After years of legal battles and online speculation, the Justice Department faces a Friday deadline to release the rest of its investigative files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose connection to the rich and powerful and his death by suicide in 2019 has spawned dozens of conspiracy theories.
Last month, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act mandating the release of the files following pushback the administration received. seeking the release of materials.
The law says the Justice Department “may withhold or redact” the identities of Epstein’s victims and contains exemptions that would allow the Justice Department to withhold records that would “jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.”
The Justice Department and the FBI announced in July that they would not release additional files on Epstein, after several senior officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and outgoing FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, had accused the government of shielding information about the Epstein case before joining the administration.
The Senate later voted to approve Epstein’s House-passed transparency bill, after which President Donald Trump signed it into law.
This photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein on March 28, 2017.
New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File
Trump’s critics have speculated about the extent to which the president, who had a friendship with Epstein until they had a fall circa 2004, appears in Epstein’s files, while Trump has accused several well-known Democrats of having ties to the disgraced financier.
“Perhaps the truth about these Democrats and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein will soon be revealed, because I JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!” Trump wrote on social media after signing the bill.
Epstein owned two private islands in the Virgin Islands and large estates in New York City, New Mexico, and Palm Beach, Florida, where he was investigated for allegedly luring underage girls to his seaside home for massages that turned sexual. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for sex crimes after reaching a controversial non-prosecution agreement with the US attorney’s office in Miami.
In 2019, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York accused Epstein of “sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of underage girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.
Epstein committed suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.
