SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Justice Department has released files relating to the life, death and criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein - well, at least some of them. The law signed by President Trump last month had directed the DOJ to turn over the documents by Friday. NPR's Stephen Fowler has been reviewing the files and joins us. Stephen, thanks for being with us.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Good morning.
SIMON: What exactly was released?
FOWLER: Well, on the surface, it sure looked like a lot. Justice.gov/epstein went live around 4 p.m. And there was a queue you had to wait in before accessing the page. The Epstein library contained well over 100,000 pages of court records, Freedom of Information Act files, memoranda from the Justice Department and videos from outside Epstein's federal prison cell, where he died by suicide in 2019, and documents that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law last month, compelled the Justice Department to hand over.
SIMON: Feels like there's more to the story.
FOWLER: Well, yeah. It's not all the files. And in the grand scheme of what was released, there aren't that many things that are actually new, Scott. Notably, there aren't many mentions of the president in this latest release. He was a longtime friend of Epstein before they had a falling out and has appeared in previously released files. Eighty percent of it comes from public court records from more than 50 cases against Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and others. There's about 4,000 files, 8,500 pages, that fall under this new Transparency Act. Most of those are photos of Epstein's estate and his travels with people like former President Bill Clinton, among others. And there's this previously undisclosed FBI report from 1996 - 30 years ago - that accused Epstein of child pornography crimes and allegedly threatened to burn the accuser's house down if she told anyone about it. Even then, there are hundreds of pages, just straight-up redacted black boxes all over things like grand jury information that do leave a lot of questions.
SIMON: The law directed the Justice Department to release all of their files by yesterday. That apparently didn't happen. What did department officials say?
FOWLER: The DOJ says its review of the files found more than 1,200 victims and families and wrote in a separate court filing Friday that redactions include people who may not actually be victims, as they err on the side of what they say might be viewed as an over-redaction, taking out more than may be required by law out of an abundance of caution. This could also explain why there will be more than one release of documents. On Friday night, there were more files that were uploaded.
SIMON: What's been the reaction from members of Congress?
FOWLER: Not all of them are happy. Remember, this was a near unanimous law that was passed through Congress. Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California, who cosponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, told All Things Considered yesterday that the released files weren't what he expected or wanted. He says there's too many redactions and missing information altogether. Here's an example.
RO KHANNA: There's a draft indictment of the first Jeffrey Epstein case that really implicates other rich and powerful men who knew about the abuse or participated in it. That indictment should be released.
FOWLER: His Republican cosponsor, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said that impeachment could be on the table for officials involved, though Congress is out of session for a while over the holidays.
SIMON: Stephen, what can we expect to happen now?
FOWLER: Like Khanna said, it's notable all of the things that aren't in the files that have been released and that some people think will never be. There's an FBI memo from over the summer that said about 300 gigabytes of evidence is in their possession. And the way President Trump has handled this by fanning flames of conspiracy on the campaign trail, then attacking his supporters for wanting to know more once he took office has basically made it where nobody is set to be satisfied with the information that is and could be put out there.
SIMON: NPR's Stephen Fowler. Thanks so much.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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