The Department of Justice has published thousands of documents in another batch of files from investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, marking the largest release yet, with many references to President Donald Trump.
Tuesday’s newly released documents include hundreds of emails as well as jail and court correspondences from prosecutors investigating Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein in the wake of his death in prison in 2019, which was ruled a suicide.
In one message from January 2020, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan claimed that flight records showed Trump “traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware),” including during the period in which prosecutors were preparing to charge in the case against Maxwell.
There were at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996 in which Trump was a passenger, according to the message. Maxwell was also present on at least four of those flights, according to the assistant U.S. attorney, whose name is redacted.
“We’ve just finished reviewing the full records (more than 100 pages of very small script) and didn’t want any of this to be a surprise down the road,” the prosecutor added.
In a statement accompanying the agency’s announcement of the latest batch of 30,000 pages, the Justice Department said that “some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”
“To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” the statement said. “Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims.”
The documents also include several tips collected by the FBI about Trump’s involvement with Epstein and parties at their properties in the early 2000s.
The messages do not state whether any follow-up investigations were pursued or if the allegations are corroborated.
A message from an investigator in June 2021 said they discovered an image of Trump with Maxwell on Steve Bannon’s phone. Bannon, the far-right media personality and former Trump adviser, is seen in several undated photographs alongside Epstein in documents submitted by the Justice Department.
Federal prosecutors also subpoenaed Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort that year for employment records as they prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell, documents show
A subpoena request from October 2021 seeks “any and all employment records” related to a person whose name has been redacted.
Trump, who had a yearslong relationship with Epstein until the early 2000s, is not accused of wrongdoing in connection with his crimes, and one’s appearance within the files does not suggest otherwise.
Speaking from Mar-a-Lago in his first public remarks about the documents Monday night, the president said Epstein was “all over Palm Beach” and many people crossed paths with him.
“You probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago,” Trump said. “A lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein, but they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruin the reputation of somebody.”
Another document that mentions Trump in the latest batch of files appears to be a letter sent from “J. Epstein” from “Manhattan Correctional” to Larry Nassar, the former women's gymnastics team doctor convicted of exploiting and and sexually assaulting hundreds of young athletes.
The letter is postmarked August 13, 2019, three days after Epstein’s death. It was marked “return to sender” and discovered in a mailroom more than a month later.
The existence of the letter was previously reported, and additional documents in the files showed investigators trying to authenticate it. It is unclear whether they reached a conclusion.
“As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck!” the postcard reads.
It continues: “We shared one thing . . . our love [and] caring for young ladies at the hope they'd reach their full potential. Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.”
The documents also reveal that prosecutors identified 10 co-conspirators in Epstein’s sex trafficking case.
Three of those alleged co-conspirators lived in Florida and were served grand jury subpoenas. There were others in Boston, New York City and Connecticut.
One is a “wealthy business man in Ohio,” according to a message from July 2019.
The Justice Department failed to release all of the files related to Epstein’s cases in its possession despite federal law signed by Trump requiring the administration to publicly disclose everything it has by Friday, December 19.
An initial round of long-awaited documents, including photographs of Epstein with high-profile figures, failed to advance the public’s understanding of the scope of his alleged crimes and connections to an alleged sex trafficking ring accused of exploiting and abusing young girls.
There were heavy redactions, including dozens of pages of grand jury testimony and previously sealed court filings that were nearly entirely blacked out.
The law requires the release of potentially thousands of documents that are typically shielded from public view, including grand jury testimony, settlements, investigative notes and internal records related to the Epstein and Maxwell cases
It also requires the release of documents related to Epstein’s jailhouse death. Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
After an initial release of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act , the Justice Department removed more than 20 files — including an image of a credenza inside Epstein’s home, where a photograph of Trump with bikini-clad women was sitting in an open drawer.
Those images were later restored, but the Justice Department’s violation of the legal deadline and the apparent removal of images only fueled outrage and demand for the full release of the files.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, said the Justice Department needed time to make necessary redactions to protect survivors.
“You’re talking about a million or so pages of documents — virtually all of them contain victim information,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.
He said officials were not removing any mentions of Trump in the documents, more of which are expected to be rolled out over the coming weeks.
Members of Congress have suggested Attorney General Pam Bondi could be held in contempt for failing to release documents on deadline.
