DOJ releases huge new set of Epstein files with many mentions of Trump

A Bureau of Prisons correctional officer claimed he was "the only person" who saw Jeffrey Epstein hanging in his jail cell on the morning Epstein was found dead, according to a letter from his attorney, Montell Figgens, to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres.

The correctional officer, Michael Thomas, recounted some details of how he found Epstein deceased in his jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. Thomas has not spoken publicly about what he found that day.

"Mr. Thomas is the only person who saw Jeffrey Epstein hanging in his cell," Figgens wrote. He also said that his client is one of the "very few people to have lengthy conversations" with Epstein before his death. 

The letter was part of a support brief asking the court for a deferred prosecution agreement after federal prosecutors had charged Thomas and fellow correctional officer Tova Noel in November 2019 with falsifying records related to the events of that day. The letter is not dated.

The guards, who were the only ones working in MCC's Special Housing Unit where Epstein was being held on the morning his body was found, were accused of searching the internet and moving around the common area during their shift instead of checking on inmates. 

Thomas' attorney wrote that his client reported to his midnight shift on Aug. 10 after working multiple overtime shifts. Thomas checked in, signed onto the computer system and handled some preliminary paperwork for the upcoming shift, the letter states. 

Thomas remembers "briefly going online to check some sports scores and look at some classifieds," his attorney wrote, and that he was on the internet for "well under one hour's time."

According to the letter, "the next thing" Thomas "remembers is being awakened around 5:00 a.m. by the arrival of the morning food cart." He heard a "commotion" and then "immediately rushed to check on the inmates, at which time he found Mr. Epstein hanging in his cell," the letter reads. Later in the letter, Figgens writes that Thomas attempted "lifesaving CPR" on Epstein.

A 2023 report from the Justice Department's federal watchdog said that Thomas and Noel began delivering breakfast at 6:30 a.m., and Epstein's body was found at 6:33 a.m.

Figgens wrote that Thomas worked for the Bureau of Prisons for 16 years and described the employment struggles he faced after losing his job following Epstein's death. "Mr. Thomas has not been able to secure any employment since losing his job at the MCC," the attorney wrote.

Prosecutors dropped charges against Noel and Thomas in 2021 after offering them a deferred prosecution deal. 

In one newly released file, a woman who worked as a longtime executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein said she regularly scheduled massages for him. She said the massages were described to her as a normal part of Epstein's routine, and indicated she never witnessed any wrongdoing.

The revelations were made in an attorney proffer dated Feb. 13, 2020. An attorney proffer is a procedure in which a witness or defendant can provide written answers through their legal counsel. It's unclear what specific case this proffer was for.

In it, the woman said she worked for Epstein from the early 2000s until she resigned following his 2019 arrest.

She described at length her scheduling of daily massages, which she said were around one or two a day. She said the massages were described to her as "just part of his normal day. Akin to someone going daily to the gym."

"Massage appointments were a part of a normal day and were usually a daily occurrence," the executive assistant said.

She said that after Epstein pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges in Florida in 2008 — for which he served about 13 months in county jail — she "was not asked to make massage appointments after his plea, and, to her memory, the word 'massage' was not used again," according to the proffer.

She claimed that after Epstein's first arrest, she gave him "the benefit of the doubt" since he continued to associate with the same businesspeople and politicians, and that he "continued to claim it was all blackmail."

She said she decided not to resign at that time because she liked the flexibility of her lifestyle in working for him.

However, she said she quit after Epstein was indicted in 2019, saying she felt "used" as well as "betrayed and disgusted," and that she realized the previous allegations were likely real despite Epstein's denials.

The name in the proffer was mostly redacted, but twice the initials "LG" were accidentally left in the document. The "L" is also visible in many of the redactions. The initials and biographical details, such as the timing of the birth of the individual's son, match those of Lesley Groff, Epstein's longtime executive assistant.

A civil lawsuit against Groff was voluntarily dropped in 2021.

Two documents released Tuesday indicate that the Justice Department, during the end of President Trump's first term, appeared to be in plea negotiations with a possible "co-conspirator" of Jeffrey Epstein.

The Nov. 5, 2020, email with the subject line "DAG Meeting Overview" included bullet points of topics discussed for a meeting that day, and included two sections: "Anticipated Charges and Investigate Steps" and "Charged Cases."

