For days, Lawyer Common Pam Bondi had talked about releasing the “Epstein information,” supposedly secret paperwork the federal authorities has on a few of the highly effective males who had been within the orbit of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
However the roughly 200 pages of documents that Ms. Bondi launched on Thursday contained little new info 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 make contact with info for a whole lot of associates, together with transient 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 News appearance 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., supplied 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 Information: Section I.” Certainly one of them later referred to as it an “interesting souvenir.”
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 character 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 stated {that a} “supply” within the F.B.I. area workplace in New York Metropolis had instructed her the bureau withheld “1000’s” of beforehand unknown pages of Epstein-related paperwork and that she was decided to get them, in accordance with a letter her spokesman offered to reporters.
The paperwork had been launched late on Thursday, together with a press release from Mr. Patel that stated: “If there are gaps, we are going to discover them. If information have been hidden, we are going to uncover them.”
Nonetheless, some Republicans in Congress took to X to voice displeasure with the data launched by Ms. Bondi.
“THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a whole 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 fees.
Mr. Epstein is believed to have sexually abused greater than 200 teenage ladies and younger girls over three many years. Throughout that point, he amassed a fortune price $600 million and befriended a few of the strongest and well-known individuals on the planet.
Included within the paperwork, which had been lastly posted on Thursday night time, was a completely redacted listing of 254 individuals described as masseuses.
Lots of the boldface names related to Mr. Epstein first got here to mild in 2015 when Gawker revealed his so-called black e-book of names, numbers and addresses.
That listing contains the retail magnate Leslie Wexner, the non-public fairness mogul Leon Black, the Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates and the enterprise capitalist Reid Hoffman. All of these males have stated they regretted their affiliation with Mr. Epstein.
It has additionally lengthy been recognized that President Trump, former President Invoice Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain and celebrities together with Kevin Spacey and Naomi Campbell had been pleasant with Mr. Epstein at one time, and a few traveled on Mr. Epstein’s non-public planes, in accordance 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 prison trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, considered one of Mr. Epstein’s longtime associates and a former girlfriend. She was convicted in 2021 on fees that she aided Mr. Epstein in his sex-trafficking actions.
Whereas Justice Division leaders claimed the papers launched on Thursday had been “declassified,” none of them had classification markings — or declassification markings.
The doc launch on Thursday was a second that stated a lot concerning the Trump administration. The 2 strongest legislation enforcement officers within the nation, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel, who’re accountable for overseeing very important nationwide safety and prison 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 dying however the names of highly effective males who additionally abused a few 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 talking in media interviews concerning 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 Instances searching for an inventory 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 embody partial descriptions of a few of these objects seized by federal brokers. Beneath the heading “evidence list,” there are transient descriptions of things like “VHS tape,” “envelope containing 4 CDs” and “picture 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 legislation agency is dealing with that lawsuit, stated that Ms. Bondi had taken a great first step and that he hoped this “will result in her taking significantly the ache of the victims” who had been suing the F.B.I.
Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.
