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This particularly cursed holiday week kicked off in earnest last night when my father turned his iPad in my direction. On its screen was a terribly disturbing post on X containing two images. In the first, Jeffrey Epstein was hugging and kissing a little girl. In the second, that girl was bound and gagged on a bed.
Dad was rightly outraged and disgusted. He asked me if I’d seen the photos in my time going through the Epstein files. I immediately recognized the first image of Epstein and deduced that it had been Photoshopped from a widely distributed photo of Epstein hugging Ghislaine Maxwell. The second image seemed to be an AI rendering. (To add to the confusion, images reportedly do exist of Epstein cuddling children.) I let him know that the imagery was fake, and a distinctly non-yuletidy conversation ensued. Yes, Epstein was a heinous pedophile and convicted sex offender. Also, the internet is awash in fake, traumatizing slop that’s being used to score points in an ongoing information war. Happy holidays!
Early this morning, the Department of Justice released nearly 30,000 documents related to its investigations into Epstein. A previous batch was released late last Friday afternoon, as mandated by Congress, and was notable for its thorough redactions, its overall lack of material related to President Donald Trump, and the fact that it was incomplete. This latest batch contains far more mentions of Trump, leading the DOJ to issue a defensive-sounding, partisan, and frankly unprofessional post on X: “Some of these documents 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.”
As I looked through the documents myself, I realized that many mentions of Trump in this batch come from news stories or documents referencing publicly available information about the president. For example, a random email in the archive includes a link to a story headlined “Trump: Kushner’s Security Clearance Is Up to Kelly.”
But there are some new, salacious-seeming details. Take, for instance, a 2020 email from an unidentified federal prosecutor alerting an unknown recipient that Trump had taken more trips on Epstein’s plane than was previously realized. There are at least two unvetted forms submitted in 2020 to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center tip line that mention Trump’s name in conjunction with alarming and unproven allegations, including rape and paying for sex.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about these new documents and allegations, and instead referred me to posts on X by the DOJ; Trump has previously denied any wrongdoing and has downplayed his past relationship with Epstein.
Another shocking revelation is a copy of a letter allegedly written by Epstein to Larry Nassar, a former U.S.-gymnastics-team doctor who was convicted of possessing child pornography, among other crimes, and who used his position to sexually abuse hundreds of women and girls. The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein’s death, in 2019, and makes a reference to suicide. “As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home,” the letter, which appears to have been signed by Epstein, reads. “Good luck! We shared one thing … our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential.” The letter continues: “Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.” The existence of a letter sent by Epstein to Nassar had been previously reported by the Associated Press, but the contents had not been; earlier today, the DOJ posted on X that it had concluded that the Nasser letter was fake, which “serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual.”
These details alone are a lot to take in. That they are just a few needles of newsworthy information in a PDF haystack is dizzying. Blearily tabbing through the files at random this morning, I came across screenshots of what appear to be emails between prosecutors in Epstein’s 2008 sex-crimes case, which resulted in Epstein getting a cushy plea deal (almost all of the names in the email are redacted). I can think of no reason that the names of those who afforded him such an arrangement shouldn’t be made public. In one of the emails, from late May of that year, one person mentions an unnamed person, presumably Epstein, spending only 90 days in jail. “Please tell me you are joking,” the other replies. “Maybe we should throw him a party and tell him we are sorry to have bothered him.” Such emails, although redaction-heavy, are the kind of information that journalists and investigators have longed for—they shed partial light on the government’s leniency in the case. Still, the release is piecemeal and difficult to comb through; as a result, it paints an unclear picture.
As is often the case online, the messy, public release has at times led to more confusion than clarity. On X this morning, I came across a viral post containing a screenshot of one of the FBI tips from the files that alleges that Trump and Epstein raped a woman. “Now we’re starting to see why Trump was hiding the Epstein files, and it probably gets much worse,” the post reads. Digging through the files, I’ve confirmed that the document is real, but the post—which currently has several million views—lacks crucial context. The allegations are not part of a court document or witness testimony; they’re transcribed from a 2020 call to the FBI tip line, and totally unconfirmed.
This is a sterling example of the informational chaos here. A disturbing, salacious tip, the credibility of which is completely unknown, printed on an official FBI form: It’s perfect fodder for screenshots, reposts, and accusations. The “information” looks terrible for Trump, but it’s presented without any burden of proof. That the DOJ would release something so potentially incendiary but redact other information, such as the names of government lawyers, only adds to the confusion.
The Epstein scandal has consumed Washington and dogged Trump’s second term, and the release of these latest files is textbook news dump: a massive tranche of individual image files and PDFs, collected with few discernible organizing details, dropped online just before the Christmas holiday. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Sunday that the partial, phased release is being done in part to protect victims. Although that could be the case, the drip-drop release has the added effect of being frustrating and overwhelming, stringing everyone along during a moment when fewer people are likely to be paying attention.
Ironically, the nature of the release also means that the story will not die. Today’s release has only fanned the flames of the conspiracy. It also fragments an important news story such that it becomes hard to get a good sense of where things stand. In one interpretation, it might feel like the walls are closing in for Trump and the White House, where an avalanche of anecdotal evidence—the infamous 50th-birthday-book release in September, a trove of emails in November that mention Trump and his onetime adviser Steve Bannon, last Friday’s release, today’s—is piling up. But seen another way, this release is also optimally confusing, muddying the waters with as-yet-unverified information that’s being disseminated via individual screenshots on social media, making the whole thing easier to dismiss.
[Read: You really need to see Epstein’s birthday book for yourself]
There’s a secondary effect for those of us watching, which is that of being trapped in some kind of Epstein holiday purgatory. Family gatherings and Honey Baked Hams are colliding with the slow-burn proliferation of crime-scene evidence related to an alleged prolific sex trafficker who appears to have been close friends with the current president of the United States. Those following the Epstein saga closely are stuck waiting for the next shoe to drop; those with more normal news-consumption habits or who may wish to ignore the sordid affair may be forced to acknowledge it as nauseating details barge into their life while they scroll, channel surf, or talk with a politics-obsessed uncle at the dinner table.
This would be a small price to pay, if any true accountability were to come from this process. But much of the context of the Epstein files is that they are being released by a DOJ that, as my colleague David A. Graham wrote yesterday, has gone to great lengths to politicize itself in the second Trump administration. As Graham notes, the entire Epstein ordeal is a showcase of “compounding failures” by the federal government, from its slowness to act on tips about Epstein many years ago, to the plea deal in 2008, to this administration’s questioning of Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell and her move to a minimum-security prison this past summer. And then there is what the files continue to confirm: a moral rot in some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. Combine these things, and the files are a recipe for inspiring potent distrust and resentment.
Those of us paying attention are, for now, stuck—bombarded with enough troubling information and allegations to assume the worst about this conspiracy, but also possessing enough earned cynicism and suspicion to assume that little will change.
