working their way through the many thousands of pages of files. He described the experience as “surreal” and said that he felt a mix of appreciation and pride for his sister and other victims’ efforts over decades to get the attention of federal law enforcement. He and others I spoke with said they felt vindicated that included in the files released today appeared to be Maria Farmer’s report to law enforcement, which had never been seen before. It is dated September 1996, and it describes Epstein’s alleged possession of photographs of underage girls. “Epstein is now threatening [redacted] that if she tells anyone about the photos he will burn her house down.”
Read: [Virginia Giuffre’s family was shocked that Trump described her as ‘stolen’]
Information that Roberts said he had expected to be in the files didn’t appear to be there—such as the names of other prominent men who are believed to have been involved. “I feel like we’re still getting the same runaround we were getting before,” he told me, “where they’re kind of slow-rolling it and keeping what they want to keep from us.”
Khanna told me that he was discussing next steps with Massie and others on the oversight committee, which may include contempt of Congress or articles of impeachment for Bondi and Blanche.
“We’re exploring all options—including impeachment,” Khanna said. “They’re delusional if they think this is going to go away.”
Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed reporting.
The post Epstein’s Victims Are Furious appeared first on The Atlantic.
