What do the Epstein Files contain and what happens now?

The long-running furore over the so-called Epstein files is expected to reach new heights this week after a judge ruled that a tranche of documents previously kept secret must be unsealed on December 19. The documents are expected to offer more insights into the federal investigations into child abuser Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator and occasional lover, Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein died in jail before he could be tried. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year jail term for child sex trafficking.

Previous attempts to unseal grand jury records have been repeatedly denied because of court protective orders to maintain the anonymity of victims and others who have testified. Last week, however, Richard M. Berman of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that a new bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump – called the Epstein Files Transparency Act – helped to overrule previous reservations.

A day earlier, another judge, Paul A. Engelmayer, made a similar decision in the case of Maxwell, also citing the new law, following an earlier ruling by Florida judge Rodney Smith. Judge Berman did, however, maintain “the unequivocal right of Epstein victims to have their identity and privacy protected”, which means that many of the documents are likely to be heavily redacted.

Trump has been in an awkward position over the Epstein files for the better part of his second term in the presidency. He has called the files boring, a hoax and “something nobody cares about” and denied he had contributed to the so-called “Birthday Book” presented to Epstein on his 50th birthday (more on that later). Ultimately, though, both Democrats and Republicans have agreed that many of the files should be unsealed.

”The questions on everyone’s minds, I think, are whether high-powered men took part in the abuse or helped to cover it up,” Holly Baltz, investigative editor at The Palm Beach Post, one of the Florida newspapers responsible for surfacing many of the Epstein revelations, alongside the Miami Herald told us in August. “They also want to know whether the government buried information in order to protect them.”

What are the Epstein files? What might be revealed?

First, who was Jeffrey Epstein and what did he do?

It’s 2005 in the affluent town of Palm Beach, Florida, where middle-aged, grey-haired multi-millionaire bachelor Jeffrey Epstein owns a waterfront mansion. It is arranged for a girl to come to the house to give him a massage. She is 14 but has been coached to say she is 18 if anybody asks.

Epstein, who divides his time between Florida, New York and other properties, is known as a “financier”, although what he actually does to make money is opaque. Possibly, he gives friends and acquaintances investment advice, managing their affairs and clipping the ticket; maybe he conjures up business deals; he almost certainly liaises between wealthy acquaintances and his preferred banks.

Then he asks, would she like to make another $100? She says ‘sure’, what does she have to do?

“He makes it sound as though his job combines the roles of real-estate agent, accountant, lawyer, money manager, trustee and confidant,” is how British journalist Vicky Ward describes him in her 7500-word profile for Vanity Fair in 2003, “The Talented Mr Epstein”, which unpicks some of Epstein’s nefarious business dealings in great detail but only hints at his penchant for “pretty ladies”. (Ward will later claim that Vanity Fair put a lid on abuse allegations; the magazine will say there were legal issues.)

We also know that Epstein has an unusual relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, the high-society, Oxford-educated daughter of media tycoon and fraudster Robert Maxwell. They have apparently been intimate, but the relationship is now better framed as friends or co-conspirators. One reporter describes Maxwell and Epstein as “soulmates” who “serve each other’s purposes”.

As will later be revealed in testimony to a grand jury, it is part of Maxwell’s job as a charming “fixer” to seek out and persuade girls of high-school age to “massage” Epstein. She then encourages these girls to rope in their friends and acquaintances to do the same in return for a finder’s fee – a pyramid scheme of child sex trafficking.

Today’s victim doesn’t know who Epstein is, she only knows she will be paid $US200. She is told to undress and gives Epstein a massage, after a fashion. He is relaxed and chatty, asking the girl about her school and home life. Then he asks, would she like to make another $100? She says “sure”, what does she have to do?

She is apparently not the first child to experience Epstein’s modus operandi, which typically starts with a massage that escalates into illegal sex acts as he tests the waters. She finishes, dresses, is paid in cash (Epstein is always flush with cash) and leaves.

A few days later, at the girl’s school, there are rumours. She gets into a fight and is called to the principal’s office. The principal asks to see inside her purse and discovers the $US300, a vast sum for a 14-year-old in 2005. A story about dealing pot rapidly unravels. Police investigate and eventually the FBI gets involved too.

‘If the justice system in the US were a nightclub, then the saga around Epstein shows that there’s a VIP entrance.’

That’s how it all began, said Holly Baltz – and it’s how it should have ended, with Epstein properly investigated, multiple witnesses examined and him and his cronies ending up jailed for decades. “Had that original prosecution been robust,” she told us from Florida, “you and I wouldn’t be talking today.”

