The Trump administration released some of the federal government’s trove of documents about deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein on the deadline set by Congress.
The Justice Department released thousands of Epstein-related documents on Friday in an attempt to comply with the congressionally imposed deadline to publicize all the documents within 30 days. Photos and call logs are among the batch of Epstein files, which feature redactions meant to protect victims’ identities and other sensitive information.
Epstein’s friends, associates, victims, possessions, and estate can be seen in the voluminous trove of photos the Trump administration disclosed Friday on its publicly available Epstein webpage. Former President Bill Clinton can be seen prominently in several photos in the new disclosures. A few of the photos show Clinton hanging out with Epstein and other friends. One photo shows Clinton lying in what appears to be a hot tub next to a person whose face is redacted. Another photo shows a smiling Clinton with his arm around a woman whose face is redacted.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be,” a spokesman for Clinton said in a statement.
“There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that. Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.”
The latest Epstein files are not the entirety of the federal government’s batch, meaning the Trump administration did not fulfill all of its obligations under recently passed federal law.
Bipartisan legislation was passed overwhelmingly in November to give the Trump administration 30 days to release all of the federal government’s Epstein files. The legislation made it through after Trump permitted House Republicans to vote for it. He did so only after Democrats gained enough Republican support for using a legislative vehicle known as a discharge petition to advance the legislation. Epstein’s victims backed the legislative push and have called for maximum transparency in releasing the files.
The Justice Department’s failure to meet the deadline does not come as a surprise. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier Friday that the administration would be releasing “several hundred thousand” documents Friday and more over the next few weeks.
“The DOJ is releasing a massive tranche of new documents that the Biden and Obama administrations refused to release. The story here: the Trump administration is providing levels of transparency that prior administrations never even contemplated. The initial deadline is being met as we work diligently to protect victims,” the DOJ’s public affairs office said in a statement.
Blanche’s statement drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers who accused the Trump administration of violating federal law in order to perpetrate a cover-up of the Epstein files.
“Donald Trump and the Department of Justice are now violating federal law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long, billion-dollar, international sex trafficking ring,” Representatives Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) and Robert Garcia (D., Calif.) said in a joint statement.
“We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law. The survivors of this nightmare deserve justice, the co-conspirators must be held accountable, and the American people deserve complete transparency from DOJ.”
Raskin is ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Garcia is ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, the two powerful House investigative panels. They had led Democrats’ effort to hammer the Trump administration on the Epstein files and revive public interest in Trump’s old friendship with the deceased sex offender.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration declined to release the Epstein files, prompting an avalanche of scrutiny from Democrats and the MAGA base. Trump has repeatedly dismissed the files as a “hoax” perpetrated by the Democratic Party. The Epstein files galvanized Democrats and became a thorn in Trump’s side over the past few months. Representatives Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), two MAGA favorites, repeatedly criticized the administration’s handling of the Epstein files as part of their broader split from Trump. Greene is set to resign from Congress next month, and Massie is facing a Trump-backed GOP primary challenger.
Massie said Friday’s document release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.” His Democratic colleage, Representative Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), another leading advocate for releasing the files, reacted similarly.
“The DOJ’s document dump of hundreds of thousands of pages failed to comply with the law authored by @RepThomasMassie and me. One document, 119 pages of Grand Jury testimony, was completely redacted. I explain what is missing and what the survivors and their lawyers are still expecting to be released,” Khanna stated.
In August, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Epstein’s activities with the goal of obtaining all of the existing documents on him. The committee has released multiple batches of documents from Epstein’s estate including never-before-seen emails, photographs, and legal documents. One of those documents was a controversial 50th birthday letter Trump appears to have written for Epstein on an image with an outline of a woman’s body. Trump has claimed the letter is fake and sued the Wall Street Journal for first reporting on it.
Trump’s name is one of many prominent ones in the Epstein files, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles acknowledged in a series of interviews that Vanity Fair published earlier this week. Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing during his friendship with Epstein, which spanned the 1990s and ended in the mid-2000s.
Trump has ordered the Justice Department to investigate prominent Democrats linked to Epstein, including Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and tech billionaire Reid Hoffman. Clinton and Hoffman have dismissed Trump’s directive. Meanwhile, Summers has experienced significant professional consequences over newly unearthed emails revealing he sought Epstein’s help in trying to seduce a younger, female economist shortly before Epstein’s 2019 arrest.
Epstein died in a New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His death was officially ruled a suicide but remains the subject of intrigue because of its circumstances. His partner, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year sex trafficking sentence after being convicted in 2021.