In Epstein’s latest files are famous names and new details about an earlier investigation
NEW YORK (AP) — Newly released government files on Jeffrey Epstein offer more details about his interactions with the rich and famous after serving time for sex crimes in Florida, and how much investigators knew about his abuse of underage girls when they decided not to indict him on federal charges nearly two decades ago.
The documents released Friday include Epstein’s communications with former White House aides, a co-owner of an NFL team and billionaires such as Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said it would release more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law aimed at revealing most of the material it collected during two decades of investigating the wealthy financier.
The files, posted on the department’s website, included documents involving Epstein’s friendship with Briton Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, and Epstein’s email correspondence with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, and other prominent contacts with people in political, business and philanthropic circles.
Other documents offered a window into several investigations, including those that led to sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019 and his longtime confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021, and an earlier investigation that found evidence that Epstein cavorted with underage girls but never led to federal charges.
Draft indictment details Epstein’s abuse
The FBI began investigating Epstein in July 2006, and agents expected him to be formally charged in May 2007, according to newly released records. A prosecutor drafted an indictment after several underage girls told police and the FBI that they had been paid to give Epstein sexualized massages.
The draft, included in the latest batch of documents, indicated that prosecutors were preparing to charge not only Epstein but also three people who worked for him as personal assistants.
According to interview notes released Friday, an employee at Epstein’s Florida estate told the FBI in 2007 that Epstein once made her buy flowers and give them to a Royal Palm Beach High School student to commemorate her performance in a school play.
The employee, whose name was redacted, said some of his tasks included fanning $100 bills on a table near Epstein’s bed, placing a gun between the mattresses in his bedroom and cleaning up after Epstein’s frequent massages with young girls, including disposing of used condoms.
In the end, the federal prosecutor in Miami at the time, Alexander Acosta, signed a deal that allowed Epstein to avoid federal prosecution. Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge of soliciting someone under 18 for prostitution and received an 18-month prison sentence. Acosta was Trump’s first Secretary of Labor in his previous term.
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Famous names appear in Epstein emails
The records have thousands of references to Trump, including emails in which Epstein and others shared news articles about him, commented on his policies or gossiped about him and his family.
Also included was a spreadsheet created in August summarizing uncorroborated tips from people who claim to have some knowledge of Trump’s wrongdoing.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s name appears at least several hundred times in the newly released records, in news clippings, Epstein’s private emails and guest lists at dinners hosted by Epstein. Some records document prosecutors’ attempt to get him to agree to be interviewed.
The records also show that Musk, the Tesla, SpaceX and X billionaire, contacted Epstein at least twice to plan visits to a Caribbean island where much of Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse allegedly occurred.
It was not immediately clear whether the visits took place. Spokespeople for Musk’s companies did not respond to emails seeking comment. Musk has said he repeatedly rejected Epstein’s overtures.
Epstein also appears to have tried to connect Tisch with women, according to emails. In one exchange, Tisch told Epstein that she had had lunch with one of Epstein’s assistants’ friends, a “very sweet girl,” and asked if Epstein knew anything about her.
Tisch said in a statement that she had a “brief association” with Epstein, “never went to his island” and “deeply regrets” meeting him.
The documents show that Bannon, a conservative activist who served as a strategist in Trump’s first term, joked about politics with Epstein, discussed meetings with him over meals and, in March 2019, asked Epstein if he could provide his plane to pick up Bannon in Rome.
In December 2012, Epstein invited Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street billionaire who is now Trump’s commerce secretary, to lunch on his island, records show. Lutnick’s wife accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. On another occasion in 2011, the men had drinks, according to a schedule shared with Epstein.
Lutnick has said he cut ties with Epstein a long time ago. A Commerce Department spokesperson said Lutnick had “limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.”
Another Epstein contact was former Obama White House general counsel Kathy Ruemmler. In one exchange, Epstein emailed Ruemmler to advise that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a mob-type figure, even as he derided Trump as a “maniac.”
A spokesman for Goldman Sachs, where Ruemmler is general counsel and chief legal officer, said he had a “professional association” with Epstein and “regrets meeting him.”
Records are based on previous government publication
Last month’s release of tens of thousands of pages included previously released flight logs showing Trump flying on Epstein’s plane in the 1990s and photographs of former President Bill Clinton. None of Epstein’s victims who have gone public have accused Trump, a Republican, or Clinton, a Democrat, of wrongdoing. Both men said they had no knowledge that Epstein was abusing underage girls.
Epstein committed suicide in a New York jail in August 2019, a month after being charged.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping to recruit some of her underage victims. He is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse. One victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, sued Mountbatten-Windsor, saying she had sexual encounters with him since she was 17. The now-former prince denied having had sexual relations with Giuffre, but settled his lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre committed suicide last year at age 41.
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Tucker and Richer reported from Washington. News journalists across the country contributed to this report.
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