Epstein files
The Epstein files are over 6 million pages of documents, images and videos detailing the criminal activities of American financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his social circle of public figures that included politicians and celebrities.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump floated the idea of releasing the Epstein files, though he later said that the files are fabrications by members of the Democratic Party.
On November 18, 2025, the United States House of Representatives passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in a 427–1 vote, and the United States Senate unanimously approved it; Trump signed the bill the next day. The U.S. Department of Justice released a relatively small amount of the Epstein files by the act's deadline of December 19, 2025, leading to bipartisan criticism. On January 30, 2026, an additional 3 million pages were released, including 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. Though the Department of Justice acknowledged that a total of 6 million pages might qualify as files that would have to be released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, it said the January 30 release would be the final one and that it had met its legal obligations. The released files mentioned a number of public figures and led to increased scrutiny of Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson, Peter Mandelson, Steve Tisch, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and Peter Attia.
Background
Jeffrey Epstein was indicted in 2006 and accepted a plea deal in 2008. He was indicted again in 2019 and died in prison. Epstein cultivated a social circle of public figures that included politicians and celebrities. This fueled conspiracy theories that Epstein kept a list of clients to whom he had trafficked young girls, that he used it to blackmail them, and that he was killed by them; these theories were disseminated widely after his 2019 death, including by then-president Donald Trump, and again in 2025.The term "Epstein files" refers to documents collected as evidence in the criminal cases against Epstein and his associates, stored as over 300 gigabytes of data, plus other media, in the FBI's Sentinel case management system. They include his contacts book, flight logs of his planes, and court documents; some have been publicly released in redacted form. For example, court documents and flight logs have contained various prominent individuals as having traveled with Epstein, or been in contact with him.
The Epstein list
The Epstein list is a purported document within this body that contains the names of high-profile clients to whom Epstein trafficked young girls. Epstein cultivated a social circle of public figures that included politicians and celebrities, fueling claims suggesting that he maintained such a list to blackmail these associates—and that his 2019 death was not a suicide but a murder to protect his clients. Claims surrounding the existence of a client list first surfaced in the immediate aftermath of Epstein's death, later reaching heightened prominence in 2025 following a now-deleted tweet from former White House senior advisor and Department of Government Efficiency associate Elon Musk alleging that United States president Donald Trump was "in the Epstein files". The Trump administration's United States Justice Department released a memo on July 7, 2025, which stated the list did not exist and "no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties." The memo was met with skepticism from political commentators across the political spectrum, such as Alex Jones and John Oliver."Epstein's black book" or "Epstein's little black book" refers to a 97-page book of names, phone numbers, emails, and home addresses a former employee took from Epstein's home in 2005 and later tried to sell. Gawker published a redacted version in 2015, and an unredacted version was released on 8chan in 2019. A second book of contacts, sometimes referred to as "Epstein's other little black book", was published by Business Insider in 2021, and is dated October 1997. According to investigative reporter Julie K. Brown, Epstein's then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell compiled the directory, which included celebrities as well as Epstein's gardeners, hairdresser, barbers, and electrician. Brown said that "the so-called list is really a red herring" and that "every time Epstein or Maxwell met somebody important, they would get their contact information, and they would put it in this file... So it was pretty clear that this was not a black book in the sense that these were all his clients. It was just a phone directory." The DOJ's July 2025 memo stated that no client list exists within the Epstein files and that investigators found no credible evidence Epstein used such material to blackmail associates. The memo also affirmed that Epstein's death was a suicide.
