The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Justice Department did not say why the files were removed or whether their disappearance was intentional. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.

Scant new insight in the initial disclosures

Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

The gaps go further.

The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability

Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

“I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked context

Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.

The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.

Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

“For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.

“There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

Misinformation is a problem, the Microsoft cofounder said, that we are “handing to the younger generation.”

Speaking to CNBC Make It, Gates, worth $118 billion per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, said he had been naive to assume that “when we made information available, that people would want correct information.”

A high-profile figure himself, Gates has seen scrutiny extend to his family. His daughter Phoebe, in particular, has struggled with being harassed online.

“Hearing my daughter talk about how she’d been harassed online, and how her friends experienced that quite a bit, brought that into focus in a way that I hadn’t thought about before,” Gates—a father of three—continued.

Gates’ youngest daughter—co-founder of AI shopping tool Phia—has previously spoken about misconceptions surrounding her family and relationships, including being “memed for being in an interracial relationship.”

An internet meme is an image or video, usually intended to be humorous, that is spread online.

Despite being aware of how misinformation is spreading online, Gates said he can understand why certain audiences flock to platforms that reflect their views—a phenomenon known as confirmation bias.

“We have context where we want correct information, like hopefully when we want medical advice,” Gates said. “But then we kind of like, in our community and enclave, have these shared views that kind of pull us together.”

He explained: “Even I will wallow. Let’s say there’s a politician I don’t like, and there’s some article online criticizing him a little bit. I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s such a good critique, [and] I enjoyed reading it, even if it was exaggerated.’”

AI could help curb misinformation

Gates’ probing questions about how to control the spread of incorrect information online may be at odds with the take of fellow billionaire Elon Musk.

Gates said in the interview: “We should have free speech. But if you’re inciting violence, if you’re causing people not to take vaccines, where are those boundaries? Even the U.S. should have rules, and then if you have rules, what is it? Is it some AI that encodes those rules? You have billions in activity, and if you catch it a day later the harm is done.”

This isn’t the first time Gates has proposed the emerging technology as a tool against misinformation and deepfakes (images and videos which are incredibly realistic but are not authentic).

In a blog post on his website, GatesNotes, in July 2023, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation cofounder wrote: “This will be a cyclical process: Someone finds a way to detect fakery, someone else figures out how to counter it, someone else develops counter-countermeasures, and so on.

“It won’t be a perfect success, but we won’t be helpless either.”

Elon Musk’s take on freedom of speech

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of X—the platform previously known as Twitter—is a free-speech absolutist who is unlikely to appreciate the notion of rules being placed on what he, or others, can say.

Musk believes freedom of speech is the “bedrock of democracy” and has vowed to battle apparent censorship of his platform.

That being said, a debate over how to control misinformation wouldn’t be the first time the views of Musk and Gates have been at odds. In July 2024, for example, Musk threatened Gates would be “obliterated” for apparently holding a bearish position on Tesla stock. Fortune could not confirm whether Gates still owns a short position on the EV maker.

Likewise, Gates has said his management style is better than that of Musk—a boss he believes may push “too hard.” Meanwhile, Musk has claimed Gates doesn’t understand artificial intelligence, saying his insight on the topic is “limited.”

More recently, the tech titans have been at loggerheads over Musk’s work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE.) In January 2025, Gates said he hoped some of the foreign aid and personnel cuts enacted by DOGE would be rolled back: “Elon I think said ‘Yeah, we made a mistake, we went overboard,’ but … what is the equilibrium? How many of those people can be kept so we can continue to save tens of millions of lives?” Gates also accused Musk of some “insane” political interference in 2025.

In November, Musk revived the bad blood between the pair, writing on X that if Gates hadn’t closed out his alleged “crazy short position” against Tesla, “he had better do so soon.”

It seems misinformation may just be another of many topics on which the billionaires will have to agree to disagree.

More on Bill Gates:

• Bill Gates’ $200 billion moonshot: Inside the biggest bet on humanity a philanthropist has ever made
• Bill Gates believes Alzheimer’s blood tests should be part of routine medicals—such prevention means you could work into your 90s if you wanted to
• Bill Gates calls on Congress to ‘show its values’ on foreign aid, or this year will see children’s deaths go up instead of down

A version of this article was first published on September 5, 2024.

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