At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public website containing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photo depicting President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were published, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.
The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible Saturday, included images of paintings depicting naked women and one that showed a series of photographs along a sideboard and in drawers. In this picture, in a drawer, among other photos, was a photo of Trump with Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Justice Department did not say why the files were removed or whether their disappearance was intentional. A spokesman for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Online, the unexplained missing files sparked speculation about what was removed and why the public was not notified, adding to the long-standing intrigue surrounding Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed out the missing image of a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”
The incident exacerbated concerns that had already emerged from the much-anticipated release of the Justice Department document. The tens of thousands of published pages offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.
The first revelations contained little new information
Some of the most consequential records about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which run into tens of thousands of pages.
Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions – records that could have explained how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge in 2008.
The gaps continue.
The records, required to be released under a law recently passed by Congress, make little reference to several powerful figures long linked to Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew. This raises new questions about who was investigated and who was not, and to what extent the revelations actually promote public accountability
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The new findings include: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to drop an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which allowed him to plead guilty to these state charges, and a previously unseen complaint from 1996 He accuses Epstein of stealing photos of children.
So far, numerous images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands have been released, including some photos of celebrities and politicians.
There were a number of unprecedented ones Photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly little from Trump. Both were linked to Epstein, but both have since denied these friendships. None of them were accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no evidence that the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.
Although Congress set a Friday deadline for release, the Justice Department said it plans to release the records on a rolling basis. The delay was attributed to the time-consuming process of redacting survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not said when additional documents might arrive.
This approach angered some Epstein accusers and Members of Congress those who fought for the law’s passage forced the department to act. Rather than marking the end of a years-long battle for transparency, Friday’s release of the document was merely the beginning of an endless wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to solve them.
“I feel again that the justice system and the judicial system are failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who claims Epstein began sexually abusing her in his New York mansion when she was 14.
Many of the long-awaited records were redacted or lacked context
Federal prosecutors in New York filed sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in prison after his arrest.
The documents just released were a fraction of potentially millions of pages of records in the department’s possession. In one example, Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Manhattan district attorney’s office had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, although many duplicate materials had already been turned over by the FBI.
Many of the records released so far had been released in court filings, congressional disclosures or Freedom of Information requests, although this was the first time this had been done everything in one place and available to the public for free searching.
New texts often lacked the necessary context or were heavily blacked out. A 119-page document labeled “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the 2021 indictments against Epstein or Maxwell in 2021, has been completely redacted.
Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey and even Epstein with television news anchor Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and no explanation was given as to why they were together.
The most substantive documents released so far showed that federal prosecutors had seemingly compelling cases against Epstein in 2007 but never charged him.
Transcripts of grand jury proceedings released publicly for the first time included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.
One of them told investigators that she had been sexually abused by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.
Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury that Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she subsequently recruited other girls to do the same.
“For every girl I brought to the table, he gave me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them if you’re underage, just lie about it and tell him you’re 18.”
The documents also include a transcript of an interview that Justice Department lawyers conducted more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his final decision not to pursue federal charges.
Acosta, who was labor secretary in Trump’s first term, expressed concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.
He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to pursue a federal prosecution in a case that straddles the legal line between sex trafficking and solicitation of prostitution, which is more commonly handled by prosecutors.
“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said the public would likely view the survivors differently today.
“There have been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.
