Three million more pages of the Epstein files dropped last week. Here’s what you need to know.
David Enrich’s whole life right now is the Epstein files. As an investigations editor at the New York Times, his phone and computer basically explode whenever new files are released. Last Friday, his phone exploded again when the Department of Justice dropped about 3 million pages of documents into the cloud.
, Democrats and Republicans worked together to force the DOJ to release all they’d discovered about Jeffrey Epstein—the country’s most notorious sex criminal and probably one of the richest, too. With this latest release, the DOJ says it has satisfied that demand. But it’s not even all they’ve got. The Times built its own internal search engine to sort through the sludge. It doesn’t just search for specific words; you can ask it to search for concepts likeAnd these documents aren’t just emails about President Donald Trump, or giddy vacation planning for rich folks hoping to hop a ride to Epstein’s infamous island. There are photos and videos, even bank records.of What Next, host Mary Harris spoke to Enrich about the latest Epstein file drop and what it says about Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity. Mary Harris: Before we dig into exactly what’s in the file and what it says, what does the sheer volume of what’s been released tell you?I don’t have much confidence in the government. I don’t have much sense that the majority of this stuff has been read thoroughly. When these files were released, a number of things seemed to have been released by mistake. The implication of that is that they didn’t know exactly what they were releasing. But it’s also really awful stuff. Pictures of women and young girls without any kind of redaction. They’re identifiable, nude. Very upsetting, essentially. And your team was part of the team that found that, right?This has been a real mess by the government. The argument they make is that they only had two months to pull this stuff together because thewas passed and signed into law in November, with a December deadline. But the truth is that Trump came into office saying he was going to be transparent about this and release the files, and they made a series of choices and decisions not to do that, which I think were based in part on their gradual understanding of the fact that what was in these may be damaging to Trump or his allies. So they then entered this frenzied period, starting in November, and did not do a good job. There are a huge number of things in there that are identifying victims, a number of files that have a high likelihood of being child sexual abuse material, and all sorts of other damaging stuff that serves no public interest and was not, in fact, required by law to be disclosed. What they’ve done is all these haphazard redactions, redacting a bunch of things they’re not supposed to redact.that Steve Bannon had texted Epstein, and Epstein’s name was redacted, and Trump’s face was redacted. And it’s like, why on earth wouldThe government is being somewhat responsive now when things are being brought to their attention. They’re taking them down and are re-redacting them. But at the same time, they appear to have overredacted quite a bit of stuff. What stands out to me in this possible final release of files is the way that neither Donald Trump nor Jeffrey Epstein seem to be able to escape each other. These are two people who were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s. There are reports that there was a falling-out between them. Epstein gets arrested for sex acts with a minor. Donald Trump decides to run for president. But these guys can’t stop talking about each other.Yeah, they were very close for a while, but Epstein’s defining human trait was an ability to seize on his connections and leverage them for as much currency as he could. And that came in many forms, right? That’s why he had all these pictures of himself with famous people in his houses, because he liked to be able to show those off to other famous people, or to use these as a threat hanging over the heads of his victims.With Trump, it’s playing out in some different ways. Part of it is that with Trump’s rise to power back in 2016, Epstein realized that here was someone who had great power to either make Epstein’s life better or worse. And so I think he was really trying to suss out, initially, how he could pull those different levers. It obviously didn’t work very well, since during Trump’s first term, Epstein ended up in prison and then died. And the files were kind of a useful tool for Trump and Trump’s allies, in particular, to beat Democrats and fan the flames of conspiracy theories on the far right. There’s no doubt that one of the things that got Trump elected in 2024 was this band of far-right MAGA people who were convinced that Trump was going to expose this global ring of pedophiles on the left and through the Epstein files.The big allegation about Trump in these latest files involves calls to the FBI’s tip line. And these are a little dicey to talk about, because these are unverified tips. The FBI gets all kinds of unverified tips all the time. But could you just lay out what’s in there?I’m going to be like a really anal New York Times reporter. We’ve made a decision institutionally that we’re not going to give airtime to things that we really just have no idea if they are true or not, especially when they’re of this lurid nature. But I mean, in general, it’s just very lurid sexual allegations involving Trump in the context of his relationship with Epstein. And they’re very bad allegations.Let’s talk about some of the other big names that have been in the