Dareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.
The Justice Department on Friday released thousands of documents from its files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the massive document release was heavily redacted, incomplete and shed little new light on his crimes.
It did, however, contain some celebrity cameos. Here's a look at what is — and what is not — in the 'Epstein files' so far. Many of the files had already been released Many of the materials that were released had been made public through various lawsuits and court filings, including the reports from the Palm Beach police in Florida that led to the initial state criminal probe in 2005. Some records were also released as part of the House Oversight Committee investigation into the Epstein case. Among the documents released were already public filings from the criminal cases against Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, including filings from Maxwell’s appeal for her conviction and 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges. It also includes various civil complaints filed against Epstein over the years. But not all of it was old news. One of the files released was Maria Farmer’s 1996 complaint to the FBI alleging Epstein stole photos she had taken of her 12- and 16-year-old sisters and sold them. She sued the federal government this year in federal court over alleged failures to protect her and other Epstein victims. “I feel redeemed,' Farmer said in a statement Friday. Her legal team said in a news release that the document “proves that if the FBI had simply done its job in 1996, Epstein’s decades-long sex trafficking operation could have been stopped at the outset.” Farmer's suit is still pending and the government has yet to file a response to her allegations. Lots of records are still missing The Epstein Files Transparency Act gave the attorney general 30 days to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” involving Epstein, “including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters.” That clock ran out Friday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that the release was several hundred thousand pages short of 'all' and that it could take a 'couple of weeks' for the rest to come to light. He attributed the delay to the need to redact information about the victims. “What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim — their name, their identity, their story — to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected,” he told Fox News. The law's co-author, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said the department needs to give a detailed timeline on when those documents will be released, and also noted that some documents appeared to be overly redacted. 'Some of the documents I’ve just been scanning them have very heavy redactions,' Khanna said, and under the law, 'they owe the Congress and the American public an explanation for every redaction.' Khanna’s co-author, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said in a video on X Thursday that he’d been told by victims’ lawyers that “there are at least 20 names of men who are accused of sex crimes in the possession of the FBI,” but no such names were evident in the release. Few mentions of Trump in the DOJ release President Donald Trump's past friendship with Epstein is well known — and his chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that he appears in the files — but there were only a few passing mentions of him in the documents released Friday. Trump has said he had a falling out with Epstein before he ever faced criminal charges, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump was in the files but he’s “not doing anything awful.” She said he and Epstein had been “young, single playboys together.” In a statement following the DOJ release, the White House said: “The Trump Administration is the most transparent in history. By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have.' Bill Clinton makes numerous appearances Former President Bill Clinton, however, made numerous appearances in photographs that were released with the files. In one, he's standing with Epstein as they smile while looking at something that's not shown in the photo. In another, he's in a hot tub. In a third, he's photographed swimming in a pool with Maxwell. In two others, Clinton is shown with his arm around a woman whose face is blacked out, and in a third, he's shown sitting at a table with a woman sitting on his leg. The pictures are undated and it's unclear where they were taken. Clinton traveled on Epstein's plane four times in 2002 and 2003 on trips for his Clinton Foundation, according to his spokesperson, Angel Ureña. Trump has called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Clinton's ties to Epstein, although the former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Nothing in the photos suggests any wrongdoing. Ureña said in a post on X that the 'White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.' Wiles told Vanity Fair that 'the president was wrong' to suggest that there was anything incriminating about Clinton in the Epstein records. More celebrity sightings Clinton wasn't the only well-known person whose picture appeared in the files. Appearing with the former president in another picture was Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, with a woman whose face is blacked out standing between them. A representative for Jagger did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In another shot, Epstein was photographed standing next to the late pop star Michael Jackson, in front of a painting of a naked woman reading on the beach. Others showed actor Kevin Spacey standing with Epstein. None of the photos are dated, so it's unclear when or where any of them are from. Spacey told journalist Piers Morgan last year that he traveled on Epstein's plane as part of a humanitarian mission with the Clinton Foundation but that 'he never spent time with him.” A representative for Spacey did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a post on X earlier this year, Spacey wrote: 'Release the Epstein files. All of them. For those of us with nothing to fear, the truth can’t come soon enough.' Nothing in the photos suggests any wrongdoing by any other figure. In a letter to Congress on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the records 'did not reveal credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals, nor did it uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.'
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