WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department released hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday that made scant reference to President Donald Trump but extensively featured Democratic former President Bill Clinton.
The release was intended to comply with a law overwhelmingly passed by Congress in November that mandated the disclosure of all Epstein files, despite the Republican president’s months-long effort to keep them sealed. Trump for years had promoted conspiracy theories about Epstein, but the case has turned into a political liability for him since his return to the White House in January.
It was not immediately clear how substantive the new materials were, given that many Epstein-related documents have previously been made public since his 2019 death in jail, which was ruled a suicide. Reuters is in the process of reviewing them.
The material included evidence from several law enforcement investigations into Epstein, along with photos of Clinton, long scorned by Trump’s Republicans. But they appeared to include few if any photos of Trump or documents mentioning him, despite Trump and Epstein’s well-publicized friendship in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The absence of references to Trump was notable given that pictures and documents related to him have trickled out of previous Epstein releases for years. Trump’s name appeared in flight manifests listing passengers on Epstein’s private plane that were part of a first batch of Epstein material the Justice Department released in February.
Trump and several of his family members were also listed in an Epstein contact book, which was made public during the trial of Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
NOT ALL DOCUMENTS RELEASED
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the initial batch of documents would be followed by additional releases, leaving open the possibility that Trump could feature more prominently in later disclosures.
Trump ordered the Justice Department last month to investigate Clinton’s ties to Epstein, in what critics viewed as an effort to shift the focus away from his own relationship with Epstein.
In one image released on Friday, Clinton can be seen in a swimming pool with Maxwell and another person whose face is blocked out. Clinton, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has previously expressed regret for socializing with Epstein and has said he was not aware of any criminal activity.
The Justice Department added a note to the webpage where it posted links to the documents that said “all reasonable efforts have been made” to redact victims’ personal information, but warned that some could be disclosed inadvertently.
In a letter to Congress, Blanche estimated it would take an additional two weeks for the Justice Department to review other documents for potential release.
There are more than 1,200 names identified as victims or their relatives in the files, he added.
In a statement on Friday, the White House claimed the release demonstrated its transparency and commitment to justice for Epstein’s victims, criticizing previous Democratic administrations for not doing the same.
BIPARTISAN VOTE FORCED RELEASE
But the statement ignored that the disclosures occurred only because Congress forced the administration’s hand, after Trump officials declared earlier this year that no more Epstein files would be made public.
Democrats immediately criticized the administration for failing to release all of the files.
“This set of heavily redacted documents released by the Department of Justice today is just a fraction of the whole body of evidence,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, who is the subject of a criminal mortgage-fraud investigation by the Justice Department that he says is motivated by politics, said: “They could have been completely ready for this moment, and they’re not, or they’re just simply withholding the materials.”
But many Trump voters accused his administration of covering up Epstein’s ties to powerful figures and obscuring details surrounding his death in a Manhattan jail, where he was awaiting trial on charges of trafficking and abusing underage girls.
Just 44% of American adults who identify as Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the Epstein issue, compared to his 82% overall approval rating among the group, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. The issue has damaged Trump’s political standing ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, when control of Congress is at stake.
Two days after those disclosures, Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s connections to Clinton and JPMorgan bank . The following week, despite White House pressure to delay the vote, U.S. lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to pass a bill forcing the release of the Justice Department records, which Trump then signed into law.
TRUMP DENIED KNOWLEDGE OF EPSTEIN’S ALLEGED SEX TRAFFICKING
Trump was once friendly with Epstein until they had a falling out in the mid-2000s, before Epstein’s first conviction in 2008. Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing and has denied knowing about Epstein’s sex trafficking.
The law ordering the files’ release allowed the Justice Department to withhold personal information about Epstein’s victims as well as material that would jeopardize an active investigation.
Previous disclosures of Epstein records have revealed that even after his 2008 conviction he continued corresponding with high-profile figures, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Britain’s former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his royal title over revelations about his links to Epstein.
Spokespeople and lawyers for Bannon, Thiel and Mountbatten-Windsor have not responded to Reuters’ requests for comment about their interactions with Epstein.
Summers stepped back from positions at Harvard University, OpenAI and other institutions and said he was deeply ashamed of his actions after documents released by House Democrats in November showed that Summers corresponded with Epstein up through 2019, even seeking relationship advice from him.
JPMorgan paid some of Epstein’s victims $290 million in 2023 to settle claims that it had overlooked his sex trafficking. The bank kept Epstein on as a client for five years after he was convicted of soliciting a minor in 2008.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Julia Harte, , Brad Heath, Andy Sullivan, Jeff Mason and Ryan Patrick Jones, writing by Joseph Ax; editing by Ross Colvin, Scott Malone, Deepa Babington and Diane Craft)
Comments