(Washington) The US Department of Justice announced Friday that it would publish three million documents concerning Jeffrey Epstein, after the first published documents confirmed a past proximity between the sex criminal and Donald Trump.
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The number two at the Department of Justice, Todd Blanche, specified that these included more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, largely “pornography”.
The images and videos of all the women were hidden with the exception of those of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, he stressed during a press conference.
US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE IMAGE, PROVIDED BY REUTERS
This image, released by the Department of Justice on January 30, 2026, shows a police record form for Ghislaine Maxwell.
The American government, which is publishing this gigantic file under the constraint of a law passed by Congress, had already released tens of thousands of documents at the end of December.
It will take “several weeks” to sort everything out, the Department of Justice then announced, announcing that it had to process “more than a million” new documents potentially linked to the case, discovered by a New York prosecutor and the federal police.
Previous publications have especially shed light on the spectacular network of the wealthy New York financier, who died in prison in 2019 in New York before being tried for having set up a system of sexual exploitation of underage girls.
For the rest, they asked more questions than they provided answers, for example on the existence of possible accomplices of Jeffrey Epstein.
Besides the businessman, who authorities say committed suicide in his cell, the only other person prosecuted was his former collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in the United States.
Republican and Democratic parliamentarians joined forces to push for the publication of this enormous mass of photos, videos and written documents (e-mails, witness interviews, etc.), against the will of the American president.
Dropper
This reluctance of Donald Trump has outraged some of his supporters, who see in the Epstein affair, fertile ground for all kinds of conspiracy theories, the confirmation of their suspicions about the depravity of the elites.
The department justified the slow dissemination by the need to protect the victims by crossing out names or even entire passages, or by covering faces in the photos.
This sparse publication and redactions fueled accusations of cover-up against the Trump administration.
Among the documents not yet released are pieces likely to shed light on the very first Epstein case, more than 15 years old and distinct from the prosecutions brought later in New York.
In this first case, investigated by Florida prosecutors, Jeffrey Epstein was accused of having used the services of underage prostitutes.
He received a modified prison sentence of 13 months and escaped a trial thanks to a secret agreement made in 2008 with a prosecutor, considered extremely lenient by experts.
The parliamentarians behind the law on the disclosure of the file would like to see the indictment drawn up at the time against Jeffrey Epstein, as well as a memorandum summarizing the investigation.
Private plane
Among the documents published in December, photos of former Democratic President Bill Clinton in the company of Jeffrey Epstein or women with hidden faces particularly attracted attention.
Other documents had confirmed the closeness that existed at one time between the rich businessman and Donald Trump, who was never accused of criminal actions in relation to Jeffrey Epstein.
The American president admits to having seen him in the 1990s, but claims to have cut ties before he was worried by the courts.
He declared in January 2024 on his Truth Social network: “I never took Epstein’s plane. »
The name of Donald Trump appears eight times on the passenger list of Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane between 1993 and 1996, however, claims an investigator, in an email dating from 2020 made public as part of the first publications.
