Epstein’s lawyers later questioned the state’s official autopsy, which found that Epstein had killed himself, suggesting instead that he had been murdered. Their speculation drew public attention and resulted in widespread conspiracy theories—especially among members of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, who were ardent supporters of Trump. MAGA members believed that Epstein’s death was related to his connections with billionaires and elite public figures and that Epstein had kept a secret “client list” of men for whom he had trafficked young women and girls. Regarding the murder accusation, however, no credible evidence was ever produced. To the contrary, later in August 2019 it was reported that Epstein had signed a redrafted final will and testament two days before his death. In June 2023, a report by the office of the inspector general (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Justice agreed with the state’s autopsy and noted that the OIG’s investigators “did not uncover evidence contradicting…the absence of criminality in connection with how Epstein died.”
Long-time Epstein associateIn 2021 Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking of underage girls for the American financier Jeffrey Epstein. The two were romantically involved in the 1990s and remained close until Epstein's 2019 death.In February 2025, during Trump’s second term (2025– ), Attorney General Pam Bondi sparked much anticipation among conspiracy theorists by claiming in a press interview that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” The documents later released, however, did not include a client list, which greatly angered a large portion of the MAGA movement. (Bondi later claimed that in the interview she had been referring to the entire body of Epstein files.) In July the FBI seemingly contradicted Bondi in a memo stating that its “exhaustive” and “systematic” review of files and documents related to the Epstein case did not find a client list or “uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” Soon afterward Trump further angered MAGA members in a post on Truth Social, his own social media site, in which he criticized his supporters for demanding the release of fake “Epstein files” that, he claimed, had actually been created by his Democratic enemies—including “Obama, Crooked Hillary,…and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.”
Later in July, in an apparent effort to resolve the Trump administration’s contradictory claims and to calm the MAGA movement, Trump’s deputy attorney general conducted a two-day interview with Epstein’s long-term partner Ghislaine Maxwell, who had been convicted in 2023 of aiding Epstein in the procurement and sexual abuse of young girls. According to a transcript of the interview later released by the Justice Department, Maxwell was asked whether “Epstein or anybody” had said that Trump had done “anything inappropriate with masseuses or with anybody in your world.” Her answer was, “absolutely never, in any context.” In the week following the interview, Maxwell was transferred from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison in Texas.
Throughout the summer and fall of 2025, the call from survivors of Epstein’s abuse, estimated to number more than 1,000 girls and young women, to release the files gained momentum. The publication of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl in October led King Charles to strip Andrew of his prince title. Other survivors of Epstein’s abuse went public in appearances on television, in Washington, D.C., and in a public service announcement in which they held photographs of themselves at the time of their abuse. The media barrage served to squelch the argument that releasing the files would harm the survivors.
In November 2025, Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee released a set of e-mails written by or sent to Epstein and obtained through a subpoena of Epstein’s estate in August. Some of the e-mails indicated that Trump may he known about Epstein’s sex trafficking, and in one of them Epstein stated that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims. About two hours after the e-mail release, Republican members of the committee made public some 20,000 documents also received from Epstein’s estate. Soon afterward, Trump publicly reversed his opposition to the passage of a bill called the Epstein Files Transparency Act by the House of Representatives that required the release of all of the Justice Department’s Epstein files, with exceptions for ongoing investigations, national security, and to protect the identity of survivors. The bill was passed by the House and Senate on November 18 and signed into law by Trump the next day.
The transparency act called for a release of documents by December 19 and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were released on that day. They included never-before-seen photographs of Clinton as well as other celebrities including Michael Jackson. They also included some previously released material and hundreds of pages that were completely black, hing been redacted. Almost immediately, some lawmakers and Epstein survivors decried the release as incomplete.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of the legislators who wrote the transparency act said the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that the Justice Department had not completed its review of the files, saying he expected that review would take several more weeks.
Quick Facts Born: January 20, 1953, Brooklyn, New York, U.S. Died: August 10, 2019, Manhattan (aged 66) See all related contentOn December 23, 2025, the Justice Department released another 30,000 pages of documents, including correspondence between Maxwell and then-Prince Andrew. Also included was a 2020 email from a prosecutor in New York to an unknown recipient noting that recently obtained flight records “reflect that Donald Trump treled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware) …” As part of the release the Justice Department put out a statement saying: “Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump …”