Most appearances of President Trump’s name in the set of files just released by the Justice Department came from news reports and other documents. But some deal directly with the relationship between the one-time friends.
Here’s a Summary of the Latest Epstein Files Release:
The latest batch of files related to the investigations of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein disclosed hundreds of references to President Trump and contained two subpoenas sent to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s residence in Florida, where, he once said, Mr. Epstein “hired away” an employee.
The new documents — nearly 30,000 in all — also include different versions of Mr. Epstein’s will; blacked-out pages of tax returns for Ghislaine Maxwell, a confidante of Mr. Epstein’s who was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021; and internal communications from the Manhattan jail where Mr. Epstein died. The partly redacted subpoenas sought employment records as part of the federal criminal case against Ms. Maxwell.
Mr. Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Mr. Epstein or Ms. Maxwell. The Justice Department said in a statement that some of the newly released material contained false accusations, without specifying which claims it believed to be untrue.
Here are five takeaways from Monday’s release:
Some of the files addressed Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Epstein.
Most appearances of Mr. Trump’s name in the files that were released on Monday by the Justice Department came from news reports and other documents, but some dealt directly with the relationship between the one-time friends.
One email, sent by an unidentified federal prosecutor in 2020, during Mr. Trump’s first term, alerted the recipient that Mr. Trump had flown on Mr. Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware),” though those trips have since become public knowledge.
The names of the sender and the recipient are redacted, but the prosecutor wrote that they were sending the email for “situational awareness” and that they “didn’t want any of this to be a surprise down the road.”
A man asking for “new inappropriate friends” appears to be former Prince Andrew.
Ms. Maxwell received a series of letters from a sender she referred to as “Andrew,” which offer a number of identifying details that match those of Prince Andrew, who was recently stripped of his royal titles and evicted from the mansion where he lived because of his ties with Mr. Epstein.
In the emails, the sender — who identified himself only as “A” — asked Ms. Maxwell for “new inappropriate friends” and then inquired about “girls” before a trip to Peru.
Ms. Maxwell, who is serving a federal prison sentence for helping Mr. Epstein traffic underage girls, wrote back the same day, apologizing for disappointing him after being able to find only “appropriate friends.” In a reply, “A” said that he was “Distraught!”
Now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, he made an official visit to Peru in March 2002, the month after the email exchange, at one point posing for a photo with firefighters in Lima.
The sender also said he was staying at Balmoral Castle, the British royal family’s summer residence in the Scottish highlands.
Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor’s friendship with Mr. Epstein, and allegations that he sexually abused a young woman trafficked to him by the financier, led to public scandal. He became a person of interest for federal prosecutors investigating Ms. Maxwell in 2021, which was noted in the emails released on Monday.
A cast of Wall Street executives served as executors of Epstein’s estate.
When he died, Mr. Epstein left behind a significant fortune that he had amassed during a decades-long rise from a high school math teacher to a financial confidant of the ultra wealthy. The new documents include copies of Mr. Epstein’s last will and testament, which offer an evolving list of the power players who were part of his life.
In one version, Jimmy Cayne, the chief executive of Bear Stearns, was named as an executor, while in another, James Staley, a top executive at JP Morgan Chase, was listed.
Mr. Epstein’s will in 2012 named as an alternate executor Andrew Farkas, a billionaire real estate mogul who co-owned a marina in St. Thomas with Mr. Epstein that was just north of the private island at the center of Mr. Epstein’s trafficking operation.
In a 2014 version, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers was named as a backup executor. He is one of a few high-profile men who has stepped back from public life after their chummy relationships with Mr. Epstein were revealed.
Federal agents tried to contact ‘co-conspirators,’ emails show.
A day after federal agents arrested Mr. Epstein on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, they were also apparently trying to contact about 10 people they called potential “co-conspirators,” according to a redacted email exchange in the new release. Because of the redactions, it is unclear who sent the emails.
The list of co-conspirators included three people whose names were not redacted: Leslie Wexner, the retail magnate behind The Limited and Victoria’s Secret stores; Jean-Luc Brunel, a former French modeling agent who was found dead in his Paris jail cell in 2022 and who was suspected of scouting girls for Mr. Epstein; and Ms. Maxwell.
A legal representative for Mr. Wexner told The New York Times that he was not a target of the federal investigation or considered a co-conspirator.
Trump administration officials deflected attention from the president’s appearance in the latest batch of documents.
Unlike on Friday, when administration officials quickly noted the presence of former President Bill Clinton in files that had already been released, this time they adopted a far different tone.
“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the F.B.I. right before the 2020 election,” the department wrote on social media.
Such claims, the statement said, were “unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
