What you need to know before the Epstein files come out

The “Epstein files” are maybe, finally, coming out — or at least, some of them are.

Friday is the deadline for the Justice Department to disclose materials from its two investigations into deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein after Congress passed a bill last month requiring it to do so within 30 days. There are still questions about what materials could be withheld or redacted, but it’s extremely likely we’ll see something.

Ahead of that deadline, I spoke with my colleague Andrew Prokop for Vox’s daily newsletter, Today, Explained. We talked about how the Epstein scandal took over the second Trump administration, what could be released, and more. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below, and you can sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this.

How did this become the all-consuming story of the Trump administration?

They really did it to themselves. No one was really talking about the Epstein case anymore except for a relatively small group of highly engaged online right-wingers who deeply believed there was a vast conspiracy the government was covering up, and that if Trump won the 2024 election, he could blow the lid off that conspiracy. 

Then Trump wins, and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, tries to pander to these right-wing influencers by inviting them to the White House and giving them these binders that were supposedly the Epstein files, and they contain absolutely nothing new. It’s a huge embarrassment, and it raises the question of, kind of like, what’s going on here? Is the administration trying to hide something? 

Since then, there’s been this drip, drip, drip of revelations about Donald Trump’s own closeness to Jeffrey Epstein, something that had long been known, but I think that a lot of people hadn’t really focused on.

What specifically is DOJ being compelled to release?

The Department of Justice and the FBI investigated Jeffrey Epstein during two different periods. One was in the mid-2000s — an investigation run in Florida about sex trafficking there — and about a decade later, around 2019, there was a New York-based investigation that eventually resulted in Epstein’s arrest and imprisonment, where he died before trial. As part of those investigations, investigators obtained a lot of evidence that the government presumably still has. 

Typically, this investigative material is not released. But because of the nature of the Epstein case, there was this pressure that they needed to disclose more. Republican House leaders tried to stop this from happening, but once it was clear the bill had a majority, there was a stampede, and now everyone claims they supported it, including Donald Trump. 

The bill calls for, within 30 days, the attorney general to release and make publicly available all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials that relate to Epstein, convicted sex trafficker and Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, or individuals named in connection with Epstein’s criminal activities. 

There are some loopholes in this; records that would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution could be withheld as long as such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary. So the question is, how much good faith do they approach this with? Are they going to put everything out there, or are they going to claim that there are a lot of exceptions?

What could we learn from the files?

Epstein had all these famous and powerful friends. He had this private island, private jets. And some of Epstein’s victims say that they were trafficked to other men as well, and have named certain of those men. That’s the biggest question that could be answered by an Epstein files release: What did investigators conclude when they checked out these claims that Epstein was trafficking women or girls to other prominent, influential, powerful men? Did they look into this and conclude there’s nothing to it? Did they conclude it’s too hazy and they couldn’t prove anything? Or did they conclude, Yeah, we think he actually did, but for whatever reason, we’re not going to bring charges? 

Then the other question is about Trump and his own closeness to Epstein. I think we have a pretty clear picture of this relationship: It involved a lot of going to parties, going to events, hanging out with models, and this sort of basic sexism and harassment that they both demonstrated during this period. There hasn’t been a credible, corroborated claim of Epstein sex-trafficking a girl to Trump. Obviously, I would be skeptical that the Trump administration would release new files that have negative revelations about Donald Trump.

What else should people be aware of before the files come out? 

As part of an investigation, investigators find a lot of stuff that doesn’t hold up. People tell them all kinds of things, and they don’t really have any good basis for it. It is quite possible that this release will include a lot of juicy-sounding but dubious material that people told investigators, but that investigators themselves couldn’t corroborate.

You’ve written about how this has become the mother of all conspiracy theories, in a way that makes it really hard for the Trump administration to dismiss. How did that happen? 

There’s a particular way the Epstein scandal can resonate with just about anyone. There’s the generic “it’s powerful elites behind sex crimes” angle. There’s a #MeToo angle. Antisemites love this because Epstein was Jewish, and many of his friends were Jewish. 

The more MAGA people were hoping that the Epstein files would reveal that a bunch of Democrats were criminal sexual abusers and should be sent to jail. And the #Resistance people now see Trump’s own culpability as the center of this thing, and they want a scandal that hurts Donald Trump. 

There are these unanswered questions that anyone can point to. Those are different questions, depending on who you’re talking about, but they’ll ask, “Oh, is Jeffrey Epstein tied to intelligence services? Who are the other men involved? Did Epstein really kill himself, or was there some kind of conspiracy to shut him up? How did he make his money?” 

There’s been a lot of reporting on these topics, but I don’t think there will ever be enough to establish definitive answers for the people who continue to have these questions. Even when the Epstein files are released, they’ll only feed more questions. There’s just going to be one conspiracy theory after another.