The US Justice Department announced it was releasing millions of new pages from the Jeffrey Epstein files with photos and videos, adding fuel to a political drama that has put pressure on US President Donald Trump.
Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche said more than three million pages of documents related to the convicted sex offender were being published on a department website with 180,000 images and 2000 videos.
“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people,” Blanche said at a press conference.
He said all images of girls and women were being redacted aside from those of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of trafficking underage girls for Epstein and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
“We did not redact images of any men unless it was impossible to redact the woman without also redacting the man,” the Deputy Attorney-General said.
The latest release is expected to contain previously unseen material from the investigation into Epstein, a wealthy US financier who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking of underage girls. His death was ruled a suicide.
Previous releases have shed light on Epstein’s ties to leading business executives, celebrities, academics and politicians, including Trump and former President Bill Clinton.
Perhaps the most significant documents published so far are two FBI emails from July 2019 which mention 10 “co-conspirators” of Epstein.
Only one person – Epstein’s former girlfriend Maxwell – has ever been charged in connection with his crimes and the names of the alleged co-conspirators are redacted from the emails.
According to Axios, major documents which have not been released yet include a draft 60-count federal indictment of Epstein that was inexplicably quashed, and an 82-page prosecution memo from 2007.
Trump, a one-time close friend of Epstein, and Clinton both figure prominently in the records published so far, but neither have been accused of any wrongdoing.
A Republican-led House panel recently voted to launch contempt of Congress proceedings against Bill and Hillary Clinton over their refusal to testify before its probe into Epstein.
Trump, 79, fought for months to prevent release of the vast trove of documents about Epstein.
But a rebellion inside his Republican Party forced him to sign off on a law mandating release of all the documents.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) called for all of the documents held by the Justice Department to be published by December 19.
Blanche said the recent release brings the Justice Department in compliance with the act and he blamed the delay on the need to painstakingly carry out redactions that protected the identities of Epstein’s more than 1000 victims.
The sweeping redactions across many of the documents – combined with tight control over the release by the Trump administration – have stoked allegations of a potential high-level cover-up.
Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, rejected allegations the Justice Department was seeking to protect the President.
“We complied with the act,” he said. “We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect or not protect anybody.”
He said the White House played no role in the review of the files.
“They had no oversight over this review,” he said. “They did not tell this department how to do our review, what to look for, what to redact, what to not redact.”
As soon as the President’s name began surfacing in the released files, the Justice Department issued a statement saying that some documents “contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump”.
But the documents already released confirm that Trump was once close to Epstein.
They moved in the same social circles in New York and Florida, and documents confirm Trump flew multiple times on Epstein’s private jet.
A January 2020 note from New York federal prosecutors who were investigating Maxwell had Trump making eight trips on Epstein’s plane between 1993 and 1996.
Trump has given varying accounts of why he eventually fell out with Epstein. He has criticised the file dumps, expressing concern that people who “innocently met” Epstein over the years risked having their reputations smeared.
A spokesman for Clinton has urged the Justice Department to release all materials in the files related to the former President, saying he had nothing to hide.
- AFP