US justice department releases more investigative records on Jeffrey Epstein – Firstpost

The US Justice Department on Friday released a new tranche of records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, reviving disclosures under a transparency law designed to reveal what authorities knew about the financier’s sexual abuse of underage girls and his ties to powerful figures.

The documents, published on the department’s website, form part of millions of pages that officials say were withheld from an initial release in December and are being made public under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

The law was enacted after months of political and public pressure to force greater disclosure of government records related to Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, and his long-time associate and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a prison sentence for her role in the abuse.

Congress had set a December 19 deadline for the full release of the files, which the Justice Department missed. Officials later said the scale of the records and the need to protect victims required extensive review before public disclosure.

To comply with the law, the department said it assigned hundreds of lawyers to examine the files to determine what information must be redacted, particularly material that could identify survivors of sexual abuse.

The scope of the review has expanded sharply, with the Justice Department saying the total number of documents now stands at 5.2 million pages, including duplicates.

The department has said further releases are expected as the review process continues, amid intense scrutiny of how federal authorities handled the Epstein investigation and what officials knew about his conduct and network.

The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.

Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Donald Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of former President Bill Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.

Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.

Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was 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 home in Palm Beach, but the U.S. attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.

In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.

U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.

Among the people she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after the scandal led to him being stripped of his royal titles. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.

Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia last year at age 41.

With inputs from agencies