For days, Legal professional Common Pam Bondi had talked about releasing the “Epstein information,” supposedly secret paperwork the federal authorities has on a number of the highly effective males who have been within the orbit of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
However the roughly 200 pages of paperwork that Ms. Bondi launched on Thursday contained little new data pointing to wrongdoing by anybody apart from Mr. Epstein, a registered intercourse offender who died in jail. The doc dump largely consisted of flight logs for Mr. Epstein’s planes — way back made public — and phone data for lots of of associates, together with temporary descriptions of things discovered at his residences.
The discharge was billed as a gesture ushering in a brand new period of transparency on the Justice Division. However the hyped first launch of paperwork (which Ms. Bondi teased as “breaking information” in a Fox Information look on Wednesday night time) gave the impression to be largely political theater. Its complicated daylong rollout even spun off a couple of new conspiracy theories amongst some Trump supporters, who view the Epstein investigation as a fountainhead for different conspiracies.
On Thursday afternoon, Ms. Bondi and Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., provided a sneak preview of the paperwork to a number of conservative influencers, a few of whom emerged from the West Wing waving chunky white binders with the label “The Epstein Recordsdata: Part I.” One among them later referred to as it an “fascinating memento.”
However by midafternoon, the Justice Division had not posted the contents. And Ms. Bondi was drawing criticism on social media from those that had taken her at her phrase the night time earlier than. The conservative persona Glenn Beck posted on X: “The Epstein information are a complete joke,” and requested, “Who’s subverting POTUS?”
Ms. Bondi responded by promising extra paperwork to come back. Later, she mentioned {that a} “supply” within the F.B.I. area workplace in New York Metropolis had informed her the bureau withheld “1000’s” of beforehand unknown pages of Epstein-related paperwork and that she was decided to get them, in keeping with a letter her spokesman offered to reporters.
The paperwork have been launched late on Thursday, together with a press release from Mr. Patel that mentioned: “If there are gaps, we are going to discover them. If data have been hidden, we are going to uncover them.”
Nonetheless, some Republicans in Congress took to X to voice displeasure with the knowledge launched by Ms. Bondi.
“THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and an entire disappointment. GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!” wrote Consultant Anna Paulina Luna of Florida.
Mr. Epstein, a school dropout and self-proclaimed monetary whiz, killed himself in August 2019 — one month after his arrest on federal sex-trafficking expenses.
Mr. Epstein is believed to have sexually abused greater than 200 teenage ladies and younger girls over three a long time. Throughout that point, he amassed a fortune value $600 million and befriended a number of the strongest and well-known individuals on the planet.
Included within the paperwork, which have been lastly posted on Thursday night time, was a wholly redacted listing of 254 individuals described as masseuses.
Most of the boldface names related to Mr. Epstein first got here to gentle in 2015 when Gawker printed his so-called black guide of names, numbers and addresses.
That listing consists of the retail magnate Leslie Wexner, the personal fairness mogul Leon Black, the Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates and the enterprise capitalist Reid Hoffman. All of these males have mentioned they regretted their affiliation with Mr. Epstein.
It has additionally lengthy been identified that President Trump, former President Invoice Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain and celebrities together with Kevin Spacey and Naomi Campbell have been pleasant with Mr. Epstein at one time, and a few traveled on Mr. Epstein’s personal planes, in keeping with beforehand launched flight logs, trial testimony and court docket filings.
Probably the most notable flight log was a 118-page doc produced through the legal trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, considered one of Mr. Epstein’s longtime associates and a former girlfriend. She was convicted in 2021 on expenses that she aided Mr. Epstein in his sex-trafficking actions.
Whereas Justice Division leaders claimed the papers launched on Thursday have been “declassified,” none of them had classification markings — or declassification markings.
The doc launch on Thursday was a second that mentioned a lot in regards to the Trump administration. The 2 strongest regulation enforcement officers within the nation, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel, who’re answerable for overseeing very important nationwide safety and legal investigations, selected to prioritize a long-concluded case to assuage conservative media and the obsessive core of Trump supporters who see the case as nefarious unfinished enterprise.
For years, conspiracy theorists have believed there’s a grand plot by the federal government to hide not solely the reason for Mr. Epstein’s loss of life however the names of highly effective males who additionally abused a number of the victims, who included teenage women and girls.
On right-wing media platforms like Fox Information and Mr. Trump’s personal service, Fact Social, there lengthy has been discuss of an “Epstein consumer listing” that particulars the names of males for whom Mr. Epstein procured girls. However there has by no means been a reference to any “consumer listing” in any of the civil litigation introduced by victims.
Earlier than becoming a member of the Trump administration, Ms. Bondi fueled a few of that hypothesis herself by speaking in media interviews in regards to the authorities’s refusal to launch Epstein paperwork.
The F.B.I. additionally has refused to launch some paperwork requested by legal professionals for victims and the information media. In October, the F.B.I. rejected a Freedom of Data Act request filed by The New York Occasions searching for a listing of all objects seized by federal brokers after they searched Mr. Epstein’s residences in New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands after his July 2019 arrest.
The paperwork launched by Ms. Bondi could embrace partial descriptions of a few of these objects seized by federal brokers. Underneath the heading “proof listing,” there are temporary descriptions of things like “VHS tape,” “envelope containing 4 CDs” and “photograph depicting two ladies.”
Greater than two dozen of Mr. Epstein’s victims have joined a lawsuit charging the F.B.I. with mishandling earlier investigations into his actions and ignoring complaints filed by victims.
Jordan Merson, whose regulation agency is dealing with that lawsuit, mentioned that Ms. Bondi had taken an excellent first step and that he hoped this “will result in her taking significantly the ache of the victims” who have been suing the F.B.I.
Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.
