Yet again, released Epstein files raise more questions than answers | Moira Donegan

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After months of public outcry and pressure from within the Maga coalition, Donald Trump’s justice department released what it called The Epstein Files, with the Trump world’s typical fanfare. A media frenzy ensued. But the “files” that were released by Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice left many observers frustrated and confused. The release was partial and heavily redacted; much of the information had already been made public. Media figures were incensed, and members of Congress pledged to push the Trump administration for more. The episode left Washington watchers frustrated. It fueled speculation that Trump, who had long opposed the release of the documents, had something to hide. That was on 27 February, when a group of 15 rightwing media figures who had taken a special interest in the Epstein case were summoned to the White House and given white binders labeled “The Epstein Files.” The release was meant to allay pressure from the president’s conspiracy-minded base and neutralize the Epstein issue, which has dogged Trump since the financier sex offender and former close friend of the president died in prison during his first term in 2019. But those who received the binders said that there was little new information in them. The episode only further inflamed tensions and increased the salience of the Epstein issue. Something similar seems to have happened on Friday, when the Trump administration, facing a deadline set by Congress to release the totality of the Epstein files, published about 13,000 of the reportedly hundreds of thousands of documents in their possession relating to Jeffrey Epstein and the various law enforcement investigations into his trafficking and sexual abuse of underage girls. Once again, the documents seemed to largely reflect information that had already been made public; they also appeared to be selectively redacted in ways tailored to preserve the president’s interests and disparage or embarrass his enemies. Once again, the highly partial release from the Trump administration raises questions much more readily than it supplies answers. The partial release of the documents represents a political defeat for Donald Trump. Long opposed to releasing the files, Trump came under fire from within his own party last month when congressional Republicans including Thomas Massey, Majorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace sided with Democrats in demanding the release of the Epstein files. Trump’s concentrated effort to delay or prevent the release, which reportedly included heavy pressure on the congressmembers, proved futile; he reversed course and signed the bill passed by Congress on 19 November that mandated that all the documents be released by the justice department. The partial release came late in the afternoon on the Friday before Christmas, with much of the nation’s attention away from politics and toward the upcoming holiday. Still, congressmembers argued that the Department of Justice violated the law, which demanded a full release of the Epstein files within 30 days of passage: Thomas Massey wrote that the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law”. This is not to say that nothing in the files is disturbing. Photographs, in particular, paint a disturbing image of the financier. In his Manhattan townhouse, a room that seems to have been dedicated to Epstein’s abuse contains a massage table, various lotions and oils, and large artworks depicting nude women on the walls. Most of Epstein’s homes in Manhattan and the Virgin Islands appear to be decorated with artwork depicting nude female figures and spotted with framed photographs of adolescent girls, whose faces are redacted in the released images. (Epstein had no children.) Many of the documents pertain to the two major investigations of Epstein’s abuse: the first, which began with the Palm Beach police in 2005 and culminated in Epstein serving a markedly lenient sentence brokered by the then US attorney and later Trump labor secretary Alexander Acosta, and the second investigation, begun by federal authorities in 2019, which was curtailed by Epstein’s death in jail that year. There is also evidence of the government’s failures to investigate Epstein or to take the reports of his sexual predation seriously. Included in the documents is a report of a 1996 complaint about Epstein’s interest in child pornography made to the FBI by Maria Farmer, a young artist who once worked for Epstein, who told authorities that the financier had stolen nude photographs and negatives that she had made of her younger sisters, then aged 12 and 16, and had asked her to photograph girls at swimming pools for him. “EPSTEIN is now threatening that if she tells anyone about the photos he will burn her house down,” the complaint reads. The FBI took no action on Farmer’s complaint; she says she was sexually assaulted around that time by Epstein and his girlfriend and procuress, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a prison sentence for sex trafficking. It would be almost another decade before law enforcement bothered to look into what Epstein was doing to girls. Other images show how routinized or banal Epstein’s abuse of girls had become. Notes taken from a November 2004 voicemail read, “I have a female for him.” One particularly disturbing image, a Post-it, reads in a bubbly, childlike handwriting: “Cannot come at 7PM tomorrow b/c of soccer.” Some of the redactions appear to have been made to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims. One law enforcement list –labeled “Masseuses” – is completely blacked out, except for the numbers enumerating the names. They go up to 254. Trump does not appear often in the files that were released on Friday, but there are marks of his friendship with Epstein. He appears in photos in a drawer, in an image which was briefly removed from the public files over the weekend before being restored after a public outcry. In a legal complaint filed in a Manhattan court, a woman who says she was recruited by Maxwell as a 13-year-old at summer camp claimed that Epstein took her, then 14, to meet Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. “Introducing 14-year-old Doe to Donald J Trump, Epstein elbowed Trump playfully asking him, referring to Doe, ‘This is a good one, right?’” the complaint says. The claims echo recent reporting from the New York Times, in which one teenager’s mother says that as a 14-year-old model, her daughter was told to “dress sexy” for a party at Mar-a-Lago, where she was repeatedly offered alcohol. But if the files released on Friday offer little information about Donald Trump, they heavily feature Bill Clinton, the former president who was a longtime associate of Epstein’s. In images, Clinton is pictured repeatedly socializing with Epstein. In one photo, taken aboard a private plane, Clinton poses with a very young woman perched on the arm of his chair, her face redacted. Perhaps the Department of Justice released these images of Clinton hoping to shift the political consequences of the Epstein scandal onto Democrats. But anyone pictured in the Epstein documents, or who can be reasonably suspected of having known about Epstein’s activities and associated with him anyway, is someone the Democratic party is better off without. Clinton, in particular, is a man with numerous credible allegations of sexual misconduct that should have disqualified him from good standing within his party long ago; if that was not enough, his discredited style of politics should have been. His will be no great loss. The Epstein scandal is not going away, and neither is the public outrage over Trump’s association with the dead pedophile. At its core, the Epstein saga is a metaphor for the corruption of the American elite: their amorality, their immunity from consequence, their densely incestuous relationships of mutual protection. A decade ago, Trump swept into power by wielding anger at that elite to his own advantage. But the Epstein story has revealed to everyone that he was part of that rotten core all along. No one is going to forget. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist