Epstein files live updates on today's DOJ release with 3 million documents, photos

Kathryn Ruemmler, who was White House counsel under former President Obama from 2011 to 2014, said in a December 2015 email that she adores Epstein. 

"I adore him. It's like having another older brother!" Ruemmler said to a redacted recipient, according to the emails released by the Justice Department. Ruemmler made the comment after Epstein offered to buy her a first-class ticket to Europe. 

Ruemmler also served as associate White House counsel to former President Bill Clinton. She is now the chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs. 

In 2023, she told the Wall Street Journal, "I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein."

In a November 2013 email, Epstein asked Elon Musk if he would come to the Caribbean for Christmas. He said Woody Allen was with him and that Musk "might enjoy" the trip. 

"Yes," Musk responded.

Although CBS News has not independently verified that Musk attended, the next year, in a September 2014 email, Epstein mentioned he had spoken with LinkedIn founder and tech investor Reid Hoffman, and he asked Musk if he would join for Christmas "again" in St. Barts.

"Don't know," Musk responded. 

In a May 2015 text message exchange, Epstein asks filmmaker Woody Allen if he wants to have a "day museum White House trip" the next week. That would have been when former President Barack Obama was president. 

Allen replied, "With my rap sheet I'll never get past security."

It's unclear if they were referring to visiting someone at the White House or simply a tourist trip. Another person appears to be included in the text exchange, but the name is redacted. 

Allen has not been charged with any crimes, and he has denied accusations by Mia Farrow that he molested their adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow. 

A message sent Sept. 28, 2012, asks "what does JE think of going to Mar-a-Lago after xmas instead of his island?"

The names of the sender and the recipient are redacted. It's unclear whether there was any response. 

Mr. Trump has acknowledged that he and Epstein were friends for years but said they had a falling out around 2004, years before Epstein pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges in Florida and more than a decade before he was indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges.

The Justice Department release includes a diagram of Epstein's inner circle. It shows pictures of Maxwell, suspected co-conspirator Jean Luc Brunel, suspected co-conspirator Leslie Groff, accountant Henry Bellar and other associates. Other suspected co-conspirators, recruiters, former pilots and employees are listed with some of their names redacted. 

The Justice Department said in a press release about the latest publication of Epstein-related documents that some of the material contains untrue information about Mr. Trump.

"This production may include fake or falsely submitted images, documents or videos, as everything that was sent to the FBI by the public was included in the production that is responsive to the Act," the department said, referencing the Epstein Files Transparency Act. "Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims 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 have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already."

The Justice Department said the records came from five primary sources, including cases against Epstein and Maxwell, a Florida case investigating one of Epstein's former butlers, multiple FBI probes and an investigation into Epstein's death conducted by the Justice Department's internal watchdog.

It said "notable individuals and politicians were not redacted in the release of any files."

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche also sent a six-page letter to Congress, dated Friday, informing lawmakers that the production "marks the Department's compliance with its production under the act."

"Today's release marks the end of a comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the Act," they wrote. "The Department has engaged in an unprecedented and extensive effort to do so."

Among the material made public Friday is a two-page document with booking information for Maxwell that includes her mugshot.

Maxwell was indicted on sex-trafficking charges and arrested on July 2, 2020. The document, which appears to be from a Joint Automated Booking System, includes Maxwell's biographical information.

In an October 2009 email to Epstein from Peggy Siegal, a publicist and New York socialite, said she just left Ghislaine Maxwell's house, where an after-party for an unnamed film was being held.

"Bill Clinton and Jeff Bezos were there," she wrote. 

Epstein sat for a deposition in 2016 as part of Virginia Giuffre's defamation suit against Ghislaine Maxwell. He was asked several questions about Bill Clinton, and he responded "fifth" — to signify that he was invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — to each question about the former president. Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein case.

Questions included:

• "Isn't it true that in the time period 2000 to 2001, you were close friends with Bill Clinton?"
• "Bill Clinton flew on your jet a number of times in 2002, right?"
• "When Bill Clinton came to your island, he was accompanied by two young women who were approximately 18 years old, true?"

California Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the Trump administration is breaking the law by withholding millions of pages related to the federal probe into Epstein.

"Donald Trump and his Department Justice have now made it clear that they intend to withhold roughly 50% of the Epstein files, while claiming to have fully complied with the law. This is outrageous and incredibly concerning," he said in a statement. "The Oversight Committee subpoena directs Pam Bondi to release all the files to the committee, while protecting survivors. They are in violation of the law."

Garcia said House investigators will review the latest release of records but will continue their investigation into Epstein and the government's handling of his case. 

"We are demanding the names of Epstein's co-conspirators and the men and pedophiles who abused women and girls," he said.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, questioned the Justice Department's decision to release roughly 3.5 million pages of documents after identifying more than 6 million that may have been covered by the law.

"The DOJ said it identified over 6 million potentially responsive pages but is releasing only about 3.5 million after review and redactions. This raises questions as to why the rest are being withheld," he said in a statement.

Khanna said he will be reviewing the newly available documents to see if they include records that he has been pushing to be made public, such as FBI forms memorializing victim interview statements, a draft indictment and prosecution memorandum that was prepared during a federal investigation into Epstein in 2007, and emails and files from his computers.

"Failing to release these files only shields the powerful individuals who were involved and hurts the public's trust in our institutions," Khanna said in a statement.

Blanche said the Justice Department and reviewers of the Epstein records in no way tried to protect President Trump. 

"I hope that the work that the men and women within this department have done over the past two months hopefully is able to bring closure," Blanche said. "I think that what we told our reviewers is that that was the goal. There's this mantra out there that, 'Oh, you know, the Department of Justice is supposed to protect Donald J. Trump,' and that's what we were telling — that's not true. That was never the case."

"We are always concerned about the victims," Blanche continued. "When we said that we were not legally allowed to release documents, that's a fact. That was true, it remains true today, and then with the act's passage, we are now able and directed to release documents, which is what we are doing."

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer in a Jan. 15 letter that compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act is a "substantial undertaking" because many of the documents required a "manual review" to ensure information identifying victims was redacted.

"To date, the Department has employed over five hundred reviewers to review and redact millions of pages of materials from the investigations into Epstein and his convicted coconspirator, Maxwell," Justice Department leaders wrote.

Blanche said federal authorities redacted every image or video of every woman depicted in the records they're releasing, except for Ghislaine Maxwell. They also redacted images of exploited minors. 

No images of men were redacted, Blanche said, unless it was impossible to redact the image of the woman without also redacting the man.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Friday the Justice Department is releasing more than 3 million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images and videos related to its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Blanche said it appears that Epstein took some of the photos, though some were taken by others. He said the images and videos made public include "significant redactions" to protect survivors of Epstein's crimes.

The deputy attorney general said the federal authorities identified more than 6 million pages as being potentially responsive to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed late last year. He said more than 500 lawyers and other combed through the records over nights, holidays and weekends. 

In another letter to Berman and Engelmayer dated Jan. 27, Bondi and Blanche said they expected the Justice Department to make public "substantially all" of the records related to its investigation into Epstein "in the near term."

The two Justice Department leaders said "hundreds" of department employees were working to finish the review of Epstein records.

The Justice Department said on Dec. 24 that "over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case" had been uncovered by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI, adding that the process of releasing the files may take "a few more weeks."

SDNY prosecutors filed federal sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019 and he was awaiting trial in that case when he died in jail. The office also prosecuted his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Read more here.

The Justice Department published the first batch of files on Dec. 19, which consisted of five data sets containing thousands of photos of what appeared to be Epstein's properties in Manhattan and the Virgin Islands, along with photos of Epstein's travels — including some images of prominent figures, including former President Bill Clinton, President Trump, Mick Jagger, Woody Allen, Larry Summers and others. They have not been accused of wrongdoing. 

The release also included PDF files of call logs, phone records, handwritten notes and police files. 

The next day, another batch of documents was released, featuring grand jury presentations, interview transcripts, 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.

Some files were heavily redacted, drawing criticism from lawmakers who pushed for the release.

Then on Dec. 23, the Justice Department released a massive tranche of more than 11,000 files, totaling nearly 30,000 pages of photos, court records, emails, news clippings, videos and other records. Many of the files included mentions of Mr. Trump, though the Justice Department said some of the documents contained "untrue and sensationalist claims" about the president. The president has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Thousands of pages of materials from Epstein's estates and other sources had already been made public prior to the Justice Department's action.

The Justice Department's release of the Epstein files comes after interest swelled earlier this year upon the release of an internal DOJ review, which found no "client list" among the evidence collected by investigators, despite earlier claims by the attorney general.

Following months of pressure from lawmakers, constituents and survivors, an effort to force a vote to compel the Justice Department to release the files gained enough support in the House in November. Lawmakers quickly approved the legislation, and Mr. Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law on Nov. 19, giving the Justice Department 30 days to release the files. 

Though it faced a Dec. 19 deadline to release all the files, the Justice Department said it will release the files on a rolling basis due to the volume, citing the time it takes to make redactions to protect the survivors' privacy.