The sender and recipients of the email are redacted, as is everything under the first section. DAG generally refers to "deputy attorney general."

The criminal case of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was listed as a subhead under the "Charged Cases" section, which notes that defense motions could draw press coverage if Maxwell succeeded in securing victims' identities.

Maxwell had been arrested and charged about four months prior to the sending of the email, in July 2020.

Under the same subhead, the email also states: "Also working on potential resolution with another Epstein co-conspirator." The next sentence is redacted.

A second, mostly redacted document titled "DAG Meeting Case Overview" that is also dated Nov. 5, 2020, reads: "Relatedly, we are in plea negotiations with counsel for [redacted], another Epstein co-conspirator. [Redacted], who scheduled hundreds of sexual massages with minors for Epstein but was also a victim of his sexual abuse, may plead to an obstruction of justice-related count."

The files contain several emails between Maxwell and someone using the moniker "The Invisible Man" who signed his messages "A." Various pieces of evidence indicate the sender was Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew. CBS News has reached out to his representatives for comment.

"The Invisible Man" used the email address abx17@dial.pipex.com. In one message dated Aug. 16, 2001, the sender mentions they are "up here at Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family." The writer asked Maxwell if she had found some "new inappropriate friends" for him to spend time and have "fun" with.

Another file includes Maxwell's response: "So sorry to dissapoint you, however the truth must be told. I have only been able to find appropriate friends. Will let you know about some church meetings on those dates." 

The Invisible Man replied to that message with another hint about his identity. "I lost my valet on Thursday. He died in his sleep. He had been with me since I was 2," he wrote to Maxwell on Aug. 18, 2001. The Guardian reported on Tuesday that "[r]eports from 2001 record that Mountbatten-Windsor's valet, Michael Perry, 61, died days before the email was sent."

Maxwell referred to the person as "Andrew" in February 2002 when she helped arrange activities for The Invisible Man in Lima, Peru. 

Her contact in Peru, a man identified as Juan Esteban Ganoza, told her: "Or we can rent a small plane and go to see the Nazca Lines. ... We could ride Peruvian Paso horses in the morning. ... Paracas is a very special bay for water-skiing. ... About the girls... how old is he? I doubt it that he will find someone here, but we can try."

The Invisible Man told Maxwell that he liked those ideas: "However I am afraid that horses and I do not mix particularly well but the trip to see the Lines sounds really interesting. ... As for girls well I leave that entirely to you and Juan Estoban!" 

Maxwell then identified "Andrew" as a "very English sounding gentleman" in an email back to Ganoza a few days later that she forwarded to Andrew. She said that he wanted "Some sight seeing some 2 legged sight seeing (read intelligent pretty fun and from good families)."

In a new statement, the Justice Department says the FBI determined that the letter addressed to Larry Nassar was a "fake":

Investigators found a photo of Mr. Trump with Ghislaine Maxwell while examining Steve Bannon's iPhone in June 2021, according to an email whose sender and recipient are redacted. 

"I've been looking through Steve Bannon's iPhone 7 on Cellebrite. As I was going through the images from that phone, I found an image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Bannon's phone (see screenshot from Cellebrite, attached)," the email said. Cellebrite is a software company that provides digital forensic tools often used by law enforcement.

The photo is blacked out in the document released Tuesday. The sender said they were flagging the photo "in case it was of any importance to you."

Bannon, previously a top Trump adviser, was indicted in September 2022 on state charges in New York related to a scheme to collect private donations to build a border wall. The next month, Bannon's attorneys said that prosecutors had collected 4 terabytes of data during the investigation. 

Bannon previously faced similar federal charges but was pardoned by Mr. Trump in 2021. He reached an agreement to plead guilty to one state charge to avoid prison time in February 2025.

The Justice Department said it is "currently looking into the validity" of a letter included in the files that was sent to Larry Nassar, the convicted sex offender who was a doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University. The letter is signed "J. Epstein" and lists Epstein as the sender, but its authenticity is in question.

In a post on X, the department said "three facts stand out" about the letter: It was postmarked in Virginia instead of New York, where Epstein was jailed at the time it was sent; the return address is incorrect and didn't include his inmate number, which the Justice Department said is required for outgoing mail; and the letter was processed after Epstein died by suicide.

