The Justice Department released a second wave of files related to Jeffrey Epstein this week, providing a window into federal investigators’ examination of sexual abuse allegations lodged against the deceased financier by women and girls over the course of decades.
The tranche of files released by the Justice Department on Monday includes wide-ranging references to President Donald Trump and a revelation that U.S. authorities sought to interview Prince Andrew in connection to two separate criminal investigations. The department previously released the initial batch just ahead of last Friday’s deadline that was established in the law passed by Congress.
Despite the deadline to release the full trove of files about Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, many files have yet to be made public. The Justice Department’s releases have faced issues, including the latest tranche being briefly taken offline before being reuploaded. The department, traditionally regarded as being independent from partisan influence, released statements saying documents in the latest batch contained what it called “untrue and sensationalist claims” about Trump.
Here’s what we’ve learned so far from the latest release:
Trump is mentioned much more in the latest batch of files
The latest batch of files released this weekproduced more documents mentioning Trump than the first one. It includes a 2021 subpoena sent to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Florida, for records that pertained to the government’s case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice in sex trafficking. The full reason for the subpoena to Mar-a-Lago was not immediately clear, but an assistant U.S. attorney had been seeking past employment records from Trump’s club that were relevant in the case against Maxwell.
The new batch includes notes from an assistant U.S. attorney in New York about the number of times Trump flew on Epstein’s plane, including one flight that included just Trump, Epstein and a 20-year-old woman, according to the notes.
The latest drop also includes several tips that were collected by the FBI about Trump’s involvement with Epstein and parties at their properties in the early 2000s. The documents do not show whether any follow-up investigations took place or whether any of the tips were corroborated.
Being mentioned in a mass trove of investigatory documents does not demonstrate criminal wrongdoing. Trump has not been accused of being involved in Epstein’s criminal activities and has denied knowing about Epstein’s abuse of young women and girls. His spokesperson previously said Trump kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago Club for being a “creep.”
In a statement Tuesday morning, the Justice Department said: “Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump.”
“Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” the statement said.
In a social media post on Wednesday, the Justice Department said that the “US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI” informed DOJ that “over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case” had been uncovered.
“The DOJ has received these documents from SDNY and the FBI to review… . Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks,” the department added.
When asked for comment Wednesday, the White House referred The Post to the DOJ’s statement on X.
U.S. authorities wanted to interview Prince Andrew, documents show
The new set of public documents includes emails and court filings of U.S. authorities seeking to interview Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in connection with two separate criminal investigations: one relating to Epstein and another involving Peter Nygard, the Canadian fashion tycoon accused of sexually assaulting multiple women and girls.
The newly released material also contains an email sent from “A,” who writes that he is at the royal residence of Balmoral in Scotland and asks Maxwell whether she had found him some “new inappropriate friends.”
While it is known that prosecutors wanted to speak to Andrew about Epstein, their desire to engage on Nygard was newly revealed by the recently released documents.
The document regarding Nygard stressed that Andrew was not a target of the investigations and that U.S. authorities had not gathered evidence that he had committed any crime under U.S. law.
U.S. authorities similarly stated that Andrew was not a target of the Epstein investigation and that there is “evidence that Prince Andrew engaged in sexual conduct involving one of Epstein’s victims.” The document noted that U.S. authorities had not concluded he had committed a crime under U.S. law.
Andrew, who was stripped of his prince title, has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing. The former prince’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday when The Post first reported his mentions in the documents.
Justice Department struggles with releasing files
The second wave of files on Epstein was available for several hours Monday afternoon and evening on the Justice Department website, but they were taken down around 8 p.m. The department reposted the files on its website shortly before midnight Monday.
The department did not respond to questions about why the documents had been posted and then apparently removed.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and Epstein’s accusers have also criticized the DOJ for only releasing some of the files by the Dec. 19 deadline. The House members who wrote the law said they would seek to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress over the partial release.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the Justice Department has “about a million or so pages of documents” related to Epstein and that “virtually all of them contain victim information.” Based on internal estimates, it appears that hundreds of thousands of pages of additional Epstein-related documents have yet to be publicly released.
The Justice Department has said that some documents made public, including a purported letter from Epstein to Larry Nassar, a doctor convicted of sexually abusing athletes, are fake.
Along with the Justice Department’s statements challenging the veracity of claims made about Trump, Blanche has defended his agency’s procedures for releasing documents related to Epstein.
“We produce documents, and sometimes this can result in releasing fake or false documents because they simply are in our possession because the law requires this. … We will continue to produce every document required by law. Let’s not let internet rumor engines outrun the facts,” Blanche wrote on X.
The latest batch of documents included emails describing that federal investigators faced data processing delays and issues organizing the large collection of files they had obtained while investigating Epstein.
An assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York wrote in one February 2020 email released this week that it was “basically impossible for us to keep track of what we’re getting, and what has been completed, without some kind of identification or labeling system.”
A follow-up message in the email chain later that month states that investigators received access to “well over a million documents, and we don’t have any idea what we’re looking at.”
Victims’ rights advocates want specific info from files — and aren’t likely to get it
A group of women who have accused Epstein of abuse said in a statement on Monday that valuable information was still missing from Friday’s initial wave of documents released by the Justice Department.
The women, in their statement, claimed that numerous victim identities were left unredacted in the initial release and specifically criticized the lack of financial documents and unredacted grand jury minutes. The second batch of documents was similarly devoid of such information.
The Justice Department said its review process was focused on keeping victims’ identities shielded. While compiling records, the department sought the names of people victimized by Epstein and found “over 1,200 names being identified as victims or their relatives,” Blanche said in a letter to Congress.
Blanche also said the department had withheld some files that it claimed were covered by legal privileges that the new law did not specifically waive. Among those were documents that would reveal internal deliberations at the Justice Department.
Azi Paybarah, Matt Viser, Aaron Schaffer, Karla Adam, Mark Berman, Jeremy Roebuck and Perry Stein contributed to this report.
The post What we know (and what we don’t) about the Epstein files’ release appeared first on Washington Post.
