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The Justice Department has significantly expanded its public release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier implicated in the exploitation of young girls, and his connections to influential figures. This release is part of an ongoing effort to comply with a law aimed at unveiling the extent of the government’s knowledge about Epstein’s crimes and associations.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the department has made available over 3 million pages of documents, along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. These files, now accessible on the department’s official website, include materials previously withheld from an earlier document release in December.
The disclosures are in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a legislative measure passed after considerable public and political demand for transparency. This act mandates the disclosure of government files concerning Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Today’s release concludes a rigorous document identification and review process aimed at ensuring transparency for the American public while adhering to the requirements of the act,” stated Blanche during a press briefing about the document release.
Despite missing the initial December 19 deadline set by Congress for releasing all pertinent files, the Justice Department has engaged hundreds of attorneys to meticulously review the records. Their task is to redact sensitive information to safeguard the identities of sexual abuse victims.
Among the materials being withheld is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of personal details about potential victims. All women other than Maxwell have been redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.
The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to roughly six million, including duplicates, the department said.
The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.
Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Donald Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of former President Bill Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.
Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his home in Palm Beach, but the U.S. attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.
U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.
Among the people she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after the scandal led to him being stripped of his royal titles. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia last year at age 41.