No less than 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — lower than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the federal government and no notice to the general public.
The missing files, which were available Friday and now not accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer amongst other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Justice Department didn’t say why the files were removed or whether their disappearance was intentional. A spokesperson for the department didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the general public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We want transparency for the American public.”
The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of hundreds of pages made public offered little latest insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting among the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.
Scant latest insight within the initial disclosures
A few of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be present in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of hundreds of pages.
Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that might have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a comparatively minor state-level prostitution charge.
The gaps go further.
The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long related to Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions on who was scrutinized, who was not, and the way much the disclosures truly advance public accountability
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Among the many fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to desert an investigation into Epstein within the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 grievance accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of youngsters.
The releases to this point have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in Latest York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.
There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Each have been related to Epstein, but each have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in reference to Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a task within the criminal cases brought against him.
Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make all the pieces public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming strategy of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.
That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. As an alternative of marking the tip of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the start of an indefinite wait for a whole picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to analyze them.
“I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein began sexually abusing her at his Latest York City mansion when she was 14.
Lots of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked context
Federal prosecutors in Latest York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.
The documents just made public were a sliver of doubtless tens of millions of pages records within the department’s possession. In a single example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had greater than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.
Lots of the records released to this point had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of data requests, though, for the primary time, they were multi function place and available for the general public to look at no cost.
Ones that were latest were often lacking vital context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from considered one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the fees against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.
Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There have been also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But not one of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.
The meatiest records released to this point showed that federal prosecutors had what seemed to be a powerful case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.
Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the primary time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews that they had 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 had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.
One other, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and the way she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the identical.
“For each girl that I dropped at the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from highschool, she said. “I also told them that in the event that they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you just are 18.”
The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did greater than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision to not bring federal charges.
Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would consider Epstein’s accusers.
He also said the Justice Department might need been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.
“I’m not saying it was the fitting view,” Acosta added. He also said that the general public today would likely view the survivors in a different way.
“There’s been a variety of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.