The US justice department has released additional files related to the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The justice department gave a statement on Thursday evening, saying the release largely contained documents that had been “previously leaked but never released in a formal capacity by the US government”.
“This Department of Justice is following through on President Trump’s commitment to transparency and lifting the veil on the disgusting actions of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators,” said US attorney general Pam Bondi.
In recent weeks, Bondi had indicated that the justice department would release files related to Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
During an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Bondi, who was sworn in as attorney general earlier this month, said: “I think tomorrow … you’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office.”
“What you’re going to see hopefully tomorrow is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information” on Epstein, she said, adding: “It’s pretty sick what that man did.”
She told the network that there are “well over 250 victims” connected to Epstein and that her department was working on protecting their identities and personal information.
On Thursday, a group of individuals was spotted leaving the White House carrying binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1”.
Among them was Rogan O’Handley, a conservative political commentator, who shared on social media that he had met with Bondi, as well as Donald Trump, JD Vance and FBI director Kash Patel in the Oval Office on Thursday.
“They handed me a binder copy of the Epstein Files,” he said. “This is the most transparent administration in American history.”
“This is just the start,” O’Handley continued. “AG Bondi confirmed there are thousands more Epstein File documents being secretly held in the SDNY and they will be delivered to the DOJ in DC by February 28 People will be going to jail for what they’ve done.”
Over the past few years, troves of documents and records have been released through lawsuits, criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests.
In January 2024, a court unsealed additional court records that had been gathered as part of a lawsuit filed against Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2015 by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre.
While the documents offered some details and context about Epstein’s connections with influential figures, much of the information and the names of public figures mentioned in the documents were already known to the public.
Last week, when asked on Fox News whether the justice department would be releasing a list of Epstein’s clients, Bondi said: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President Trump.”
During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump, who knew Epstein, mentioned on a podcast that he would consider releasing the rumored records related to Epstein.
Earlier this month, a new congressional taskforce was established to “examine the declassification of materials in the public interest”.
When announcing the taskforce, the representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican leading the initiative, stated that the group would investigate the Epstein client list, as well as documents related to political assassinations, the origins of Covid-19, the September 11 files and more.
This week, Luna appeared to put pressure on Bondi to release the Epstein files.
“Reaching out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from the AG,” Luna said in a Tuesday post on social media. “@AGPamBondi what is the status of the documents? These documents were ordered to be declassified.”
