The Justice Department released thousands of files related to sex offender and accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in a much-anticipated document dump Friday.
The documents are the result of Congress forcing the Trump administration’s hand. The administration had initially promised extensive disclosures on Epstein but then, in July, abruptly changed course. Congress ultimately last month passed a bill requiring the administration to release the files, after a bipartisan revolt.
The documents are not everything the Justice Department has; it said Friday it will continue rolling them out in the coming weeks. But they give us our biggest glimpse to date of what the administration initially decided not to release.
The batch of documents appears, at least after early reviews, to include no smoking guns and relatively few major revelations.
Below are some takeaways from what we learned.
1. The administration failed to follow the law, likely seeding more suspicion
After months of the administration stepping on its own toes and making it look like it had something to hide, it did itself few favors with its rollout.
For one, the Justice Department didn’t release all the documents, as was required by the deadline Friday, 30 days after Congress passed its law.
And secondly, the documents carried extensive redactions — and for more reasons than the law prescribed. The redactions were also inconsistent, with the same content being redacted in one instance but not in another.
In some cases, the redactions included whole pages and even whole documents, as was the case with 119 pages of grand jury testimony.
Democrats cried foul, as did Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who helped lead the Epstein discharge petition effort. The Kentucky Republican said the document dump “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.”
A few key points: it was a tough deadline — 30 days to comb through thousands of documents and, in some cases, redact sensitive information. There is also no enforcement mechanism in the law, so it’s not clear what recourse Congress could have. (Two Democrats on key committees said they would examine “all legal options.”)
But the administration didn’t do much to warn everyone that it would fail to meet the deadline — at least until Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Fox News appearance on Friday morning.
And these things are unlikely to help the administration from a political standpoint. After all, it’s already lost plenty of trust with its handling of the files. And as many as 7 in 10 Americans thought the government had hidden information about Epstein, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll earlier this month.
“This just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
The problem with conspiracy theories is that they’re difficult to fully extinguish. Even if the administration had followed the law and released everything Friday, there would likely have been suspicions about things it held back or redacted.
But it’s given people plenty of reason to be suspicious about its commitment to transparency. And we can now add this to the list.
2. A heavy dose of Clinton
The documents that were released Friday, while only partial, featured a heavy dose of former president Bill Clinton. And the administration took great care to point that out.
There were a number of never-before-released pictures of Clinton.
But perhaps the most notable ones showed Clinton in water next to someone whose face was redacted. A Justice Department spokesman, Gates McGavick, in a post on X identified someone in a hot tub with Clinton as a “victim.”
(It’s worth noting that the Justice Department says it didn’t just redact victims.)
Several White House officials also pointed to the pictures. And the White House in its statement alluded to “Epstein’s Democrat friends.” It’s clear this was a point of emphasis.
Clinton’s connections to Epstein and travel on Epstein’s plane have been well-known, and Clinton has never been accused by law enforcement of wrongdoing related to Epstein. Indeed, Trump White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was quoted by Vanity Fair just this week saying Trump was “wrong” to link Clinton to potential criminal activity with Epstein.
Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña pointed to Wiles’s comment. He said the administration’s focus on Clinton amounted to “shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever.”
(It’s worth noting that Trump has been tied to one of Epstein’s victims, though he has denied any wrongdoing and has not been accused by law enforcement of it. Emails released by Epstein’s estate showed Epstein writing in a 2011 email that Virginia Giuffre had “spent hours at my house with” Trump. Giuffre in a 2016 deposition said she “never saw or witnessed” Trump participate in sexual acts and didn’t think he “participated in anything.”)
It was especially notable how many pictures of Clinton there were in the first batch of documents, compared to how few there were of Trump. This despite Trump and Epstein having had what clearly appears to be a close friendship for many years, as the New York Times recapped this week.
We’ll see if that continues to be the case in future document dumps, or if the Clinton photos were frontloaded.
3. A remarkable lack of Trump
It’s really remarkable how little Trump’s name and appearance show up in this first batch of documents, at least after early reviews.
We’ve seen many pictures of the two with one another previously, and as the Times story recapped, they spent lots of time socializing together in the 1990s and early 2000s, including at widely attended parties. Wiles referred to them as young “playboys” at the time. One woman the Times talked to recalled Epstein introducing himself at one point as “Don’s best friend.”
One image released Friday shows a number of photos featuring Trump and many others, arrayed across a desk and in a drawer.
Other photos had previously been public. Trump’s name appeared in Epstein’s phone and message books and on flight manifests, as it has before, and in depositions by others.
The big question with Trump, given his ties to Epstein in a crucial period, is whether he knew what Epstein might have been up to. A series of disclosures have added to those questions, with some Epstein victims demanding answers.
Trump didn’t address the situation in comments to reporters on Friday night.
4. Confirmation that law enforcement was warned very early
Aside from the politics here, this is really about the failure to bring Epstein to justice earlier. Epstein in the late 2000s cut a much-derided sweetheart deal before he was ultimately charged again in 2019, shortly before his suicide.
And one entry in the new documents Friday confirms just how long the system failed.
The documents confirm that Epstein survivor Maria Farmer filed a complaint against Epstein related to child pornography as far back as the mid-1990s. A 1996 FBI document references the complaint. While Farmer’s name is redacted, her lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, confirmed it was her report.
In the complaint, Epstein is alleged to have stolen photos of Farmer’s underage sisters.
“Epstein stole the photos and negatives and is believed to have sold the pictures to potential buyers,” the document reads. “Epstein at one time requested (redacted) to take pictures of young girls at swimming pools.”
It continued: “Epstein is now threatening (redacted) that if she tells anyone about the photos he will burn her house down.”
It would be nearly a quarter-century before Epstein would truly face justice.
“Just to see it in writing and to know that they had this document this entire time — and how many people were harmed after that date?” Farmer’s sister, Annie Farmer, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday night. “We’ve been saying it over and over, but to see it in black and white that way has been very emotional.”
5. The documents continue to turn up more famous people
Powerful men keep getting wrapped up in these document dumps.
This new dump, for instance, includes photos of Michael Jackson. In one photo, Jackson appears with Clinton and Diana Ross. (Jackson died in 2009. Ross and Jackson’s estate did not immediately comment to CNN.)
In other photos dated from 2007, Epstein is pictured across a table from famed newsman Walter Cronkite. (Cronkite’s name had turned up on flight logs earlier this year, indicating he traveled to Epstein’s private island. He, like Jackson, died in 2009.)
The release of the documents has proven a headache for a number of prominent individuals who turned up in photos or documents, including in Epstein’s later years after his plea deal made him a convicted sex offender. That’s perhaps most notably the case with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and former Obama White House official Kathy Ruemmler.
There is no evidence any of them engaged in illegal activity. But Summers has taken leave from teaching at Harvard University and resigned from his position on the board of OpenAI. He has said he was “deeply ashamed” of his association with Epstein.
