No charges arising from Epstein files, says US official
WASHINGTON—A top justice department official played down the possibility of additional criminal charges arising from the Jeffrey Epstein files, saying on Sunday that the existence of “horrible photographs” and troubling email correspondence does not “allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.”
Department officials said over the summer that a review of Epstein-related records did not establish a basis for new criminal investigations and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that position remains unchanged even as a massive document dump since Friday has focused fresh attention on Epstein’s links to powerful individuals around the world and revived questions about what, if any, knowledge the wealthy financier’s associates had about his crimes.
“There’s a lot of correspondence. There’s a lot of emails. There’s a lot of photographs. There’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him,” Blanche said on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.”
He said victims of Epstein’s sex abuse “want to be made whole,” but that “doesn’t mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of come up with a case that isn’t there.”
President Donald Trump’s justice department said on Friday that it would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents and more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal most of the material it collected during long-running investigations into Epstein.
Swift fallout
The fallout from the release of the files has been swift.
In the United Kingdom, Lord Peter Mandelson announced his resignation from the governing Labour Party on Sunday following further revelations about his relationship with Epstein. He said he was stepping aside to avoid causing “further embarrassment,” even as he denied allegations he had received payments from Epstein two decades ago.
A top official in Slovakia, meanwhile, left his position after photos and emails revealed he had met with Epstein in the years after Epstein was released from jail. And British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested that longtime Epstein friend Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, should tell US investigators whatever he knows about Epstein’s activities.
The files posted to the department’s website included documents involving Epstein’s friendship with Mountbatten-Windsor, along with 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, such as billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
Trump, Clinton ties
The Epstein saga has long fueled public fascination in part because of his past friendships with Trump and former President Bill Clinton. Both men have said they had no knowledge Epstein was abusing underage girls.
Among the records was a spreadsheet created last August that summarized calls made to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center or to a hotline set up by prosecutors from people claiming to have some knowledge of wrongdoing by Trump. That document included a range of uncorroborated stories involving different celebrities and somewhat fantastical scenarios, occasionally with notations indicating what follow-up, if any, was done by agents.
Blanche said on Sunday that there were a “ton of people” named in the files besides Trump and that the FBI had fielded “hundreds of calls” about prominent individuals where the allegations were “quickly determined to not be credible.”
Women for sex
Some of Epstein’s personal email correspondence contained candid discussions with others about his penchant for paying women for sex, even after he served jail time for soliciting an underage prostitute.
