What are the Jeffrey Epstein files, and will more be released?

What are the ‘files’? What kinds of documents?

The federal government has a “truckload” of documents from and about Epstein related to his criminal cases, according to reported comments of Pam Bondi, the US attorney general. This includes his flight logs for private planes and contacts, which is sometimes referred to as his “black book” – which has already been publicly posted online.

A memo released by the justice department in July said the agency searched through its databases, hard drives and physical areas to find Epstein-related information, locating “more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence”.

Within those files were images and videos of Epstein and his victims, some of whom are minors, and more than 10,000 downloaded videos and images of “illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography”.

Some documents related to Epstein are under court-ordered seals. For instance, a federal judge this week denied a request from the justice department to unseal grand jury transcripts in a south Florida criminal investigation. Some of those that were once sealed have been unsealed, including some unsealed in early 2024 that identified names of people included in depositions and motions who previously were listed as John Does.

“Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing,” the justice department memo said. “Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.”

There are also serious concerns about identifying victims if some documents are released. The department said Epstein had harmed more than 1,000 victims, some minors, all of whom “suffered unique trauma”.

“Sensitive information relating to these victims is intertwined throughout the materials. This includes specific details such as victim names and likenesses, physical descriptions, places of birth, associates, and employment history,” the memo said.

Is there a ‘client list’?

In its memo, the department says there was no “client list”, despite it being a longtime claim and rallying call for those embedded in the Epstein case, especially on the right.

“There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” the memo says. “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

Julie K Brown, an investigative journalist with the Miami Herald who has been uncovering the Epstein case for years, said earlier this year that there was “no Jeffrey Epstein client list. Period. It’s a figment of the internet’s imagination – and a means to just slander people.”

In an interview with the Atlantic, Brown said the list idea was a “red herring” that seems to have been born out of a phone directory Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, compiled, often referred to as the “black book”. People such as Trump and other celebrities were in the directory, but so were Epstein’s gardeners, barbers and others, Brown said.

What has Trump said about the files?

After Epstein’s death by suicide, Trump shared a tweet that claimed the Clintons were involved in his death. He also told reporters at the time that he had questions about whether Bill Clinton went to Epstein’s infamous island.

While campaigning for the 2024 election, Trump said, when asked, that he would declassify the Epstein files, though he prioritized them below files about September 11 and the John F Kennedy assassination. “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phoney stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phoney stuff with that whole world,” he said then.

Bondi said earlier this year that the justice department would be releasing a list of Epstein’s clients, telling Fox News that it was “sitting on my desk right now to review” – though she later said she was talking about case files and not a client list. The department released some information, dubbed a “first phase of files”, to rightwing influencers, though those files did not contain much new information.

Trump has grown increasingly angry at those calling for the files to be released, and dismissed the entire controversy as “boring” and a “hoax”, something that “nobody cares about”.

“I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” he wrote on Truth Social on 16 July.

On 16 November, Trump said the files should be released.

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,’” he wrote on Truth Social.

Is Trump named in the files?

Yes. Trump is known to be a one-time friend of Epstein’s. His name’s inclusion in the documents does not mean he was a party to any of Epstein’s criminal activity.

Documents released by Democratic members of the House oversight committee included an email from Epstein to Trump biographer Michael Wolff in which Epstein said of Trump: “Of course, he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” In another, he called Trump the “dog that hasn’t barked”.

Epstein emailed people about Trump regularly, usually derogatorily. “I have met some very bad people,” he wrote in one email. “None as bad as Trump. Not one decent cell in his body.”

What questions could these files help answer?

There are many legitimate questions that the files could shed light on about Epstein and his circle.

How Epstein made his money is still of much interest, as is how he financed his extensive sex-trafficking operation. Often referred to as a financier, he had vast wealth, owning expensive real-estate including two private islands, and a private jet.

Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate finance committee, told the New York Times that four major banks had “flagged more than $1.5bn in transactions – including thousands of wire transfers for the purchase and sale of artwork for rich friends, fees paid to Mr Epstein by wealthy individuals, and payments to numerous women”.

Questions still swirl over potential ties to the intelligence community. Bondi told reporters: “To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that. We can get back to you on that.” The former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett denied Epstein was an Israeli agent, a frequent claim made without evidence. “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false,” Bennett said.

And suspicion over the manner of Epstein’s death is still in the mix. The justice department released an 11-hour video of jail footage in the hours before and after his death, though there seems to be almost three minutes of footage missing, leading to further scrutiny. Bondi has said that missing footage is because the Bureau of Prisons was resetting video.

There is also much to be discovered on how Epstein was able to evade justice for so long. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter, told the Atlantic her “one nagging question” goes back to 2008, when the justice department decided not to fully go after Epstein after local and state authorities first were looking into his crimes.

“Who were the people behind that in the beginning?” Brown said. “Because if they had done their jobs, of all these people in 2006, 2007, and 2008 – if all those people working for us, the American public, had done their jobs, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now. A lot of those victims would’ve never been victimized.”