The Justice Department released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including many that reference President Donald Trump. The new batch comes as the DOJ is being criticized for heavily redacting many of the files and not releasing all of them by the deadline set by Congress. White House correspondent Liz Landers reports.
William Brangham:
Welcome to the “News Hour.”
The Justice Department released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including many that reference President Donald Trump. The new batch comes as the DOJ is being criticized for not releasing all of the documents by the deadline set by Congress and heavily redacting many of those they have put out.
Our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, has been going through the recent batch, and she joins us now.
Hi, Liz.
What is in this latest release?
Liz Landers:
This is 30,000 more pages that were put up last night, taken down, and then reposted by the Justice Department. This includes photos, video surveillance, a lot of legal correspondence between different prosecuting areas that were prosecuting the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell case.
There are few pages of this that are fully redacted, no explanation why. There’s also an e-mail that mentions 10 co-conspirators that the FBI was discussing in 2019. That is some news that people have picked up on. And there’s also a few mentions of President Trump.
William Brangham:
Let’s talk about some of those mentions of him. We should say the president has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, but there are some troubling references in here.
Liz Landers:
There is a reference in one FBI file that includes a rape allegation. This was apparently made during the height of the 2020 campaign.
There’s also a court document that talks about a 14-year-old girl who was taken to Mar-a-Lago in 1994. She said that she was there with Jeffrey Epstein, who introduced her to its owner, Donald Trump. Epstein apparently elbowed Trump playfully, asking him, referring to Jane Doe: “This is a good one, right?” Trump smiled and nodded in agreement.
They both chuckled and Doe felt uncomfortable, but at the time was too young to understand why. There is another Department of Justice internal e-mail sent from a U.S. attorney to an unknown person, again redacted. This was sent in January of 2020 talking about Trump being on Epstein’s plane.
It says — quote — “For your situational awareness, we wanted to let that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than we previously had reported or that we were aware of.” And it said that he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996.
Now, the Department of Justice put out a statement this morning on social media saying that: “Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false. And if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
William Brangham:
But we don’t know which of those documents they’re referring to.
Liz Landers:
No, there’s not a clear indication in there.
William Brangham:
So what is President Trump saying about all this?
Liz Landers:
So President Trump was asked yesterday at his club in Palm Beach about some of the release that had come out, and in particular about former President Bill Clinton being in some of those images that we saw last week. Here’s what he said.
President Donald Trump:
A lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein. But they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party and you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues.
Liz Landers:
The president has repeatedly expressed his frustration that the Epstein files story continues to dominate the news, while he said it’s overshadowing some of the accomplishments of his administration.
William Brangham:
This is not how this was all supposed to roll out, right? Congress passed a law. Legislators are upset about this, as are some of the survivors. What are they saying?
Liz Landers:
To put it bluntly, the way that this has been released by the Department of Justice has not been in compliance with the original intent of the law.
The Epstein Transparency Act directed the Department of Justice to publish all of the files and materials related to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Flight logs, records, any grand jury testimony, all of that was supposed to be released, redactions to protect victims’ names, but that was it. And anything related to ongoing investigations, that was supposed to be redacted.
What we have seen is that not everything has been released all at once. Instead, we’re seeing this kind of trickle out over the course of several days now. We’ve also seen names that have been redacted in some of these e-mails with no apparent reason why between attorneys, it looks like. That’s not supposed to be covered up in some of these redactions.
And, also, we’ve seen that these files have been posted and then taken down in two instances now without explanation from the Department of Justice.
William Brangham:
Liz Landers, thanks for staying on top of all this for us.
Liz Landers:
Of course.