The few documents released by the Democrats were highly redacted, which the party said was to protect victims while investigators from the committee continued to analyse the documents. There was no information about what the meetings entailed or whether they went ahead.
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All the people involved have already acknowledged their relationships with Epstein. In 2019, Musk told Vanity Fair he had visited Epstein’s New York residence for about half an hour many years previously, and “did not see anything inappropriate at all, apart from weird art”. Musk said that Epstein repeatedly tried to get him to visit Little Saint James, but he declined.
On Friday (US time), Musk responded to a news report about his tentatively planned visit to the island. “This is false,” he posted on his social media site X.
Bannon has also acknowledged his encounters with Epstein. He told The New York Times he had recorded 15 hours of interviews with the disgraced businessman. Bannon said the interviews were for a documentary and that he wasn’t giving Epstein media training.
And Thiel told The Wall Street Journal in 2023 of his meetings with the disgraced financier: “I was rather naive, and I didn’t think enough about what Epstein’s agenda might have been.”
Prince Andrew, meanwhile, has always denied wrongdoing. He settled a civil lawsuit with Australian-American Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre in 2022. She died by suicide earlier this year in Western Australia.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee said the small tranche of documents the Democrats released constituted “old news” and accused them of conveniently withholding documents containing the names of Democratic officials.
“Once again, they are putting politics over victims,” they said. “That’s all [Democratic congressman] Robert Garcia and Oversight Dems know how to do. We are releasing them all soon.”
‘We don’t care how wealthy you are’
Democrats said the committee had received 8544 documents in the latest batch, which were still being reviewed.
“We don’t care how wealthy or powerful you are – or if you are a Democrat or Republican,” Garcia said. “If you are in the Epstein documents and files, we are going to expose it, and bring justice for the survivors.”
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Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial. Despite swirling conspiracy theories, the FBI says he killed himself, and there is no evidence to the contrary.
The first batch of documents, released earlier this month, contained a copy of the so-called “birthday book”, a compendium of letters, photographs and other notes compiled by Maxwell for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2023.
One entry took the form of a cryptic, imaginary conversation between Epstein and Donald Trump, inside the outline of a woman’s body, with a signature resembling Trump’s. Trump has denied signing the document or drawing the picture. The two men were friends in the 1990s, but Trump says they fell out in the 2000s, before Epstein was indicted.
Facing a backlash from many of his own MAGA supporters for not releasing more of the investigation files, Trump has repeatedly sought to play down the Epstein saga. He now labels it a “Democrat hoax”.
Epstein died in his prison cell in 2019.Credit: AP
This week, the Journal, which revealed the birthday book’s existence, reported Trump was perplexed about the ongoing fascination with the dead financier, and complained to aides that “people don’t understand that Palm Beach in the ’90s was a different time”.
Trump is suing the Murdoch-owned paper for $US10 billion ($15 billion) over the birthday book story. The paper’s lawyers this week sought to have the case dismissed, calling it meritless and saying it would have a chilling effect on free speech.
