The latest Justice Department release of Jeffrey Epstein files sheds some light on the FBI’s quest in 2019 to charge additional suspects who may have helped the financier or participated in his sex trafficking crimes.

The names of 10 potential co-conspirators, or suspects, that New York prosecutors intended to interview in 2019 was mentioned in the new documents, released Tuesday. Three of those suspects were: Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell; French modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel; and Leslie Wexner, the billionaire former owner of Victoria’s Secret, who was once a client of Epstein’s.

The other names were redacted without explanation. The files, released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, specifies that only certain names be redacted — primarily those of Epstein’s victims. But the DOJ has 15 days to explain the exemptions that they used to justify the redactions.

The newly released batch of some 10,000 files make multiple references to President Donald Trump, including a January 2020 memo by an assistant U.S. attorney revealing that Trump was on many more flights than the DOJ was aware of — between 1993 and 1996. On one of the flights, there were three passengers: Trump, Epstein and a 20-year-old woman; on two other flights, the prosecutor noted that Trump was on the plane with two women who could potentially be witnesses in the criminal case they were building at the time against Maxwell.

Trump has repeatedly denied he had any involvement in Epstein’s crimes. In 2024, he said on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he was “never on Epstein’s plane, or at his ‘stupid’ island.” The Department of Justice released a statement Tuesday saying a number of the documents pertaining to the president were “untrue and sensationalist claims” that were made against Trump before the 2020 election.

The emails and correspondence involving Epstein’s 2007 sweetheart plea deal in South Florida was also heavily redacted. With few exceptions, all of the prosecutors’ names were blacked out, making it almost impossible to understand how his non-prosecution agreement unfolded, why it was kept secret and how Epstein received federal immunity in the first place. At the time, Epstein was accused of sexually assaulting nearly 40 underage girls in his Palm Beach mansion.

Documents released earlier show that the DOJ not only had victims’ statements, but they also had supporting evidence, such as phone records, phone messages, witness statements and bank deposit records reflecting his payments to the girls.

All three past document releases have been heavily redacted, including some photos of older men. But the names of many of Esptein’s survivors have appeared throughout the pages, sometimes dozens of times, prompting victims to accuse the DOJ of violating the law — and trying to intimidate them. Some of them have called for U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to step down.

“I am so disgusted with this administration,” said Haley Robson, who voted for Trump, told CNN. “I think Kash Patel and Pam Bondi both need to resign, and I would love to see Number 47 (Trump) get impeached over this.”

There was also an array of tips to the FBI and DOJ hotline about the case, one that the DOJ claimed on Tuesday was an outright fake: a letter that appeared to be written by Epstein to Larry Nassar, the former U.S. Olympic Gymnastics coach and convicted rapist. The DOJ was finally forced to look into it and announced that a subsequent handwriting analysis ruled out Epstein had written it.

“This fake letter 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. Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law,” the DOJ noted.

The records also showed that Epstein’s younger brother, Mark Epstein, filed a report with the FBI in 2023 claiming that his brother was murdered in his jail cell because he was about to “name names.” Reached by phone Tuesday, Mark Epstein said that the FBI never followed up.

Epstein, 71, has long believed that his brother was killed, and alleged in the tip that Trump “authorized” the late sex trafficker’s murder.

Asked why he believed Trump was involved, he said: “The question becomes, who would be in a position to orchestrate this and have the Justice Department cover it up?”

Epstein was found hanging in his Manhattan jail cell on August 10, 2019, one month after he was arrested in New York on sex trafficking charges. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide, but the investigation showed that the jail cell where he was found was never properly treated as a potential crimes scene. All but one video camera in Epstein’s unit was recording at the time of his death — and portions of that recording went missing.

Most of Epstein’s victims do not believe he committed suicide — another reason many of them have been afraid to go public with the names of others involved in his crimes. Several of them have told the Miami Herald that they fear that their lives could be in danger if they talk publicly about their abusers.

An FBI investigator with the Crimes Against Children Human Trafficking Unit, on July 9, 2019, noted that three of the co-conspirators in the Epstein case were in Florida, one in Boston, one in New York City and one in Connecticut. It also noted that one is a wealthy businessman in Ohio, identified in later documents as Wexner.

For many years, Epstein managed the finances of billionaire Lex Wexner, of Columbus, Ohio. Wexner, 88, has always denied any involvement in his crimes. Epstein used his association with Victoria’s Secret to recruit his victims — promising many of them he could make them the next Victoria’s Secret model.

Contained in the files was an undated statement from a woman identified as “Jane Doe,” describing an encounter she had had with Epstein.

“At that point I ran to the door again and figured out how to get out of there,” she wrote. “A girl outside asked me where I was going and she said to be careful. She said that Mr. Epstein knew a lot of powerful people, including Bill Clinton, and that if I didn’t do what Mr. Epstein wanted, I would not be able to have any job in the industry.

“I was so scared, I couldn’t wait to get out of there...I had spent all my savings getting Victoria’s Secret lingerie to prepare for what I thought was an audition, but instead it seemed like a casting call for prostitution. I felt like I was in hell.”

One of the DOJ emails references a photo of Trump with Ghislaine Maxwell that was found on a cell phone belonging to Republican political strategist Steve Bannon. The photo itself is blacked out, and it is not clear when it was taken.

The documents, released overnight, also include a strange FBI report, redacted of names, that describes a tip the agency received from a limo driver who alleges that he overheard Trump talking about “Jeffrey” and that he had also spoken to a woman who claimed that she had been raped by Trump. It is not known whether the FBI investigated the tip — or whether the tip was ever dismissed as a fraud — but the tipster followed up with the woman and she told him she did report the rape to “police.”

There is nothing in the documents so far indicating that Trump committed any criminal wrongdoing, and the files do not show that he was under investigation.

As the Miami Herald documented in its 2018 "Perversion of Justice" investigation, Epstein reached a remarkably lenient deal with federal prosecutors in South Florida in 2007 that allowed him to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges, one involving a minor, and serve 13 months in the Palm Beach County Jail, where he was allowed to leave regularly to work from a nearby office space in which he continued to abuse girls.

Epstein’s victims — believed by DOJ to number roughly 1,000 women — have long sought more accountability for Epstein’s powerful friends and accomplices and greater transparency from a department that kept them in the dark about a sweetheart deal Epstein negotiated in 2007 that allowed him to escape harsh punishment for sexually abusing girls in South Florida.

The department’s initial release of files Friday — which consisted largely of photographs and heavily redacted documents — did little to satisfy victims, or the members of Congress who mandated that the files be released, especially after the release, the DOJ removed some of the files, including a photo of Trump.

That photo, and several others, were subsequently put back online.

The files released Friday contained numerous photographs of former president Bill Clinton, many from a trip to Africa that Clinton and Epstein took on Epstein’s plane in 2002.

On Monday, a spokesman for Clinton called for the Justice Department to release all the files it has mentioning Clinton and said the release of the files so far suggests that “someone or something is being protected.”

_____

(Churchill Ndonwie contributed to this story.)

_____

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit at miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.