The Justice Department on Friday released an avalanche of long-awaited investigative files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The new document dump dwarfed the two earlier Epstein file releases and included more than 3.5 million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a press conference.
And that constituted about half of the more than six million Epstein-related documents the DOJ collected, Blanche said.
The release includes many emails, “large quantities of commercial pornography and images that were seized from Epstein’s devices,” some of which were taken by Epstein, Blanche said. Much of the materials were redacted.
But Blanche pointedly pushed back on the idea that the DOJ has a secret list of names of men associated with Epstein who abused women. He also insisted the DOJ was not trying to shield President Donald Trump, who had once been close friends with Epstein.
“We did not protect President Trump,” Blanche said. “We didn’t protect or not protect anybody.”
The DOJ, though, temporarily removed and then republished a file that included a spreadsheet summary of complaints made to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center that included references to Epstein and Trump.
There was no indication that the tips were verified, and the complaints were made over an unspecified time frame. And the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to questions about why the file was removed and why it was compiled.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has not been officially accused of or charged with any crimes related to Epstein. But he and Epstein were fast friends until they had a falling out nearly 20 years ago.
Also in the newly released documents were emails from 2012 and 2013 that showed Epstein had invited top Trump ally Elon Musk to his private island.
In a 2019 interview with Vanity Fair, Musk said Epstein “tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined.”
However, in a November 2012 email, Musk sounded eager to make the trip to Epstein’s tropical isle.
“What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Musk wrote.
NBC News reached out to Musk but he did not respond. Nor has he verified whether he actually traveled to the island. He too is not accused of any wrongdoing.
In the newly released documents, there were also email exchanges between Epstein and Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s commerce secretary, about plans to visit Epstein’s island with his wife during Christmas in 2012.
It’s not clear if the Lutnicks made the trip.
“Secretary Lutnick had limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing,” the Commerce Department said in a statement.
In addition to being enormous in quantity, the new Epstein material released Friday was late.
The DOJ missed a December deadline to turn over all the unclassified documents, with certain exceptions, required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law Nov. 19 by Trump and gave Attorney General Pam Bondi 30 days to release all of the department’s Epstein files.
That law also requires the agency to explain any redactions to Congress.
But some of the newly released documents were heavily redacted, including 81 pages of an 82-page document that refers to Epstein’s psychological review.
One seven-page document was completely redacted and later appeared to have been removed from the DOJ website.
Blanche also said all the women besides Epstein’s convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell had been redacted from images and videos released on Friday.
A group of 20 women who say Epstein preyed on them issued a statement criticizing the DOJ for not releasing all of the documents.
“The Justice Department cannot claim it is finished releasing files until every legally required document is released and every abuser and enabler is fully exposed,” they said. “This is not over.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused Bondi of withholding important information.
“Your numbers keep changing,” he wrote in a post on X. “You say you collected 6 million pages but you’re only releasing 3 million. What’s in the 3 million that are missing?”
The White House declined to comment and referred NBC News to the Justice Department.
Earlier in December, the DOJ posted some 3,500 files on its website that included court documents, correspondence and dozens of photos that had previously not been made public.
Some redacted material was marked CSAM, which stands for child sex abuse material.
Epstein was charged in 2019 in Manhattan federal court with sex trafficking of minors, many of whom he allegedly preyed on while they were performing massages on him. He died behind bars while awaiting trial and his death was ruled a suicide.
In addition to Trump, powerful men Epstein had socialized with included former President Bill Clinton, Ohio billionaire Les Wexner and the former Prince Andrew of Britain, among others.
Clinton and Wexner have denied wrongdoing. Andrew has denied preying on young women allegedly supplied to him by Epstein but has been stripped of his title and evicted from his mansion near Windsor Castle because of his friendship with the fallen financier.
Epstein’s death while awaiting trial fueled years of conspiracy theories, some of which Trump himself fanned.
During the presidential campaign in 2024, Trump promised to “declassify the Epstein files” if elected. And in February, his handpicked attorney general, Bondi, announced that an Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk right now” waiting to be reviewed and released.
But the “Epstein binders” Bondi circulated to MAGA influencers contained no client list and turned out to be information that had already been made public. And the DOJ later walked back Bondi's claim of having Epstein's so-called client list.
Trump’s core supporters erupted in fury when the DOJ and the FBI announced in July that an exhaustive Epstein case review had uncovered no evidence that justified investigating other individuals. Despite earlier pledges of transparency, the DOJ said no more information about the case would be released.
Faced with a revolt by some of his most ardent supporters, Trump at first called the demands for releasing the files a “Democratic hoax.”
But the drumbeat for Trump and his DOJ to release the files grew louder in November when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released emails shared by the Epstein estate, in which he wrote that Trump “knew about the girls,” but didn’t directly accuse him of any wrongdoing. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was a selective release intended to smear the president.
Under pressure, the House and the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Nov. 19, which the president signed into law.
Epstein was first charged by Florida federal prosecutors in 2006 with having sex with a minor. He wound up pleading guilty to state charges involving a single underage victim after reaching a secret nonprosecution agreement.
That deal resulted in Epstein serving 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail, where he was allowed to leave almost daily via a work-release program and have his own private security detail.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term for conspiring to sex traffic minors and was reportedly seeking to get her sentence commuted by Trump, according to a whistleblower report to Congress.
Last month, Maxwell asked a federal judge in the Southern District of New York to set aside her sex trafficking conviction and free her from prison. She claimed “substantial new evidence” had emerged.
The judge, according to court records, has given federal prosecutors until March to respond to Maxwell's motion.