It starts out well enough. A grand jury (of citizens which, in the US, hears evidence and decides whether going to a full trial is warranted) hears testimony. The FBI collects its own evidence from dozens of victims. But then the investigation goes awry. Epstein’s crack legal team, which includes flamboyant Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr – whose investigation into Bill Clinton when he was president led to Clinton’s impeachment (he was ultimately acquitted) – persuades the local attorney-general, Alexander Acosta, to make a favourable deal called a non-prosecution agreement.

In return for the FBI parking its parallel investigation, which could have seen Epstein jailed for life for child sex trafficking, the “financier” agrees to a no-contest jail term of just 18 months on two counts of soliciting prostitutes, one of them a minor. An additional clause grants four named co-conspirators and “any potential co-conspirators” immunity from any future prosecution. “That whole saga, if you will, was very, very unusual,” Markus Wagner, professor of law at the University of Wollongong, told us in August. “A friend of mine said if the justice system in the US were a nightclub, then the saga around Epstein shows that there’s a VIP entrance.” An assistant state attorney later describes it as the “deal of the century”.

Epstein gets favourable treatment when he goes to jail in 2008, with his own TV, and ends up serving 13 months of the 18-month sentence, much of that on day release, allowed to travel to his office for 12 hours a day for “work”.

Flash forward a decade and Epstein, now a registered sex offender, is once again living the life of Riley, his crimes apparently forgiven and forgotten by high society. He mingles with celebrities, royalty and the political elite. He makes extravagant donations to institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and Harvard University. He has homes in New York and Florida, apartments in Paris, a ranch in New Mexico and owns two neighbouring islands in the US Virgin Islands, to which he flies friends and hundreds of girls, many believed to be originally from Eastern Europe, on his private aircraft.

‘The facts underlying this case, as we understand them, are beyond scandalous. They tell a tale of national disgrace.’

Some of his victims are also abused by his acquaintances, it is later alleged. One alleged victim, Virginia Giuffre, will later claim she had been sexually assaulted by Prince Andrew in London when she was 17, and that she had been “passed around like a platter of fruit” to other abusers. She settles a civil lawsuit against Prince Andrew out of court in 2022, which includes him making a donation in the millions of pounds to Giuffre’s charity; there is no admission of guilt and the now-former prince memorably claims on television that the incident could not have happened because he had been at a Pizza Express restaurant with one of his daughters that day.

Epstein is eventually charged with sex-trafficking minors, in New York, but dies in jail in 2019 before the trial, by what investigators find is suicide. (The CCTV camera footage is patchy, contributing to conspiracy theories that he was murdered.) Maxwell is found guilty in 2021 of conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex-trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor. In 2022, she is sentenced to 20 years in jail.

The FBI today tallies Epstein’s victims at more than 1000, most of them teenagers aged between 14 and 17. “The facts underlying this case, as we understand them, are beyond scandalous,” noted an appeals court in 2021. “They tell a tale of national disgrace.”

What are the so-called Epstein files?

While Epstein never faced a trial, police and other investigators had gathered what is believed to be hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence, including video files taken from security cameras in Epstein’s homes, flight logs, photographs (some allegedly of victims and, possibly, their abusers), scraps of paper such as reminder notes gleaned from Epstein’s rubbish, computers, innumerable memory sticks, hard drives, lists of his so-called “masseuses”, contact books, audio recordings, transcripts and the so-called Birthday Book, a leather-bound album allegedly made for Epstein’s birthday in 2003.

One of those pages was a written note, purportedly signed by Trump, that appeared inside the drawn outline of a woman’s body. Trump has denied writing the note or drawing the picture. He is suing News Corp and The Wall Street Journal, which first revealed the note, over its reporting.

Many documents have been made public already thanks to victims’ compensation claims, civil cases against Epstein while he was alive and against his estate after he died, a defamation case brought by Giuffre against Maxwell (who had called Giuffre a liar), a compensation claim brought by Epstein’s victims against the FBI in 2008, and associated cases such as the government of the US Virgin Islands suing the bank JPMorgan for its alleged involvement in abetting Epstein’s sex crimes in its territory.

The latter lawsuit, which the bank settled for $US75 million ($115 million), claimed “JPMorgan knew and recklessly disregarded and concealed the fact that it was Epstein’s pattern and practice to use the channels and instrumentalities of interstate and foreign commerce to recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide, obtain, and maintain young women”. The case surfaced documents from an internal investigation at JPMorgan named “Project Jeep” (J for Jeffrey, E for Epstein) that included thousands of private emails between Epstein and his personal banker, Jes Staley, who had visited Epstein at his ranch and in the Virgin Islands. One piece of correspondence was subsequently seized upon as particularly cryptic, from the banker to Epstein: “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White.”

