{"id":76234,"date":"2025-12-20T01:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T01:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/76234\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T01:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T01:57:10","slug":"justice-department-begins-releasing-long-awaited-files-tied-to-epstein-sex-trafficking-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/76234\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Department begins releasing long-awaited files tied to Epstein sex trafficking investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Justice Department on Friday began releasing its files on\u00a0Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>, a convicted sex offender and wealthy financier known for his connections to some of the world\u2019s most influential people, including Donald Trump, who as president had tried to keep the files sealed.<\/p>\n

The total volume was not immediately clear, though Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a Fox News Channel interview that he expected the department to release \u201cseveral hundred thousand\u201d records Friday and then several hundred thousand more in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

The records<\/a>\u00a0could contain the most detailed look yet at nearly two decades\u2019 worth of government\u00a0investigations into Epstein\u2019s sexual abuse<\/a>\u00a0of young women and underage girls.<\/p>\n

Their release has long been demanded by a public hungry to learn whether any of Epstein\u2019s rich and powerful associates knew about \u2014 or participated in \u2014 the abuse.\u00a0Epstein\u2019s accusers<\/a>\u00a0have also long sought answers about why federal authorities shut down their initial investigation into the allegations in 2008.<\/p>\n

Bowing to political pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump on Nov. 19 signed a bill giving the Justice Department\u00a030 days to release most of its files<\/a>\u00a0and communications related to Epstein, including information about the investigation into\u00a0his death in a federal jail<\/a>. The law\u2019s passage was a remarkable display of bipartisanship that overcame months of opposition from Trump and Republican leadership.<\/p>\n

What the law allows<\/p>\n

That law allows for redactions about the victims or ongoing investigations but makes clear no records shall be withheld or redacted due to \u201cembarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Nov. 14 that she had\u00a0ordered a top federal prosecutor<\/a>\u00a0to investigate Epstein\u2019s ties to Trump\u2019s political foes, including former President Bill Clinton. Bondi acted after Trump pressed for such an inquiry, though he did not explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men Trump mentioned in a social media post demanding the investigation has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein\u2019s victims.<\/p>\n

In July, Trump dismissed some of his own supporters as \u201cweaklings\u201d for falling for\u00a0\u201cthe Jeffrey Epstein hoax.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0But both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., failed to prevent the legislation from coming to a vote.<\/p>\n

Trump did a U-turn<\/a>\u00a0on the files once it became clear that congressional action was inevitable. He insisted that the Epstein matter had become a distraction to the Republican agenda and that releasing the records was the best way to move on.<\/p>\n

The Epstein investigations<\/p>\n

Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at his mansion. The FBI joined the investigation, and authorities gathered testimony from multiple underage girls who said they had been hired to give Epstein sexual massages.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, prosecutors\u00a0gave Epstein a deal<\/a>\u00a0that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges involving someone under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.<\/p>\n

Epstein\u2019s accusers then spent years in civil litigation trying to get that plea deal set aside. One of those women, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters, starting at age 17, with numerous other men, including billionaires, famous academics, U.S. politicians and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Britain\u2019s\u00a0Prince Andrew<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All of those men denied the allegations. Prosecutors never brought charges in connection with Giuffre\u2019s claims, but her account fueled conspiracy theories about supposed government plots to protect the powerful.\u00a0Giuffre died<\/a>\u00a0by suicide at her farm in Western Australia in April at age 41.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but\u00a0he killed himself in jail<\/a>\u00a0a month after his arrest. Prosecutors then charged Epstein\u2019s longtime confidant, British socialite\u00a0Ghislaine Maxwell<\/a>, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse.<\/p>\n

Maxwell was convicted in late 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, though she was\u00a0moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida<\/a>\u00a0to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she\u00a0was interviewed<\/a>\u00a0over the summer by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Her lawyers argued that she never should have been tried or convicted.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department in July said it had not found any information that could support prosecuting anyone else.<\/p>\n

Lots of Epstein records were already public<\/p>\n

After nearly two decades of court action and prying by reporters, a voluminous number of records related to Epstein is already public, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony and transcripts of depositions of his accusers, his staffers and others.<\/p>\n

Yet, the public\u2019s appetite for more records has been insatiable, particularly for anything related to Epstein\u2019s associations with famous people including Trump, Mountbatten-Windsor and Clinton.<\/p>\n

Trump was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling out. Neither he nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone\u2019s name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.<\/p>\n

Mountbatten-Windsor denied ever having sex with Giuffre, but King Charles III\u00a0stripped him of his royal titles<\/a>\u00a0this year after\u00a0Giuffre\u2019s memoir<\/a>\u00a0was published after she died.<\/p>\n

Sisak reported from New York.<\/p>\n

Follow the AP\u2019s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at\u00a0https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/jeffrey-epstein<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Justice Department on Friday began releasing its files on\u00a0Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3450,14155,14154,9,11,10,49,51,50,319,10111,2023,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-76234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-home","9":"tag-ksltv-com","10":"tag-ksltv-com-utah-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-talk-and-community","19":"tag-traffic","20":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}