US Justice Department releases 1st phase of Jeffrey Epstein documents

By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, United States (AA) - The US Department of Justice released the first phase of documents from the archives of convicted pedophile and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, media outlets reported Thursday.

Although there were big names released in the more than 100 pages of documents -- Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Alec Baldwin, Dustin Hoffman and President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump -- all those names have appeared on previous lists that have been publicly released and none of them 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 garnered the ire of 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," Luna 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 has demanded that the department hand over all documents by Friday.

"I learnt 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 released from 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 serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in the child sex trafficking ring.

Names released from Maxwell's files included President Donald Trump, who has been seen in pictures with Epstein from past years, as well Stephen Hawking and the previously-mentioned Jackson, Jagger, Baldwin and Hoffman.

Epstein killed himself in his New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. 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.