The Justice Department included images of the letter in the most recent release of Epstein files. It also included a document showing FBI agents in 2020 requested an analysis of the letter's handwriting to determine if Epstein had written it. The results of that analysis are unknown.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urged the Justice Department to disclose more details about the 10 potential co-conspirators of Epstein's that were referenced in emails the Trump administration released that were related to the federal investigation into Epstein.

"The Department of Justice needs to shed more light on who was on the list, how they were involved, and why they chose not to prosecute," Schumer said in a statement. "Protecting possible co-conspirators is not the transparency the American people and Congress are demanding."

In a May 6, 2020, email with the subject line "memos," an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York appears to reference memos that have been drafted about Epstein's case. The name of the prosecutor is redacted, as are the names of the recipients. Epstein's 2019 criminal case was brought by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.

The first memo listed is on "co-conspirators we could potentially charge, the Monday after Epstein's death (delivered that Wednesday) (seven pages)," according to the email. Another memo is a "co-conspirator update memo, December (86 pages)." Yet another is described as a "corporate prosecution memo, December" that is 13 pages, according to the email, and was "never discussed."

The unidentified assistant U.S. attorney also referenced a "perjury/NM memo, will be another 30 pages."

The latest batch of documents released by the Justice Department also includes an Aug. 14, 2019, email with the subject line "co-conspirator memo" that was sent by an assistant U.S. attorney with a New York phone number. The body of the message states "a draft of the memo is attached."

An Aug. 14, 2020, email also includes several attached documents, one of which is described as "A December 2019 update memo on the status of our co-conspirator investigation." The name of the senders and recipients are redacted.

In a series of emails from 2020, technical engineers at the FBI described the amount of material they had seized from Epstein's Manhattan townhouse and island in the Caribbean, referencing more than 1 million pages of documents and volumes of electronic materials.

"[W]e are talking about terabytes worth of data over multiple forms of digital evidence. Phones, tablets, loose media, cameras, DVRs, servers, laptops, and desktop computers. We have gotten past encryption on multiple devices," one official said.

The files include at least two email chains from July 2019 that mention "10 co-conspirators." Epstein was indicted by a federal grand jury July 2, 2019, and arrested days later.

The first email exchange is dated July 7, 2019, with the subject line "co-conspirators." The sender and recipients' names are redacted, but the signature line for the sender states "FBI New York." The FBI official wrote, "When you get a chance can you give me an update on the status of the 10 CO conspirators? Do we need [redacted] to head out on [redacted names]?"

An unidentified person responded that they made contact with what appears to be several people, and "attempts were made to [redacted] and Brunel. [Redacted] is confirmed to live in NY but was away for the holiday weekend." 

The person also wrote: "Attempts to Maxwell are being made in Boston today. [Redacted] will be approached in FL and [redacted] in NY but haven't as of yet. I don't know about Ohio contacting Wexner."

Brunel is likely a reference to modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who was close to Epstein. Wexner is likely billionaire Leslie Wexner, founder and CEO of L Brands. Epstein was Wexner's personal money manager and business adviser.

The second email exchange was dated July 9, 2019, from an official at the FBI's Crimes Against Children Human Trafficking Unit and states that an unidentified official "is requesting an update on the 10 co-conspirators by COB today."

The email states: "Can you tell us how many have successfully been located/interviewed/served with GJS? I believe the breakdown was 5 in New York, 1 in North Carolina, 1 in Boston, and 3 in Florida." GJS likely means grand-jury subpoenas.

A person named Sean responds, "Of the 10 co-conspirators, 3 have been located in FL and served GJ subpoenas; 1 in Boston, 1 in NYC, and 1 in CT were located and served. 4 of the 10 are outstanding with attempts having been made. 1 is a wealthy businessman in Ohio, a lead is being sent to CV; the remaining 3 are currently out of pocket."

Wexner founded his company in Ohio and is an alumnus of the Ohio State University.

Jeffrey Epstein was the only inmate housed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan who had died by hanging in a decade, figures from the Federal Bureau of Prisons show. 

The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York provided those records to the legal team of BOP correction officer Tova Noel in 2021. Noel and Michael Thomas were the two federal corrections officers on duty the night Epstein's body was discovered in his NYC cell on Aug. 10, 2019. They found him in his cell unresponsive. Noel told the responding supervisor that "Epstein hung himself," according to recently released records. His death was ruled a suicide by the New York City Medical Examiner. 

The BOP records show Epstein was an inmate at MCC and died at a community hospital. 