spotlight since the latest release. My understanding is that in these files, you see Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick trying to make plans to go to Epstein’s island. He was in friendly contact with Jeffrey Epstein long after he said he’d shut the relationship down.Yeah, and the crazy thing here is that Lutnik just last year had said not only that he had shut the relationship down, but he had given this whole explanation for why he’d shut it down, which was that he’d visited Epstein’s mansion and he’d seen stuff in there that made him and his wife really uncomfortable. And they had vowed then and there to never associate with this terrible man again. But what we see in these files shows that’s just not true at all. They by all accounts had a pretty chummy relationship. They visited Epstein on his island long after this alleged encounter in the townhouse that left them so unsettled.There’s also Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. There have been allegations for years that Gates and Jeffrey Epstein were close. But in this latest release of documents, there are these implications that Epstein was helping procure women for Bill Gates and that Gates got a sexually transmitted infection, and was trying to get drugs to treat himself and secretly treat his own wife. She’sWe’ve known for years, since Epstein’s death, about the long-running relationship between Gates and Epstein that involved everything, apparently, from science to money to women, or girls perhaps. I can’t say I’m shocked to see Gates’ reentry into this. The thing I’ll caution about here is—and I’m not at all defending Gates or his apparent conduct, and it is entirely possible that those emails were true and accurately reflected what Epstein and people like Gates did—but it is possible that Epstein is a liar and an embellisher and an expert in using threats and leverage to get what he wants with powerful people. And so it is not outside the realm of possibility that Epstein was exaggerating or twisting the truth. That being said, we know, and this has been out there in public for a while, that part of the reason that Bill and Melinda Gates got divorced was her discomfort with her husband’s relationship with Epstein. And while we’ve never really had the full gory details and what that’s entailed, it’s obviously been a subject of informed speculation.Once again, we are seeing people who had previously denied or downplayed their relationships with Epstein, and in fact had pointed at other people for being more connected to Epstein, we are now seeing that they, long after Epstein was known as a sexual criminal and had registered as a Level 3 sex offender, were continuing to associate with him. You’ve talked about transparency being important here. Can we talk about what we’re not seeing in this release of documents? We were promised 6 million documents. I thought they were legally required to release all the files, so what is happening there? That is a good question, and I don’t have a good answer. What the Justice Department has said is that they withheld a large quantity of documents to protect victims’ identities. Two things can be true: They can be protecting victims’ identities by not releasing 3 million documents and they can also be doing a bad job of protecting victims’ identities in the 3 million pages of documents that they did release. That being said, this administration’s handling of the Epstein files doesn’t have a whole lot of credibility.A year ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel said they released the Epstein files by handing binders full of public court documents to a group of MAGA influencers. That was the whole start of this. And it’s gone along on the same trajectory with deceitful disclosures. In that context, I think it is normal and reasonable for open-minded people to be skeptical and curious about what’s actually in these other 3 million pages of documents.To get to this point, Congress had to act of its own accord, essentially, and force the release. Are there other avenues available to lawmakers who want to see more here?For the First Time in Half a Century, We Won’t Have a Nuclear Treaty With Russia. Trump Is Totally Unprepared. The Justice Department has said it is going to meet with lawmakers to explain its thinking. The other options are not necessarily in terms of getting these files, but there are other ways to get some more transparency. And one of the things we’ve seen is that the House Oversight Committee has issued a bunch of subpoenas to a wide variety of people demanding that they sit for depositions under oath, the transcripts of which will presumably be released in short order. And that ranges from people like the Clintons to people like former Victoria Secret CEO Les Wexner, who was one of Epstein’s biggest financial benefactors over the years. We’ll see what happens.There are a huge number of wealthy, powerful individuals all over the world who continued to associate with Epstein and provide him with various kinds of support long after he went to jail. To me, what has made the Epstein story so riveting and so important for so many years is that yes, this is a story about a guy who is a pedophile and was doing terrible things to women and girls. But much more than that, it is a story about how one individual, when he accrues enough wealth and influence and connections, can work the entire global system to his benefit for very nefarious purposes. And he does it in conjunction and in some cases partnership with some of the richest, most powerful people on Earth. And that is a story that has not yet fully been
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