Images in the document collection released on Friday show politicians like Bill Clinton and several famous people like Diana Ross, Kevin Spacey, Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger. But there is much that is not visible. Entire pages are blacked out, that is, completely masked.
Democratic politicians, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are expressing great disappointment.
"This collection of heavily redacted documents that the Department of Justice released today represents only a fraction of the evidence," he said in a statement.
He states that Senate Democrats are examining the released documents to determine what needs to be done to "hold the Trump administration accountable."
According to the law
According to a law that Trump himself signed, all documents were to be released by December 19th. But that has not happened. Hundreds of thousands of files are waiting to be made public and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff is demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi be summoned to Congress to explain herself.
The Justice Department, which has been under intense pressure to review the documents, says it has been very careful to protect victims. The department acknowledges that it may be a "cover-up" as it can be difficult to determine who is a victim or not, CNN reports.
Trump did not mention
President Donald Trump has so far featured relatively little in the files. He was once friends with Epstein, but has since distanced himself from the convicted sex offender, calling him a “disgusting guy.” Earlier this year, some documents linked to the two were made public. Among other things, Epstein wrote in an email to author Michael Wolff in January 2019 about Trump: “Of course he knew about the girls because he asked (assistant) Ghislaine (Maxwell) to stop.”
Donald Trump gave a short speech on Friday evening, local time, after the documents were released, but did not mention anything about the files and did not answer any questions, according to the BBC.
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Petra Hedbom/TT
Background: The twists surrounding Jeffrey Epstein
TT
An investigation into businessman Jeffrey Epstein began in 2005 after a 14-year-old girl told police she had been molested by him at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. The investigation grew and in 2007 he was indicted in federal court.
After a plea deal with prosecutors, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sex trafficking in 2008. He was released after 13 months.
The case received renewed attention in 2018 after a series of articles in the Miami Herald in which several women came forward and accused Epstein of sexual assault during the period 2001 to 2005.
In July 2019, Epstein was arrested at an airport in New Jersey. The new charges against him concerned the abuse of dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005. According to the prosecution, Epstein tried to buy the silence of witnesses with millions of dollars. Epstein denies the crime.
On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. The official cause of death is suicide, but this is disputed.
