Thousands of documents related to sex offender and accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were released by the Justice Department yesterday, as a deadline set by law forced the Trump administration’s hand.
The batch of documents appears, at least after early reviews, to include no smoking guns and relatively few major revelations. More documents are set to be released in the coming weeks, the Justice Department said yesterday.
We’ll bring you reaction as and when we get it today. Here are some takeaways on what we learned from the release:
The Justice Department was ordered by law to release all documents related to Epstein by yesterday’s deadline – something it has not done. Many of the documents were also heavily redacted, despite the law saying records can’t be “withheld, delayed, or redacted” due to concerns about “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
Among the many files released were several featuring former president Bill Clinton, something the Trump administration took great care to point 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.”
Despite Trump and Epstein having had what clearly appears to be a close friendship for many years, the president showed up very rarely in this first batch of documents, at least after early reviews.
One image released 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. Trump didn’t address the situation in comments to reporters last night.
One entry in the new documents confirms just how long the system failed to being Epstein to justice.
It confirmed 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.
The newly-released documents feature photos of famous people including Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. In other photos, Epstein is pictured across a table from famed newsman Walter Cronkite.
There is no evidence any of them engaged in illegal activity. Jackson and Cronkite died in 2009. Ross and Jackson’s estate did not immediately comment to CNN.
Read more on this analysis of the latest document release here.
CNN’s Catherine Nicholls contributed to this reporting.