Epstein affair | Donald Trump mentioned in new documents

(Washington) Thousands of new documents from the investigation into sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, including hundreds of videos and audios, were posted online Tuesday by the US Department of Justice. Some of them contain “false and sensationalist claims” about Donald Trump, judicial authorities warned.

These new files notably contain surveillance images from the cell of New York sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein dating from August 2019, when he was found dead, according to the AFP analysis.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department posted about 11,000 links to new documents online, but some led to nothing.

The newly released documents contain, among other things, “false and sensationalist claims” against Trump, the department warned.

The ministry had already published around 4,000 files related to the Epstein file on Friday. Victims of the sex criminal and elected Democrats had criticized the Trump administration for what they considered to be a withholding of information and a dissemination of the Epstein file considered too slow.

Around fifteen victims complained in a press release published on

They also criticized the Justice Department for “leaving the identities of numerous victims apparent, causing immediate and real harm.”

The department was forced by a law, reluctantly promulgated by the American president, to publish the entire file before the deadline of Friday, December 19.

From his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, the American president expressed concern about the harm that the publication of the file, in particular the photos, could cause.

He spoke Monday for the first time since the partial publication of the Epstein file, expressing concern that these documents would affect the “image” of innocent people.

“Everyone was nice”

“Everyone was nice to this guy,” he said at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, residency.

“Bill Clinton was friends with him, but everyone else was,” he continued, worrying that some people “who innocently met” Mr. Epstein “because he was at a party” might be embarrassed by the publication of these documents.

Once close to the financier with whom he moved in the same circles, the Republican billionaire has always denied having any knowledge of his criminal behavior and claims to have cut ties before he was brought to justice.

The Justice Department says it needs more time to carefully release the rest of the case to best protect the victims whose identities could be revealed in these thousands of photos, videos and texts.

The Democratic opposition, however, sees this delay as a political maneuver intended to avoid the publication of information supposedly compromising President Donald Trump, who appears in images alongside Jeffrey Esptein.

The publication of these documents, resulting from the investigation led by the American authorities into the influential New York financier and sex criminal, who died in 2019 before his trial, should help shed light on his past links with prominent figures, including the Republican president.

While he said, during his 2024 campaign, he agreed to make these files public, Donald Trump then did an about-face, denouncing a “hoax” used by the Democrats.

His “MAGA” base, obsessed with this scandal, rebelled when the Department of Justice announced in the summer that it had discovered no new elements justifying the publication of additional documents or new prosecutions.

After months of revolt, the president had to give in to pressure from Congress, including elected Republican officials, promulgating a law in November requiring his government to publish all of the unclassified documents in its possession.

A figure of the New York jet set, Jeffrey Epstein is known to have frequented many prominent American and foreign personalities, including the current Republican president and his distant Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton.

He is accused of having sexually exploited more than a thousand young women, including minors.