UPDATE - US Justice Department releases 1st phase of Jeffrey Epstein documents

UPDATES WITH ADDITIONAL DETAILS; ADDS BACKGROUND; CHANGES DECK

By Darren Lyn and Efe Ozkan

HOUSTON, US / ISTANBUL (AA) - The US Justice Department released the first phase of documents from the archives of convicted pedophile and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in his jail cell in 2019, US media reported.

Although there were big names released in the more than 100 pages of documents on Thursday – singers Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger, actors Alec Baldwin and Dustin Hoffman and Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump's daughter – all those names had appeared on previous publicly released lists and none have ever been implicated in any of Epstein's illegal sex trafficking allegations.

A list of 254 names on another document titled "MASSEUSES" was entirely redacted, which drew criticism from Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, who leads the US House of Representatives Republican task force on government transparency.

“The task force (was not) given or reviewed the Epstein documents being released," Luna posted on social media. "The documents will simply be Epstein's phonebook."

"THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a complete disappointment," she continued. "GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!"

US Attorney General Pam Bondi has accused the FBI of withholding documents related to Epstein’s sex trafficking case and demanded that the department hand over all documents by Friday.

"I learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein," Bondi said in a statement. "Despite my repeated requests, the FBI never disclosed the existence of these files."

While there was no so-called smoking gun in Thursday's documents, a New York judge last year released more than 900 pages of documents related to a lawsuit filed against Epstein's convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in the child sex trafficking ring.

Names released from Maxwell's files, primarily flight manifests from Epstein’s private aircraft, included President Donald Trump, who has been seen in pictures with Epstein from years past, former President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey (also implicated over sexual misconduct but later acquitted), and Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

Flight records showed that over the course of years since buying Little Saint James Island, part of the US Virgin Islands, Epstein made hundreds of trips to his residence there, alleged to be the site of trafficking and sexual abuse of women and minors, giving it the nickname the "Island of Sin" or just Epstein Island.

- ‘Island of Sin’ and Epstein’s trafficking ring

Epstein, an American financial consultant, was convicted of child prostitution in 2008 after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. After serving 13 months in custody, he was discharged with extensive work release.

Epstein reportedly arranged for private aircraft and boats to traffic and sexually abuse women and underage girls on his island, where he hosted high-profile figures such as Prince Andrew and physicist Stephen Hawking.

In 2019, Epstein was arrested again on federal charges for sex trafficking of minors across his residences in Manhattan, New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and the island.

Epstein killed himself in his New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial. While his death was ruled a suicide, a wave of conspiracy theories emerged due to his well-documented connections to famous and powerful public figures.

A Justice Department report released in 2023 said there was no evidence of foul play and that a "combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures" by jail staff allowed Epstein to take his own life.