The Department of Justice released a portion of the vast trove of documents related to the federal government’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, after months of infighting that tested the unity of the MAGA movement.
The release comes after Congress passed a bill ordering the Justice Department to make all of its unclassified records related to Epstein’s investigation and prosecution public by Dec. 19, despite initial objections from President Donald Trump and Republican Party leaders.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that Friday’s release would not include all material and the department would disseminate potentially hundreds of thousands more files “over the next couple weeks.”
Trump had for months insisted that the push to release the files is a “Democrat hoax,” and he repeatedly targeted Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — two Republicans who led the charge in the House to release the files.
But he ultimately signed that bill into law on Nov. 19 after an eleventh-hour reversal in which he urged Republicans to vote for the bill, leading to a near-unanimous vote in the House. The Senate then passed the legislation by unanimous consent.
The law allowed the Justice Department to withhold certain documents, including those that include the personal information of victims, depict child sexual abuse or materials that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution,” giving the department wide latitude to omit some material from the release. It specifically bars DOJ from withholding or redacting information “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
Democrats and Republicans raised concerns that Trump’s decision to ask Attorney General Pam Bondi to initiate an investigation into Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats amid the furor over his handling of the investigation could serve as cover for the exclusion of certain documents.
The law also requires DOJ to provide Congress with a summary of all redactions made and “a list of all government officials and politically exposed individuals named or referenced in the published materials.”
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released more than 20,000 pages of emails exchanged between Epstein and several prominent figures in politics, media, technology and Hollywood last month, ramping up pressure on the Trump administration to release its files related to the investigation.
Epstein, who died in 2019 in a New York prison cell, faced various state and federal charges related to the sexual abuse and trafficking of dozens of underage girls as young as 14 over the course of two decades.
The release also sparked heightened scrutiny of several individuals highlighted in the emails, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who stepped away from his public commitments in the wake of the revelations. Summers told POLITICO in a statement following Congress’ release of his emails with Epstein that he’s “deeply ashamed” of his actions and takes “full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.”
But the new release from the Department of Justice could be far more expansive than just the emails obtained by the committee, potentially including investigatorial documents and evidence collected by federal agents and prosecutors.
In the emails released by Congress, Epstein communicated with people close to Trump — including his former adviser Steve Bannon — and in several exchanges offered his thoughts on the president, including one email to Summers in which he remarked that there was “not one decent cell in his body.” Bannon, who collaborated with Epstein on a never-released documentary, has denied media-training Epstein and called for Trump to empower a special prosecutor to unseal documents related to the probe.
In separate emails, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls” and referred to him as “that dog that hasn’t barked.”
Trump was once friends with Epstein, but the president has maintained for years that the two had a falling out decades ago. The president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing associated with Epstein, and there has been no evidence to suggest his involvement.
While Trump said during the 2024 presidential campaign that he would release more information on the investigation if reelected, DOJ concluded in a July memo that it “found no basis to revisit the disclosure” of the materials.
That followed a firestorm of criticism from the Republican Party after Bondi provided MAGA influencers with declassified binders titled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” at a February White House event which contained little new information on the case.
