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