Three other inmates died by suicide during 2010-2020, the period for which the records were provided. Those deaths happened either at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, or they were previously housed at the Brooklyn detention facility. 

Thomas and Noel agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement in 2021 for falsifying count records from the night of Epstein's death. The agreement included showing six months of good behavior and participating in community service. 

CBS News asked the White House for comment on the latest release of Epstein documents, including any response to the claim from a prosecutor that Mr. Trump traveled on Epstein's plane "many more times" than previously known or the Mar-a-Lago subpoena that was a part of Maxwell's case. 

A White House official referred to the statement issued by the Justice Department earlier in the day. 

Mr. Trump, who is at Mar-a-Lago, has no events on his public schedule today. 

Notes on a service request made two days before Epstein's death in a Manhattan jail show the staff's unsuccessful efforts to repair a digital video recorder surveillance unit that failed on July 29, 2019.

Epstein died on Aug. 10. The notes show a staffer at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan made calls to a service provider on Aug. 8 and Aug. 9, seeking expertise on repairing the system. 

After Epstein's death, a series of emails over the course of months show unsuccessful efforts by FBI personnel to recover data or images from the failed camera system. 

No video of Epstein's tier on the night of his death was ever recovered.

The latest files include images of an expired Austrian passport featuring a photo of Epstein with a different name. The name on the passport is Marius Robert Fortelni, with Saudi Arabia listed as his residence. (A man by the name Marius Fortelni is currently a real estate developer in Florida. CBS News left a message with his office on Tuesday morning.)

After Epstein's arrest in 2019, federal prosecutors revealed in court that authorities found an expired passport with his picture and a fake name during their search of his Manhattan mansion. Prosecutors said at the time that the Austrian passport, issued in the 1980s, listed a Saudi Arabian residence and featured a photo of Epstein under a different name. 

Photos of the passport in Tuesday's release show stamps from France, Spain, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, among other countries:

The passport became an issue after Epstein's arrest, with prosecutors arguing it showed that he was a flight risk and should be detained pending trial. Epstein's attorneys tried to explain the document in a memo to the judge, saying Epstein acquired the passport in the 1980s "when hijackings were prevalent, in connection to Middle East travel." His lawyers wrote that the passport "was for personal protection in the event of travel to dangerous areas, only to be presented to potential kidna[p]pers, hijackers or terrorists should violent episodes occur." 

Epstein's attorneys said the government had provided no evidence that he ever used the passport. 

The FBI received a tip in October 2020 that appears to be from an unidentified female who said she had information about a "Jeffrey Epstein party" in 2000. The person's information is redacted in the FBI's summary of the tip, which is included in the new files.

The woman alleged that someone named Ghislaine Lisa Villeneuve brought her to the party. Later, someone said that Donald Trump had invited everyone to Mar-A-Lago, according to the tipster. The tipster "told Villeneuve she wanted to go, but Villeneuve told [the tipster] it wasn't that kind of party, it was for prostitutes," the document says.

The tipster told the FBI she hadn't spoken to Villeneuve since 2002, according to the bureau document.

It's unclear whether the FBI considered the tip credible or did any further investigating. No one with Villeneuve's name appears to have been connected to Epstein in the past or accused of wrongdoing.

The Mar-a-Lago club was subpoenaed to produce documents in the case of United States v. Ghislaine Maxwell on Nov. 29, 2021, according to a copy of the subpoena included in the new files.

The subpoena demanded "Any and all employment records relating to [redacted]."

It is not clear who appeared on the club's behalf.

Maxwell, a longtime associate of Epstein, was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

The Justice Department said in a post on X Tuesday morning that some of the documents in the latest release "contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election."

"To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already," the DOJ said.

The Justice Department said it had released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Epstein and was releasing the documents "out of our commitment to the law and transparency," while citing its adherence to the required protections for survivors of Epstein's abuse. 

Upon receiving more flight logs in 2020, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York emailed someone (likely a colleague) to say that Donald Trump flew on Epstein's plane "many more times" than was publicly known. The names of both the sender and the recipient are redacted.

"For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware)," the email says. 

The email says he is "listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Ghislaine Maxwell was also present." 

The email also says Trump took at least one flight with Epstein and a 20-year-old, whose name is redacted, and two flights with "women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case."

"We've just finished reviewing the full records (more than 100 pages of very small script) and didn't want any of this to be a surprise down the road," the assistant U.S. attorney wrote.

