The files, posted to the department’s website, included documents involving Epstein’s friendship with Mountbatten-Windsor, and Epstein’s email correspondence with onetime Trump adviser Steve Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and other prominent contacts with people in political, business and philanthropic circles, such as billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
Other documents offered a window into various investigations, including ones that led to sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019 and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021, and an earlier inquiry that found evidence of Epstein abusing underage girls but never led to federal charges.
Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, said Saturday that he had accepted the resignation of Lajcak, his national security adviser.
Lajcak, a former Slovak foreign minister, hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing, but emails showed that Epstein had invited him to dinner and other meetings in 2018.
The records also include a March 2018 email from Epstein’s office to former Obama White House general counsel Kathy Ruemmler, inviting her to a get-together with Epstein, Lajcak and Bannon, the conservative activist who served as Trump’s White House strategist in 2017.
Lajcak said his contacts with Epstein were part of his diplomatic duties. Pressure mounted for his ouster from opposition parties and a nationalist partner in Fico’s governing coalition.
The FBI started investigating Epstein in July 2006 and agents expected him to be indicted in May 2007, according to the newly records released. A prosecutor wrote up a proposed indictment after multiple underage girls told police and the FBI that they had been paid to give Epstein sexualized massages.
The draft indicated prosecutors were preparing to charge not just Epstein but also three people who worked for him as personal assistants.
According to interview notes released Friday, an employee at Epstein’s Florida estate told the FBI in 2007 that Epstein once had him buy flowers and deliver them to a student at Royal Palm Beach High School to commemorate her performance in a school play.
The employee, whose name was blacked out, said some of his duties were fanning $100 bills on a table near Epstein’s bed, placing a gun between the mattresses in his bedroom and cleaning up after Epstein’s frequent massages with young girls, including disposing of used condoms.
Ultimately, the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time, Alexander Acosta, signed off on a deal that let Epstein avoid federal prosecution. Epstein pleaded guilty instead to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18 and got an 18-month jail sentence. Acosta was Trump’s first labor secretary in his earlier term.
The records have thousands of references to Trump, including emails in which Epstein and others shared news articles, commented on his policies, or gossiped about him and his family.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s name appears at least several hundred times, including in Epstein’s private emails. In a 2010 exchange, Epstein appeared to set him up for a date.
“I have a friend who I think you might enjoy having dinner with,” Epstein wrote.
Mountbatten-Windsor replied that he “would be delighted to see her.”
Epstein, whose emails often contain typographical errors, wrote later in the exchange: “She 26, russian, clevere beautiful, trustworthy and yes she has your email.”
The Justice Department is facing criticism over how it handled the latest disclosure.
One group of Epstein accusers said in a statement that the new documents made it too easy to identify those he abused but not those who might have been involved in Epstein’s criminal activity.
“As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy,” it said.
Meanwhile, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, pressed the department to let lawmakers review unredacted versions of the files as soon as Sunday. He said in a statement that Congress must assess whether the redactions were lawful or improperly shielded people from scrutiny.
Department officials have acknowledged that many records in its files are duplicates, and it was clear from the documents that reviewers took different degrees of care or exercised different standards while blacking out names and other identifying information.
There were multiple documents where a name was left exposed in one copy, but redacted in another.
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Republished by permission of The Associated Press.