(Staley went on to become head of Barclay’s bank but stepped down and was subsequently fined and banned from working in financial services by Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority for misleading authorities about his relationship with Epstein. Fighting, and failing, to clear his name earlier this year, he was forced to admit in court that he had engaged in con­sen­sual sexual inter­course with a woman on Epstein’s staff.)

Also publicly available is a list of hard evidence taken from Epstein’s estate, including massage tables and sex toys. But many of the documents that have been released to date are heavily redacted, ostensibly to protect the identity of victims and the success of any ongoing investigations.

Far-right Trump supporters, podcasters and internet conspiracy promoters, such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Loomer, have long alleged that documents yet to be released contain evidence of more crimes against children by well-known people, which have been covered up by the government (it’s a long-running theme in US far-right circles – in 2016 a man fired shots at a pizza parlour in Washington, DC, because he’d become convinced it was the hub of a child sex-trafficking ring, an incident inevitably dubbed Pizzagate).

During the 2024 election campaign, Trump said he would have no problem releasing the Epstein files once elected; after the election, asked whether he would “declassify” the files, he replied: “Yeah, yeah, I would.”

In January, FBI director Kash Patel told a Senate committee during his confirmation hearing that he would ensure “the American public knows the full weight of what happened”. Attorney-General Pam Bondi made the extraordinary claim that she had the “client list” sitting on her desk. The White House later amended her comments as meant to be referring to some of the broader files.

Then came the release of the so-called first batch of Epstein files, to a hand-picked group of far-right influencers, and it was a fizzer: nothing new was revealed. Nor did an internal review of the files by the Justice Department and the FBI earlier this year apparently come up with anything, despite searches by some 1000 agents of digital assets such as databases and hard drives as well as “squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, and other areas where responsive material may have been stored”.

‘You have hardline Republicans who want to go after Democrats, and Democrats who want to go after Trump.’

The review, which reported publicly in a memo in July, said it had found no evidence of any incriminating “client list”, no evidence that Epstein had blackmailed or planned to blackmail prominent individuals, no evidence that could warrant an investigation against uncharged third parties, and no evidence that Epstein did not die by suicide but was murdered in jail, as Ghislaine Maxwell and others have alleged. The memo concluded “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

Meanwhile, in June, the billionaire Elon Musk, who had headed a government cost-cutting push before falling out with Trump, posted on social media: “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

By July, Trump was posting on his social channel that his supporters should “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about”. In August, Bruce Wolpe of Sydney University’s United States Studies Centre, told us: “I think he’s nervous that something could come out.” But there was now enough momentum within Congress for Republicans and Democrats on the House oversight committee, led by Kentucky Republican James Comer, to agree to subpoena the Justice Department for the entire tranche. “You have hardline Republicans who want to go after Democrats, and Democrats who want to go after Trump,” Wolpe explained.

In October, the committee released thousands of pages of documents. In November, it released some 20,000 pages more. Many pages included emails from a Gmail inbox owned by Epstein (which pranksters compiled into a browsable facsimile of Gmail they named Jmail).

While courts have unsealed grand jury material in historical cases such as the Watergate conspiracy, to do so judges have to meet specific criteria that are a very high bar.

Democrats highlighted three emails that suggested Donald Trump might have been more aware of Epstein’s conduct than he has previously acknowledged. Trump knew Epstein in the 1990s but says the pair fell out in the 2000s and Trump has always emphatically denied knowledge of Epstein and Maxwell’s sex-trafficking operations. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails were selectively released by the Democrats “to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump”.

Still confidential, however, have been many of the documents relating to the grand jury investigations. While courts have unsealed grand jury material in historical cases such as the Watergate conspiracy, judges have to meet specific criteria that are a very high bar. Until now, the only successful Epstein grand jury application was one made by The Palm Beach Post, which last year persuaded a judge to release the notes, including witness transcripts, that led to Epstein’s original indictment.

