Latest Epstein files detail contact with Howard Lutnick, Steve Bannon and Goldman Sachs lawyer

The Justice Department on Friday released many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people such as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The files, posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release in December.

Included in the batch were records concerning some of Epstein’s famous associates, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Britain’s Prince Andrew, as well as email correspondence between Epstein and Elon Musk and other prominent contacts from across the political spectrum.

The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Lawmakers complained when the Justice Department made only a limited release last month, but officials said more time was needed to review an additional trove of documents that was discovered and to scour the records to ensure no sensitive information about victims was inadvertently released.

“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a news conference announcing the disclosure.

Friday’s disclosure represents the largest document dump to date about a saga the Trump administration has struggled for months to shake because of the president’s previous association with Epstein. State and federal investigations into the financier have long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting, demands that even Blanche acknowledged might not be satisfied by the latest release.

“There’s a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don’t think will be satisfied by the review of these documents,” he said.

After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. But it denied any effort to shield Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago despite an earlier friendship, from potential embarrassment.

“We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect — or not protect — anybody,” Blanche said.

Among the materials withheld is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of potential victims of sex abuse. Women other than Maxwell were redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.

The number of documents subject to review ballooned to roughly 6 million, including duplicates.

Epstein’s famous friends

The latest batch of documents include correspondence either with or about some of Epstein’s friends.

Mountbatten-Windsor’s name appears at least several hundred times in the documents, sometimes in news clippings, sometimes in Epstein’s private email correspondence and in guest lists for dinners organized by Epstein. Some of the records also document an attempt by prosecutors in New York to get the former prince to agree to be interviewed as part of their Epstein sex trafficking probe.

The records also show that Musk, the billionaire Tesla founder, reached out to Epstein on at least two separate occasions to plan visits to the Caribbean island where many of the allegations of sexual abuse purportedly occurred.

In a 2012 exchange, Epstein inquired how many people Musk would like flown by helicopter to the island he owned — Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“Probably just Talulah and me,” Musk responded, referencing his partner at the time, actress Talulah Riley. “What day/night will be the wildest party on our island?”

Musk messaged Epstein again ahead of a planned trip to the Caribbean in December 2013. “Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays,” he wrote. “Is there a good time to visit?” Epstein responded by extending an invite for sometime after the New Year holiday.

It’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Spokespersons for Musk’s companies, Tesla and X, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Musk has maintained that he repeatedly turned down the disgraced financier’s overtures.

“Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED,” he posted on X in 2025 when House Democrats released an Epstein calendar with an entry mentioning a potential Musk visit to the island.

The documents also contain hundreds of friendly text messages between Epstein and Steve Bannon during Trump’s first term.

Bannon, a conservative activist who served as Trump’s White House strategist earlier in the president’s first term, bantered over politics with the financier, discussed get-togethers with him over breakfast, lunch or dinner and, on March 29, 2019, asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome: “Is it possible to get your plane here to collect me?”

Epstein told him his pilot and crew “are doing their best” to arrange that flight but if Bannon could find a charter flight instead, “I’m happy to pay.” Apparently in France at the time, Epstein followed up with a text saying: “My guys can pick you up. Come for dinner.” The exchange did not show how that played out.

On one occasion in December 2012, Epstein invited Howard Lutnick — now Trump’s commerce secretary — to his private island in the Caribbean for lunch, documents released Friday show. Lutnick’s wife, Allison Lutnick, enthusiastically accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. On another occasion in 2011, the two men had drinks, according to a schedule shared with Epstein.

Lutnick has tried to distance himself from Epstein, saying in a 2025 interview that he cut ties decades ago and calling him “gross.” He didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.

During Trump’s first term, Epstein emailed Kathy Ruemmler, a lawyer and former Obama White House official, to warn that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a Mafia-type figure even as he derided the president as a “maniac.”

A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs, where Ruemmler serves as general counsel and chief legal officer, said in a statement that Ruemmler “had a professional association with Jeffrey Epstein when she was a lawyer in private practice” and “regrets ever knowing him.”

Building on the earlier release

The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many were either already public or heavily blacked out.

They included previously released flight logs showing Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling-out, and several photographs of Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. Both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.

Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.

In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his Palm Beach home. The U.S. attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.

In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.

U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.

Among those she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his royal titles amid the scandal. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.

Giuffre died by suicide last year at age 41.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com