By ERIC TUCKER, MICHAEL R. SISAK and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
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 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.
Draft indictment detailed Epstein’s abuse
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.
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.
Famous names show up in Epstein’s emails
The records have thousands of references to Trump, including emails in which Epstein and others shared news articles about him, commented on his policies or politics, or gossiped about him and his family.
Also included was a spreadsheet created in August summarizing uncorroborated tips from people claiming to have some knowledge of wrongdoing by Trump.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s name appears at least several hundred times in the newly released records, in news clippings, Epstein’s private emails and guest lists for dinners Epstein organized. Some records document prosecutors’ attempt to get him to agree to be interviewed.
The records also show Musk, the Tesla, SpaceX and X billionaire, reached out to Epstein on at least twice to plan visits to a Caribbean island where much of Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse purportedly occurred.
It was not immediately clear whether the visits took place. Spokespeople for Musk’s companies did not respond to emails seeking comment. Musk has said he repeatedly rebuffed Epstein’s overtures.
Epstein also appears to have tried to connect Tisch with women, according to emails. In one exchange, Tisch told Epstein he had had lunch with one of Epstein’s assistant’s friends, a “very sweet girl,” and asked if Epstein knew anything about her.
Tisch said in a statement that he had a “brief association” with Epstein, “never went to his island” and “deeply regrets” knowing him.
The documents show that Bannon, a conservative activist who served as a strategist in Trump’s first term, bantered over politics with Epstein, discussed get-togethers with him over meals and, in March 2019 asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick up Bannon in Rome.
In December 2012, Epstein invited Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street billionaire who is now Trump’s commerce secretary, to his island for lunch, the records show. Lutnick’s wife accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. On another occasion in 2011, the men had drinks, according to a schedule shared with Epstein.
Lutnick has said he cut ties with Epstein long ago. A Commerce Department spokesman said Lutnick had “limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.”
Another Epstein contact was former Obama White House general counsel Kathy Ruemmler. In one exchange, Epstein emailed Ruemmler to advise that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a mafia-type figure even as he derided Trump as a “maniac.”
A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs, where Ruemmler is general counsel and chief legal officer, said she had a “professional association” with Epstein and “regrets ever knowing him.”
Records build on government’s earlier release
Last month’s release of tens of thousands of pages included previously released flight logs showing Trump flew on Epstein’s jet in the 1990s and photographs of former President Bill Clinton. None of Epstein’s victims who have gone public has accused Trump, a Republican, or Clinton, a Democrat, of wrongdoing. Both men said they had no knowledge Epstein was abusing underage girls.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in August 2019, a month after being indicted.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse. One victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, sued Mountbatten-Windsor, saying she had sexual encounters with him starting at age 17. The now-former prince denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre died by suicide last year at age 41.
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Tucker and Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists from around the country contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.
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