The Justice Department on Friday dropped more than 3 million pages of documents from its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said fulfilled the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive documentation, document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a news conference.
The largest trove of Epstein materials released by the government to date includes references to President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk and other famous and prominent people, but so far there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by any of the principals mentioned.
The new documents — coming weeks after a congressionally mandated Dec. 19 deadline — include 2,000 videos and 18,000 images, not all of which were taken by Epstein or someone around him, Blanche said. They contain “large quantities of commercial pornography” and images seized from Epstein’s devices, he added.
MS NOW’s initial review of the new records indicates that despite its vow — and obligation — to protect the identities of victims, the DOJ has produced documents revealing the names and other identifying details of Epstein’s known survivors.
In at least one case, MS NOW found a driver’s license with a photo that was not redacted among the documents produced Friday, which had not been previously produced in public court filings.
The files include emails between Lutnick, his wife, Allison Lutnick, and Epstein staff showing that in December 2012, during a family vacation in the Caribbean, the Lutnicks and their children, along with another family, visited Epstein at his island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Other email chains appeared to show that between 2016 and 2017, Epstein sent genetic tests, primarily from 23andMe, to friends and family members. Although the exact purpose is not known, there is some discussion in the exchanges of analyzing the ancestry data for intelligence and potential health risks. Most notably, Epstein and his associates sent kits to Woody Allen, his wife Soon-Yi Previn, Noam Chomsky and his wife Valeria Wasserman Chomsky.
The documents also initially included a spreadsheet containing claims of impropriety — some secondhand — made against Trump and others, at least some of which appear to have been unsubstantiated tips or allegations. The spreadsheet briefly disappeared from the Department of Justice website but has since been restored. It was not immediately clear why.
Blanche said the DOJ identified a total of 6 million pages that were “potentially responsive” to the law during its collection effort, because officials “erred on the side of overcollecting” materials. “The number of responsive pages is significantly smaller than the total number of pages initially collected,” he said, adding, “We’re releasing more than 3 million pages today, and not the 6 million pages that we collected.”
The files posted online contained many redactions to images and videos, which the Justice Department said were made to to protect victims.
“We redacted every woman depicted in any image or video, with the exception of [Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine] Maxwell,” Blanche said. “We did not redact images of any men unless it was impossible to redact the woman without also redacting the man.”
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee zeroed in on the 6 million “potentially responsive” pages that Blanche referred to at his news conference earlier Friday.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the panel, demanded the release of those documents and said it was “outrageous and incredibly concerning” that the DOJ could potentially “withhold roughly 50% of the Epstein files while claiming to have fully complied with the law.” Another Oversight Committee Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, also of California, said, “Failing to release these files only shields the powerful individuals who were involved and hurts the public’s trust in our institutions.”
The latest batch of files includes email correspondence between Epstein and Musk, Trump’s former “special government employee” in charge of slashing federal jobs. In one 2012 exchange, the tech multibillionaire asks Epstein when the “wildest party” on his private island will be. It’s unclear whether such a visit took place. Epstein was a known convicted sex offender at the time, having struck a controversial plea deal with the Justice Department in 2008 in which he pleaded guilty to lesser state charges in Florida to avoid stricter federal penalties.
Musk has denied that he ever visited Epstein’s island, telling Vanity Fair in 2019, about a month before the financier died, that Epstein “tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined.”
Representatives for Musk did not respond to multiple requests from MS NOW seeking comment on the correspondence in Friday’s release of documents. But he addressed the emails he exchanged with Epstein in a post on X, writing, “I had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island or fly on his ‘Lolita Express’, but was well aware that some email correspondence with him could be misinterpreted and used by detractors to smear my name.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the Justice Department for missing a legal deadline to release in full its documents related to the late financier.
Blanche said the DOJ withheld some documents for reasons permitted by the law, including files with personal identifying information about Epstein’s victims, material that depicted child sexual abuse and death or violence, and “anything that would jeopardize an active federal investigation.”
He maintained that the department is not holding anything back.
“There’s not some tranche of super-secret documents about Jeffrey Epstein that we’re withholding,” Blanche said, adding that the DOJ has “complied with the act.”
Congress in November passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in a near-unanimous vote, and Trump signed it into law under immense pressure from his base.
But the Epstein files controversy has continued to trail the president. The Justice Department’s failure to produce all of its documents within the 30-day deadline also fueled anger and conspiracy theories over the financier’s crimes. Trump and Epstein were friends until they had a falling out in the 2000s, and Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities.
Blanche acknowledged that there is a “thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied” by the DOJ’s release of documents. But he said that the department “did not protect President Trump.”
“There’s this mantra out there that the Department of Justice is supposed to protect Donald J. Trump,” Blanche said. “That’s not true. That was never the case. We are always concerned about the victims.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