Trump's relationship with Epstein
Trump and Epstein were acquainted from the late 1980s through the mid-2000s. In a 2002 interview with New York magazine, Trump called Epstein a "terrific guy" who "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Their relationship cooled in the early 2000s, with commonly cited reasons including disputes over employees and a 2004 real estate deal in Palm Beach, Florida, in which Trump outbid Epstein on an oceanfront mansion. In 2003, Trump contributed a letter to a bound album of birthday greetings given to Epstein on his 50th birthday; The Wall Street Journal reported the letter contained suggestive content, which Trump denied writing. In October 2007, Trump revoked Epstein's membership at Mar-a-Lago.2023–2024 Maxwell case unsealing
In 2023, four years after Epstein's death, New York judge Loretta Preska ordered the unsealing of documents from the 2015 defamation case against Ghislaine Maxwell. Anyone who had their name contained in these documents had until January 1, 2024, to appeal to have their name removed, after which date the documents would be unsealed. The court documents unsealed in January 2024 contained little information that had not already been public knowledge. Individuals mentioned in the released court documents include: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, singer Michael Jackson, and physicist Stephen Hawking. Most were mentioned in passing and not accused of any wrongdoing. Model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, accused of sexual abuse by one of Epstein's victims, had died by suicide in 2022 in Paris, France, while under investigation for the rape and sex trafficking of minors.Position of Trump administration
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump and his allies pledged to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein held by the federal government. Trump stated in interviews that he would "probably" make additional Epstein records public, while allies including JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr. accused the Biden administration of concealing a list of Epstein's clients. After taking office, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in February 2025 that she was reviewing Epstein-related material at President Trump's direction, and the FBI undertook an extensive review of approximately 100,000 records.In July 2025, the Department of Justice released a memo concluding that no "client list" existed in the Epstein files, that no credible evidence supported claims Epstein had blackmailed prominent individuals, and that his death was a suicide. The announcement drew criticism from Trump supporters and Democratic lawmakers alike. Reporting by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times subsequently revealed that Bondi had informed Trump in May that his name appeared in the files alongside "unverified hearsay," and that officials had advised against public disclosure. Trump characterized the files as falsified documents created by political opponents and filed a defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal over its coverage.
On November 19, 2025, Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed to mandate release of DOJ records related to Epstein. The signing took place without reporters present.
Campaign promises (2024)
During the Biden administration, Trump allies, including Kash Patel, promoted claims that the FBI was withholding an Epstein "client list" and urged its release. In June 2024, Donald Trump Jr. accused the administration at the Turning Point Action convention of keeping the list secret to protect pedophiles; in October, JD Vance said "we need to release the Epstein list".Trump, despite having brought up a connection between Epstein and Bill Clinton at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference, rarely mentioned the Epstein files during this period; yet, he did not refute his allies' claims. On two occasions during his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump pledged to release the Epstein files. In a June 2024 interview with Fox News, when asked whether he would declassify them, Trump responded, "Yeah, yeah, I would." The clip was shared by an official Trump campaign account on Twitter. The unedited answer aired later shows Trump saying he was not sure he would because "you don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there, because it's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world". In a September 2024 interview with Lex Fridman, Trump stated he would have "no problem" releasing additional Epstein files and would "probably" make the client list public.
Initial releases and FBI review (February–May 2025)
Pam Bondi was asked on February21, 2025, by Fox News journalist John Roberts whether the Justice Department would publish "the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients", and Bondi replied: "It's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump. I'm reviewing that."On February27, she released documents that contained no significant new information. Faced with outcry from a disappointed public, Bondi demanded that FBI Director Kash Patel provide the extensive material she had originally requested from him. Michael Seidel, the section chief of the FBI's Record/Information Dissemination Section, objected to Bondi's order and was forced to resign. The FBI worked on Epstein records for two weeks during late March, according to Senator Dick Durbin. He later wrote:
pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel... on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline. This effort... was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily-protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests. My office was told that these personnel were instructed to "flag" any records in which President Trump was mentioned.
In the documents, the FBI found dozens of high-profile names, including Trump's. A unit of FOIA officers, citing exemptions in FOIA law, redacted Trump's name because, although he was then a sitting president, he had been a private citizen when the 2006 federal investigation into Epstein began.
Lawyer and law professor Alan Dershowitz said in an interview with Sean Spicer on March 19, 2025, that he knew the names of individuals on such a list and unreleased files relating to Epstein, adding that "I know why they're being suppressed. I know who's suppressing them" and that he was " bound by confidentiality from a judge and cases, and I can't disclose what I know". Dershowitz had been part of the legal team that negotiated a non-prosecution agreement for Epstein in 2006.
In May, Bondi informed Trump that his name appeared in the Epstein files. She also said that the files contained "unverified hearsay" about Trump and others, child pornography and identifying information on Epstein's victims. As such, officials advised that the files should not be disclosed. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung denied reports that Trump was advised not to release the files, and Bondi said that "As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings". Shortly thereafter, Bondi canceled her appearance at CPAC's International Summit Against Human Trafficking, citing a torn cornea. According to Politico, "ollowing the reported briefing in May, Trump appears to have sought to narrow the government's public disclosures to avoid releasing information." On May 18, Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino told Fox News that Epstein had died by suicide.
On June6, the Joe Rogan Experience aired an interview with Kash Patel, who said of the Epstein matter, "We've reviewed all the information, and the American public is going to get as much as we can release. He killed himself.... Do you really think I wouldn't give that to you, if it existed?"