NEW YORK (AP) — Newly disclosed government files on Jeffrey Epstein are offering more details about his interactions with the rich and famous after he served…
— Newly disclosed government files on Jeffrey Epstein are offering more details about his interactions with the rich and famous after he served time for sex crimes in Florida, and on how much investigators knew about his abuse of underage girls when they decided not to indict him on federal charges nearly two decades ago.
The documents released Friday include Epstein’s communications with former White House advisers, an NFL team co-owner and billionaires including Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said it would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal most of the material it collected during two decades of investigating the wealthy financier.
The files, posted to the department’s website, included documents involving Epstein’s friendship with Britain’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, 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.
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 cavorting with underage girls but never led to federal charges.
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 or draft indictment after multiple underage girls told police and the FBI that they had been paid to give Epstein sexualized massages.
The draft, included in the latest batch of documents, 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.
