The Justice Department on Friday released many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier's sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people such as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.
The files, posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release in December.
Included were documents concerning some of Epstein's famous associates, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Britain’s Prince Andrew, and email correspondence between Epstein and Elon Musk and other prominent contacts from across the political spectrum.
Friday's disclosure represents the largest document dump to date about a saga the Trump administration has struggled to shake because of the president's previous association with Epstein. Criminal investigations into the financier have long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting, demands that Blanche acknowledged might not be satisfied by the latest release.
“There’s a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don’t think will be satisfied by the review of these documents," he said.
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The latest batch includes correspondence either with or about some of Epstein's friends.
The records have thousands of references to Trump, including emails in which Epstein and others shared news articles about him, commented on his policies or politics, or gossiped about him and his family.
Also included was a spreadsheet created last August summarizing calls to the FBI’s National Threat Operation Center or to a hotline established by prosecutors from people claiming without corroboration to have some knowledge of wrongdoing by Trump.
Mountbatten-Windsor's name appears at least several hundred times in the documents, sometimes in news clippings, sometimes in Epstein’s private email correspondence and in guest lists for dinners organized by Epstein. Some records document an attempt by prosecutors in New York to get the former prince to agree to be interviewed as part of their Epstein sex trafficking probe.
The records also show Musk, the billionaire Tesla founder, reached out to Epstein on at least two occasions to plan visits to the Caribbean island where many of the allegations of sexual abuse purportedly occurred.
In a 2012 exchange, Epstein asked how many people Musk would like flown by helicopter to the island he owned.
“Probably just Talulah and me,” Musk responded, referencing his then-partner, actress Talulah Riley. “What day/night will be the wildest party on our island?”
It’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Musk has said he repeatedly rebuffed Epstein's overtures.
Epstein also appears to have tried to connect New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch with women, according to emails.
Tisch said in a statement that he had a “brief association” with Epstein where they emailed about adult women and other topics. He said he “never went to his island” and that he “deeply regrets” the association.
The documents show that Steve Bannon, a conservative activist who served as Trump’s White House strategist earlier in the president’s first term, bantered over politics with the financier, discussed get-togethers with him and, on March 29, 2019, asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome.
Epstein told him his pilot and crew “are doing their best” to arrange that flight but if Bannon could find a charter flight instead, “I’m happy to pay.” Apparently in France at the time, Epstein sent a text message saying: “My guys can pick you up. Come for dinner.” The exchange did not show how that played out.
In December 2012, Epstein invited Howard Lutnick, now Trump's commerce secretary, to his private island for lunch, the records show. Lutnick’s wife accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. On another occasion in 2011, the two men had drinks, according to a schedule shared with Epstein.
Lutnick has said he cut ties with Epstein long ago. A Commerce Department spokesman said Lutnick had “limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.”
Another Epstein contact surfacing in the records is former Obama White House general counsel Kathy Ruemmler. In one of several exchanges, Epstein emailed Ruemmler to advise that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a Mafia-type figure even as he derided the president as a “maniac.”
A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs, where Ruemmler is general counsel and chief legal officer, said in a statement that Ruemmler “had a professional association with Jeffrey Epstein when she was a lawyer in private practice” and "regrets ever knowing him.”
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The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Lawmakers complained when the Justice Department made only a limited release last month, but officials said more time was needed to review additional documents that were discovered and to ensure no sensitive information about victims was released.
After missing a December 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out.
It denied any effort to shield Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago after an earlier friendship, from potential embarrassment.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after being indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his Palm Beach home. The U.S. attorney's office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.
A draft indictment from that period released Friday shows prosecutors contemplated federal charges against not just Epstein but three others who were his personal assistants and were suspected of participating in a conspiracy to recruit underage girls to perform lewd acts with Epstein.
(FRANCE 24 avec AP)
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