It was a worthwhile exercise. While it had previously been thought that just one victim had testified, said Holly Baltz: “It turns out that two girls testified and that they were actually called prostitutes by the prosecutor in front of grand jurors. They were questioned on what underwear they wore when they went to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and whether they’d thought about what this could do to their reputations – all classic victim blaming.” The second victim, who testified that she had had sex with Epstein when she was 17, said she had not wanted to appear before the grand jury because she didn’t want her father to find out what had happened and because, “It was also stupid of me to put myself in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Maxwell, who was moved to a minimum-security prison, continues to fight to have her jail sentence overturned. She is believed to be seeking an outright pardon from Trump after unsuccessfully appealing to the Supreme Court, arguing that Epstein’s 2008 plea deal should have guaranteed her immunity from future prosecution. Interviewed in July by US Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche from prison, she doggedly stuck to the story she’s told since Epstein was first investigated: that, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, neither of them ever did anything wrong, and nor did the rich and powerful men drawn into their orbit.

Virginia Giuffre took her own life in April this year. In her much-anticipated posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl, released in October, she said she had met Donald Trump only once, when she worked as a spa attendant at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, and did not accuse him of wrongdoing. Giuffre reiterated her claims that Prince Andrew had sexually exploited her when she was a teenager. At the end of October, Andrew was stripped of his titles by King Charles. Andrew has rejected Giuffre’s allegations and has said he didn’t recall meeting her.

So what might come out now?

One victim who was 14 when she met Epstein told the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown: “Jeffrey preyed on girls who were in a bad way, girls who were basically homeless. He went after girls who he thought no one would listen to and he was right.”

We don’t know categorically whether any of the people in Epstein’s circles committed similar or other offences to him, but victims have said they did. The only other person charged in the conspiracy was a French photographer believed to have been involved in trafficking who was, like Epstein, found dead in jail before he could stand trial. Said Baltz: “Epstein hobnobbed with a number of famous and powerful people, but has law enforcement found evidence of criminal wrongdoing by them? They say no. And now in cases such as Prince Andrew, the chief witness, Virginia Giuffre, is dead.”

We don’t know what else the FBI in the mid-2000s might have uncovered had its investigation not been suspended as part of the deal with Epstein, or what might be in the materials it collected back then. Some of those documents may now surface following the judges’ ruling to unseal the federal grand jury evidence, which could include materials gathered from searches, computers, arrest reports, financial records and interviews with victims.

They will likely shed more light, too, on the actions of former US attorney for the southern district of Florida, Alex Acosta, who oversaw Epstein’s deal there and was later widely criticised by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility for having “resolved the federal investigation before significant investigative steps were completed”. Acosta later joined Trump’s cabinet in its first administration as labour secretary but resigned after a 2018 exposé by The Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown into the backroom dealings.

And we don’t know yet what the high-profile people subpoenaed to testify before Congress will reveal, if anything. Trump’s former attorney-general, Bill Barr, has already spoken behind closed doors. “What Attorney-General Barr testified in there was that he never had conversations with President Trump pertaining to a client list, he didn’t know anything about a client list,” James Comer subsequently told reporters. “He said that he had never seen anything that would implicate President Trump in any of this.”

We’re yet to hear from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton, both of whom are scheduled to appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this week after extended delays . Comer’s cover letter to Hillary Clinton says her family “appears to have had a close relationship” with Epstein and Maxwell while the cover letter to husband reads: “By your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003 … You were also allegedly close to Ms Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein co-conspirator, and attended an intimate dinner with her in 2014, three years after public reports about her involvement in Mr Epstein’s abuse of minors.” A spokesman for Bill Clinton has said Clinton knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes.

The first tranche of files, delivered on August 22, numbered more than 33,000 pages but contained little that had not already been known, according to Democrat Robert Garcia.

However, the Epstein Files Transparency Act now requires the DOJ to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to the investigation and prosecution of Epstein by December 19. It says that materials may not be “withheld, delayed or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity, including to any governmental official, public figure or foreign dignitary”. But it also mandates that victims’ names and other identifying information be protected, along with information that could prejudice active federal investigation or prosecutions.

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Have Epstein’s victims at least seen some justice? “No, not even close,” Holly Bantz told us. “Maxwell’s conviction was only a sliver. They have been denied again and again. The charges Epstein pleaded guilty to essentially labelled them prostitutes. At least two women have died of drug overdoses in Palm Beach County that their relatives pin on Epstein’s abuse. Many struggle emotionally still. And there was other shaming: for example, a judge ruled that one victim in a lawsuit she filed was required to let Epstein see her history of abortions. While the first case was being investigated, private investigators hired by Epstein visited them at work and made sure people knew they were involved with Epstein. They were run off the road. It goes on.”

This article, first published on August 31, 2025, has been updated to reflect developments.

Crisis support can be found at Lifeline (13 11 14 and lifeline.org.au), the Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467, suicidecallbackservice.org.au) and beyondblue (1300 224 636 and beyondblue.org.au).