Hours earlier, several prominent conservative influencers emerged from the White House saying they had met with Bondi and Patel and received first access to the documents on the disgraced financier, who has been linked to major political and celebrity figures and died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019.
The influencers — who included political commentator Jack Posobiec, Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, podcaster Liz Wheeler and Rogan O’Handley, known as “DC Draino” — posted photos of binders emblazoned with the Justice Department seal and labelled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1″. The binders were marked “declassified,” though it was unclear whether anything inside them had actually been classified before.
“Some of these are contacts, some of these are flight logs, there’s all sorts of things in here,” Posobiec said afterward on his online show.
Bondi first suggested a release of Epstein files could be coming during a Fox News appearance earlier this week.
“You’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office,” she said, adding that it would include a “lot of flight logs, a lot of names … a lot of information”.
Bondi did not tell Fox whether the documents she intended to release were being made public for the first time or if they were among the thousands of pages of evidence that have already been unsealed in years of litigation. She cautioned that some information would be held back to protect the more than 250 women and girls victimised by Epstein but said there would be more releases to come.
“This Department of Justice is following through on President Trump’s commitment to transparency and lifting the veil on the disgusting actions of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators,” she said. “The first phase of files released today sheds light on Epstein’s extensive network and begins to provide the public with long overdue accountability.”
Epstein, accused of sexually abusing hundreds of underage girls and young women over a decade, pleaded guilty to two felonies in Florida state court in 2008 in an unusual deal that allowed him to serve only 13 months in state jail.
Intense public scrutiny of the case, led by the Miami Herald, resulted in Epstein’s arrest in July 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking minors. He pleaded not guilty and died one month later, incarcerated and awaiting trial.
His case remains a point of fixation for the right-wing media, President Donald Trump and his allies. They have speculated without evidence that authorities engaged in a cover-up to protect famous Epstein contacts — who, according to these theories, may have also participated in his crimes.
For example, former President Bill Clinton acknowledged taking trips on Epstein’s private jet in connection with work for the Clinton Foundation, though he maintained, in a 2019 statement, he knew nothing about the financier’s “terrible crimes”. Still, Clinton has remained a target of interest for Epstein conspiracy theorists online.
Trump, too, maintained a personal relationship with Epstein, for nearly two decades starting in the late 1980s. The two travelled in similar social orbits, were neighbours in Palm Beach and partied together at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump travelled on Epstein’s jet and dined at his mansion in Manhattan.
“Terrific guy,” Trump said of Epstein in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with.”
After Epstein’s 2019 arrest, a lawyer for the Trump Organisation said in a statement that the two men had “no relationship”.
Over the years, thousands of pages of documents related to the Epstein investigation have been released through lawsuits, court filings and public records requests. Last year, a federal judge in Manhattan unsealed a tranche of documents collected as evidence in a civil suit filed by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. Much of it — including police reports and transcripts of victim interviews — had already been made public in earlier proceedings.
Still, conservative figures and some members of Congress — including Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) — have continued to call for wider public disclosures about the investigation from the Justice Department.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee has vetted Trump’s picks for key FBI and Justice Department roles this year, Blackburn has consistently asked nominees to commit to wider transparency on the Epstein case.
“For me, this is not about the celebrity,” Blackburn said in a Fox News interview. “And I know that there are many people that want to see who all flew on his planes and guested at his Caribbean island. But let’s break these human trafficking rings apart. Let’s get these people apprehended. Let’s get them prosecuted. Let’s get them jailed. Let’s put an end to this and save lives.”
Bondi, too, appears to believe there is still more to uncover. In her letter to Patel, she said that despite her request for “the full set of documents” related to the Epstein investigation, she had only received “approximately 200 pages ... which consisted primarily of flight logs, Epstein’s list of contacts, and a list of victims’ names and phone numbers”.
In a social media post hours later, Patel pledged swift repercussions for anyone found to have withheld information.
“If there are gaps in the Epstein investigation, we will find them. If records have been hidden, we will uncover them,” he wrote. “And we will bring everything we find to the DOJ to be fully assessed and transparently disseminated to the American people as it should be.”
