Trove of Epstein documents cause rift in Maga world – will the files be released?

The Guardian

3 days ago

A trove of documents related to the child sexual abuse offender Jeffrey Epstein are at the center of a splinter between Donald Trump and his rightwing allies.
While campaigning, Trump said he would release the so-called 'Epstein files,' the trove of documents about criminal investigations into his former friend, who died in jail by hanging in 2019. But since taking office, Trump has appeared to have broken that promise, rankling ardent Maga allies who have spent years calling for the documents' release.
Epstein knew powerful people of all political persuasions and counted them as friends. Releasing the documents has become a rallying cry to reveal more details about Epstein, including how he made his money, and the extent of involvement by those who supported him in his criminal activity, especially those with wealth and political sway.
Earlier in July, the US justice department said it would not be releasing more documents, saying it could harm victims and insisting there was not a 'client list'. Democrats have seized on the schism on the right, calling for Congress to compel the release of the documents and calling out Trump's hypocrisy.
Congress may intervene to obtain the documents. This week, a Democratic-led effort to subpoena the justice department for Epstein-related materials was passed by the House oversight subcommittee, but the leaders of the House GOP have also blocked other efforts to release the documents.
The federal government has a 'truckload' of documents from and about Epstein related to his criminal cases, according to Pam Bondi, the US attorney general. This includes his flight logs for private planes and contacts, which is sometimes referred to as his 'black book' – which has already been publicly posted online.
A memo released by the justice department in July said the agency searched through its databases, hard drives and physical areas to find Epstein-related information, locating 'more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence'.
Within those files were images and videos of Epstein and his victims, some of whom are minors, and more than 10,000 downloaded videos and images of 'illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography'.
Some documents related to Epstein are under court-ordered seals. For instance, a federal judge this week denied a request from the justice department to unseal grand jury transcripts in a south Florida criminal investigation. Some of those that were once sealed have been unsealed, including some unsealed in early 2024 that identified names of people included in depositions and motions who previously were listed as John Does.
'Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing,' the justice department memo said. 'Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.'
There are also serious concerns about identifying victims if some documents are released. The department said Epstein had harmed more than 1,000 victims, some minors, all of whom 'suffered unique trauma'.
'Sensitive information relating to these victims is intertwined throughout the materials. This includes specific details such as victim names and likenesses, physical descriptions, places of birth, associates, and employment history,' the memo said.
In its memo, the department says there was no 'client list,' despite it being a longtime claim and rallying call for those embedded in the Epstein case, especially on the right.
'There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,' the memo says. 'We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.'
Julie K Brown, an investigative journalist with the Miami Herald who has been uncovering the Epstein case for years, said earlier this year that there was 'no Jeffrey Epstein client list. Period. It's a figment of the internet's imagination – and a means to just slander people.'
In an interview with the Atlantic, Brown said the list idea was a 'red herring' that seems to have been born out of a phone directory Epstein's girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, compiled, often referred to as the 'black book'. People such as Trump and other celebrities were in the directory, but so were Epstein's gardeners, barbers and others, Brown said.
After Epstein's death by suicide, Trump shared a tweet that claimed the Clintons were involved in his death. He also told reporters at the time that he had questions about whether Bill Clinton went to Epstein's infamous island.
While campaigning for the 2024 election, Trump said, when asked, that he would declassify the Epstein files, though he prioritized them below files about September 11 and the John F Kennedy assassination. 'You don't want to affect people's lives if there's phoney stuff in there, because there's a lot of phoney stuff with that whole world,' he said then.
Bondi said earlier this year that the justice department would be releasing a list of Epstein's clients, telling Fox News that it was 'sitting on my desk right now to review' – though she later said she was talking about case files and not a client list. The department released some information, dubbed a 'first phase of files', to rightwing influencers, though those files did not contain much new information.
Trump has grown increasingly angry at those calling for the files to be released, and dismissed the entire ordeal as 'boring' and a 'hoax,' something that 'nobody cares about'.
'I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country's history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,' he wrote on Truth Social on July 16.
Recent reporting by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal said that the justice department briefed Trump that his name and the name of other well-known people were found as the department searched through the files. The Journal said Trump's name 'appeared multiple times'.
Trump is known to be a one-time friend of Epstein's. His name's inclusion in the documents does not mean he was a party to any of Epstein's criminal activity. Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew are expected to be named among the documents, as both were known to be in Epstein's circles to some degree.
Elon Musk, the world's richest man who was a Trump cheerleader until the two fell out, tweeted in early June amid a fight over the Trump tax bill that Trump 'is in the Epstein files' and 'that is why they have not been made public'. He has since deleted the tweet.
There are many legitimate questions that the files could shed light on about Epstein and his circle.
How Epstein made his money is still of much interest, as is how he financed his extensive sex-trafficking operation. Often referred to as a financier, he had massive wealth, owning expensive real-estate including two private islands, and a private jet.
Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate finance committee, told the New York Times that four major banks had 'flagged more than $1.5bn in transactions – including thousands of wire transfers for the purchase and sale of artwork for rich friends, fees paid to Mr Epstein by wealthy individuals, and payments to numerous women'.
Questions still swirl over potential ties to the intelligence community. Bondi told reporters: 'To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that. We can get back to you on that.' Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett denied Epstein was an Israeli agent, a frequent claim made without evidence. 'The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false,' Bennett said.
And suspicion over the manner of Epstein's death is still in the mix. The justice department released an 11-hour video of jail footage in the hours before and after his death, though one minute of footage was missing, leading to further scrutiny. Bondi has said that missing footage is because the Bureau of Prisons was resetting video.
There is also much to be discovered on how Epstein was able to evade justice for so long. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter, told the Atlantic her 'one nagging question' goes back to 2008, when the justice department decided not to fully go after Epstein after local and state authorities first were looking into his crimes.
'Who were the people behind that in the beginning?' Brown said. 'Because if they had done their jobs, of all these people in 2006, 2007, and 2008 – if all those people working for us, the American public, had done their jobs, we wouldn't be sitting here right now. A lot of those victims would've never been victimized.'