This was another massive release of documents on the Epstein affair. And yet another observation that there is still too much to know in the case of the millionaire pederast.
The US Department of Justice has now made public some 13,000 documents in its power relating to various criminal proceedings against Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. He was complying with a law unanimously approved by Congress to force the administration of Donald Trump to release all financial records, who died in 2019 (in a suicide, according to the forensic court) while waiting in a New York cell to be tried as the leader of a sex trafficking ring with hundreds of minor victims.
As usual, the declassification of new information on the “worst predator in the history of the United States”, as defined by the magistrate of one of its investigating courts, generated a solitary wait comparable to the disappointment of those who hoped to reveal all the enigmas. I also ask dozens of journalists from newsrooms around the world to examine these documents for information.
The whole is so vast that it does not seem prudent to render a verdict in the first hours on the revelations it contains and on what remains to be known. Where possible, here we pose a series of questions and answers about the latest chapter in the sinister mystery of the Epstein papers.
Which documents will be declassified soon?
It comes from three sources: the first sexual abuse investigation in Florida, in 2005, the court in the same state in which the financier experienced an extraordinary arrest in 2008, and the trial against him at the time of his death in New York, in 2019. It includes recordings of calls, testimony before the grand jury, transcripts of interviews, videos and photos without context. Parts of the text are extremely censored, because the law that required its publication also authorized the Department of Justice to mark any compromising information for the victims, some 1,200, according to Todd Blanche, deputy IRS of the United States.
The Epstein Records Transparency Act, a standard that twisted the arms of Trump’s allies after months of resistance to declassifying new documents, required released documents to be easily downloadable and allowed searches. It is also an invitation to protect documents containing descriptions of sexual abuse of minors, lurid images or data that could endanger an active investigation or ongoing legal proceeding. The fiscal general, Pam Bondi, is obliged to justify what was censored and Congress, to write a complementary report which details the content rod within 15 days of publication.
What are the main news?
This mainly comes from the graphics part. There are new photos of Epstein and Maxwell, also in the company of many famous friends they both met: from ex-President Bill Clinton to Michael Jackson, and from ex-President Andrés to Colombian Andrés Pastrana.
On the documentary side, the most important work is perhaps that which relates the denunciation by the FBI of one of Epstein’s first victims, Maria Farmer. The agency has no file even though she, as a minor, I made her aware in 1996 of the sexual abuse to which she was committed by the financier as a criminal in the company of Maxwell.
That day, Farmer released a statement saying he had experienced “one of the happiest days” of his life and had finally achieved something of justice for her, after decades of his testimony going unheeded. He also regrets the missed opportunity: if these agents had believed him, perhaps hundreds of minors would not have had to live through the traumatic experience that still haunts Farmer.
Are they all guarding the Ministry of Justice?
No, I warned Blanche this morning in an interview with Fox News. Although the law requires the Justice Department to release “all” of the documents custodians had on Epstein, the 200-person team took on the IRS’s task accomplished in just 30 days, Blanche said, of reviewing and redacting a portion of the records.
Knowing that the main protagonist of the declassification was former Democratic President Bill Clinton, a reasonable doubt arose on his part and the Department of Justice could not have chosen which party would give it time to arrive before that date.
So… what’s left?
It’s not at all clear. What is beyond doubt is that there are still many blind spots in Epstein’s grid of abuse and power relationships. Moreover, this publication is expected to reveal conclusive and substantial revelations about the origin of Epstein’s wealth, which is, to a large extent, a mystery. It’s about how I could create an international child trafficking network without arousing the suspicions of hundreds of experts in suspicious movements of bank capital, especially JP Morgan, with those who exploited and groomed him like a favored client who didn’t bother to ask questions for decades.
Do you hear from your circle of powerful friends?
Not a lot, but one of the biggest surprises was the amount of material in which Clinton appears. The Justice Department has publicly released dozens of photos – many previously unpublished – of the Democrat, who served as president between 1993 and 2001, alongside Epstein on his properties or in his private planes, on stages, during international trips or posing with musicians as recognizable as Jackson or Mick Jagger. In one, Clinton is pictured in a jacuzzi, and in another, he is seen swimming in a pool alongside Maxwell and another woman whose face has been obscured.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the former president accused the Trump administration of trying to “protect itself from what comes later, or what it is trying to hide forever” by releasing photos of Clinton. “Here there are two types of people. The first group knew nothing and broke off all relations with Epstein before discovering his crimes. The second group continued their relations after that. So we are still in the first,” he added.
In addition to Jackson and Jagger, singer and actress Diana Ross, actor Kevin Spacey and comedian Chris Tucker are among the celebrities who will appear in the roles published next month.
And Trump…is he being sold in the new papers?
Yes, but not much. The majority of the photos in which the Republican appears have already been released, including the best known, among those that were sold alongside the first lady, Melania Trump, Epstein and Maxwell.
On the other hand, he poses with four women, some of them in swimsuits; Their faces are not masked in this case, but their identity is unknown. As for the documents, Trump’s name appears in Epstein’s diary, as well as the pedophile’s theft records. This is also mentioned in court documents in the cases against Maxwell and Epstein.
The President of the United States and the pederast were friends for years, but, according to the Republican, they stopped being friends in early 2004, before Epstein was first accused of his crimes and also before the real estate mogul and reality TV star became involved in politics.
So far, the representative has not commented on the publication of these archives, and that is why he spoke for an hour and media in one of his verbose media outlets. I was in North Carolina.
Democrats… what do they mean?
It doesn’t take long for people to criticize: The government hasn’t released all the records as dictated by the law Trump signed a month ago, and much of the material released has been censored. “The law approved by Congress requires the full release of Epstein’s records so that there is full transparency,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “Limiting yourself to publishing a mountain of pages with large demarcated sections violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law. For example, all 119 pages of a document are entirely in black. You need to know why.”
The file he’s referring to is one titled “Gran Jurado New York,” so clearly it must include the information that gave access to the grand juror who convicted Epstein in 2019 of sexual exploitation and abuse of minors, or the information with which another grand juror investigated Maxwell.
And the Republicans?
Some criticism also comes from Trump’s party. Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky and one of the lawmakers who wrote the records disclosure law, said the documents released by the government were “serious, in violation of the spirit and letter of the law.”
Trump’s key allies have not been as vocal in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) world. They are the ones who fueled conspiracy theories about this affair for years. When Bondi decided that, despite his promises for months, the department he led would not publish new newspapers, it caused a huge crisis between the president’s most loyal followers and the leader of his sect. This time, they remained mostly silent.
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