The New Epstein Frenzy

Reporters, lawmakers, and ordinary Americans are poring over a deluge of new files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case today, following the latest release from the Department of Justice. This release is substantially larger than any previous ones, with 3 million pages of documents, more than 180,000 photos, and more than 2,000 videos, according to the DOJ. The website they were uploaded to—which has the elegant URL Justice.gov/Epstein—is not intuitive to operate and offers a search box as its primary navigation tool.

But a search box was the only thing many viewers needed, as they were diving into the files in pursuit of information on specific people—President Trump in particular. Thousands of the documents appear to mention Trump, though not all of them in any significant way (for example, The New York Times notes that some of the documents are copies of news articles that contain his name). When Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the file release earlier today, he said that the White House had “nothing to do” with their vetting and “no oversight.” The DOJ press release further emphasizes the independence of the process and says that “notable individuals and politicians were not redacted in the release of any files.” The only redactions, according to the release, were those made to protect victims and their families.

Reporters sifting through the files have found plenty of news. They’ve turned up a series of emails that Epstein wrote about Bill Gates and then sent to himself in 2013. In these, Epstein suggests that he helped Gates have extramarital affairs and expresses disgust that Gates would “discard” their friendship after asking Epstein to do things “that have ranged from the morally inappropriate to the ethically unsound” and “potentially over the line into illegal.” (The Gates Foundation has already issued a comment to the Times that the claims—“from a proven, disgruntled liar—are absolutely absurd and completely false.”) Many other notable people appear in the files, including Bill Clinton, who was also also in previously released photos. A number of the documents referencing Clinton are uncorroborated tips sent to the FBI. A friendly email exchange between Epstein and Elon Musk turned up, as did a reference to Kevin Warsh, Trump’s preferred candidate to replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair. (Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have refused to testify for the House Oversight Committee’s Epstein investigation, and they recently released a joint statement saying that they’ve already shared “the little information” they have about Epstein. Musk and Warsh did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

The files about such a sensitive and complicated series of crimes could be released to the public only by way of a convoluted procedural process, but the process came to seem suspiciously convoluted to many Americans in large part because of the president’s many reversals and evasions. Before Trump returned to office, he expressed a somewhat relaxed attitude about the Epstein files. Asked on the Lex Fridman Podcast in September 2024 whether he would release them if he were reelected, he said, “Yeah, I’d be inclined to do the Epstein; I’d have no problem with it.” Early last year, to demonstrate his dedication to truth-telling and transparency, Trump invited MAGA influencers to the White House, where they received binders full of Epstein-related documents labeled Phase 1. But some of the influencers were chagrined to find that the files inside were not new.

Then, in May, Trump reportedly learned from Attorney General Pam Bondi that he himself was mentioned in the unreleased files. Two months later, his attitude about them had dramatically changed. When the FBI announced in July that it had reviewed all of its Epstein files and would not release any more after all—that there would be no Phase 2—both Trump’s enemies and the MAGA faithful were aghast. But Trump was defiant and dismissive. “This guy’s been talked about for years,” he said to a reporter. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.” His resistance to releasing any more information caused a schism among his supporters (and contributed to the resignation of his longtime ally Marjorie Taylor Greene) and set Congress up for an easy win. Lawmakers moved quickly to pass a law that required the release of all further documents by December 19. Now, weeks past the deadline, the file dump has arrived.

After months of rumors about why Trump so stridently demanded that everyone move on from the Epstein files (and speculation that anything else he did was an effort to distract from them), people immediately latched onto a six-page FBI memo included in the dump that, at least on the surface, seemed to lend credence to their darkest guesses. The memo contained a spreadsheet full of uncorroborated tips sent to law enforcement, many alleging Trump’s participation in violent sex crimes involving minors, and some including graphic descriptions of their allegations. The document—which has already been widely shared by politicians and political commentators—includes some brief details about how law enforcement followed up on the tips but not about whether the tips were resolved. It also includes a note that some of the reports were “second-hand information.” (Trump has downplayed his past relationship with Epstein and denied any wrongdoing. I’ve reached out to the White House for further comment.)

This spreadsheet was salacious enough on its own, but then it was briefly unavailable on the Justice Department’s website, prompting people who had already downloaded it to start re-uploading it to other sites, recirculating it on social media, and speculating that it had been deliberately pulled down for political reasons. “DOJ has since killed this link,” the reporter Jake Tapper wrote on Bluesky, sharing a screenshot of the memo. “This is what was there.” (The document is currently loading on the DOJ site without a problem.)

Reached for comment, the DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre told me that the FBI memo had been “down due to overload and is back online.” She did not immediately respond to a follow-up email asking for more detail. Baldassarre also directed me to a section of the original DOJ press release about these documents. It notes that everything that the FBI received from the public was covered under the scope of law and had to be released, even if the information was unvetted. “Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the press release continues. “To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.” (Very neutral wording.)

But the public is unlikely to look away, even if the DOJ suggests that it should. The upswell of outrage over the botched web-hosting is a repeat of the suspicion and testiness that surrounded the issue last summer, when the FBI tried to discourage theorizing about a rumored “client list” and the footage from Epstein’s jail cell. Americans have been roped even further into this dark, tragic story because of the president’s bizarre equivocation and emotional outbursts about it. They’ll be going through these files for a long time.