The president has not been accused of wrongdoing. While he and Epstein ran in the same social circles in New York and Palm Beach from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, Mr. Trump has said the two had a falling out around 2004 and had not spoken in the years leading up to Epstein's 2019 death.

The Justice Department's newest release of files on Epstein appears to be its largest to date, with upwards of 11,000 files, many of which are multiple pages. 

The release includes court records, emails, photos, news clippings, spreadsheets, audio and hundreds of video files.

President Trump is mentioned several times, though many of those instances are in news clippings that were shared among DOJ employees. 

The data set also appears to include FBI documents, internal Justice Department communications, court subpoenas, other legal documents and records related to Epstein's 2019 death in federal custody, according to an initial review by CBS News.

President Trump said Monday that last week's release of thousands of photos from the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein risked ensnaring "highly respected" people with no connection to the late sex offender's crimes. 

Asked what he thought about the emergence of photos of former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Trump called it "terrible" and said he's "always gotten along" with the former president — and argued other people who appear in the photos could be unfairly tarred.

"I don't like the pictures of Bill Clinton being shown. I don't like the pictures of other people being shown. I think it's a terrible thing," the president told reporters. "I think Bill Clinton's a big boy, he can handle it. But you probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago ... and they're highly respected bankers and lawyers and others."

The president said Epstein was "all over Palm Beach" and many people crossed paths with him.

Epstein was known for cultivating relationships with the rich and powerful, and he socialized with both Clinton and Mr. Trump at various points — though neither man has been accused of any wrongdoing.

Read more here.

A spokesperson for former President Bill Clinton on Monday pushed the Justice Department to release "any remaining records" in the Jeffrey Epstein files that mention Clinton or include a photo of him, arguing the former president has nothing to hide.

Several photos of Clinton emerged Friday in the government's initial release of files collected during its investigations into Epstein, including an image of Clinton sitting in a hot tub with an unidentified person. He has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Clinton spokesperson Angel Ureña said Monday that Attorney General Pam Bondi should "immediately release" anything else it has on the former president, including photos, court records and internal Justice Department documents.

"[W]hat the Department of Justice has released so far, and the manner in which it did so, makes one thing clear: someone or something is being protected. We do not know whom, what or why," Ureña said. "But we do know this: We need no such protection."

It's not clear whether the Justice Department has any as-yet unreleased files that mention Clinton.

Clinton's representatives have acknowledged for years that he traveled with Epstein on multiple occasions, but say the former president had no knowledge of the late sex offender's crimes. On Friday, Ureña accused the government of trying to scapegoat Clinton.

The Justice Department released a massive new trove of records on Jeffrey Epstein early Tuesday.

The initial batch of files came on Friday, Dec. 19, and consisted of five data sets. 

The first data set was the largest of the batch. It included 3,158 photos of what appeared to be Epstein's properties in Manhattan and the Virgin Islands, apparently taken by investigators.

The second set included 574 photos of Epstein's travels and included some images of prominent figures. The third set included 67 PDF files, mostly inventories of photos found on CDs and DVDs and in scrapbooks. Many of those files included graphic material that was redacted. 

The fourth batch of documents included 152 PDF files of call logs, phone records, handwritten notes and police files. The fifth group consisted of 120 images of hard drives, folders and boxes, apparently taken by investigators.

The final two batches of documents were released on Saturday, Dec. 20: the sixth data set featured 13 files of grand jury presentations and interview transcripts, and the seventh includes 17 more files from grand jury proceedings, court records and an internal Justice Department transcript of an interview with the U.S. attorney involved in an earlier federal investigation into Epstein in the mid-2000s.

The Justice Department is facing continued backlash over its partial releases of the Epstein files, with lawmakers and survivors denouncing the limited scope of the disclosures.

A group of survivors called on Congress to hold hearings and take legal action to demand compliance with the law.

"It is alarming that the United States Department of Justice, the very agency tasked with upholding the law, has violated the law, both by withholding massive quantities of documents, and by failing to redact survivor identities," they said in a statement Monday. 

The survivors said the government released "a fraction of the files," and said the material that was disclosed was "riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a resolution Monday that would direct the upper chamber to "initiate legal actions" against the Justice Department to demand that it comply with the law. The New York Democrat is expected to force a vote on the measure when the Senate reconvenes in the new year.  

Read more here.