On the campaign trail last year, President Donald Trump repeatedly pledged to declassify information surrounding some of the most mysterious and controversial events in modern American history, such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Among the conspiracy-theory-magnets Trump promised to declassify and release to the public were files pertaining to the life and death of the shadowy financier and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration was accused of botching the release of the “Epstein files,” handing out binders full of already-publicly-available information to Trump-aligned social media influencers. Shortly afterward, the president shocked his base by suggesting that the “Epstein files” were a hoax promoted by Democrats and opposing the release of Epstein-related materials for months. Now, the president has reversed course on the issue again, just as the House of Representatives passed legislation forcing the release of Epstein-related documents.

International Man of Mystery — and Child Abuse

Epstein has long been an enigma and, in the six years since his death in a federal detention facility, the subject of conspiracy theories. Born to a school aide and a groundskeeper, Epstein somehow managed to rise to the upper echelons of society, fraternizing with some of the wealthiest and most powerful international elites. As a child, he was a gifted mathematician and graduated from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn at the age of 16. However, he dropped out of college at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, where he had been studying for a degree in mathematics.

Despite his lack of a college degree, Epstein was hired as a math teacher at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan, a springboard to the Ivy League. The young mathematics prodigy was subsequently dismissed from the school following inappropriate behavior towards female students, even attending student parties with underage girls. Shortly after his dismissal, Epstein was given a job by Alan Greenberg, whose children attended Dalton, working at then-banking and brokerage behemoth Bear Stearns in wealth management. He quickly rose through the ranks at Bear Stearns to become a top financial advisor, working with the firm’s wealthiest clients on “tax mitigation” strategies. After about five years at Bear Stearns, Epstein was forced to leave after being caught violating “Regulation D,” a federal provision governing how securities are to be registered and sold.

Epstein then struck out on his own, founding the Intercontinental Assets Group, a wealth management firm purportedly centered on recovering clients’ stolen money from fraudulent brokers and lawyers. He variously described his job to friends as working for government agencies to recover embezzled funds or helping clients who had embezzled money to hide their bounty. According to a 2001 report from the Evening Standard, Epstein also claimed to be an intelligence agent, somehow managing to smuggle weapons internationally and even telling friends that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Shortly after Epstein’s death in 2019, an associate of his claimed that defense contractor Douglas Leese and media magnate Robert Maxwell recruited Epstein to work for British intelligence.

In 1988, Epstein founded another wealth management firm, J. Epstein & Company, which was reportedly extremely selective and would only manage portfolios of at least $1 billion. However, the only billionaire known to be a client of Epstein’s second firm was Les Wexner, the founder of Bath and Body Works and the owner of a number of other companies, including luxury lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret. Epstein started out as a financial advisor to Wexner but was quickly granted power of attorney over all Wexner’s dealings and became the head of multiple charitable trusts and foundations established by Wexner. The financial guru and self-proclaimed secret agent also pretended to be a Victoria’s Secret talent scout and often used that position to manipulate and sexually abuse young women and underage girls hoping for a career in fashion and modeling. His behavior alienated some of Wexner’s closest friends and top executives and advisors, who increasingly found themselves having to go through Epstein to deal with Wexner.

Epstein cultivated a circle of friends and associates in the upper stratosphere of international power and prestige. He was frequently assisted by Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Czechoslovakian-born Jewish businessman Robert Maxwell, who had become a British citizen and member of Parliament and was reportedly linked to intelligence agencies and arms smuggling. Epstein was also reportedly close with figures such as President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, filmmaker Woody Allen, and numerous other politicians, billionaires, businessmen, media moguls, investment bankers, Hollywood figures, and lawyers.

Police first began investigating Epstein in 2004, after receiving disturbing reports of numerous underage girls coming and going from his residence in Palm Beach, Florida. Over the course of a 13-month investigation, Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter enlisted the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), charging that state prosecutor Barry Krischer was potentially compromised and was treating Epstein’s child sex abuse far too leniently. Evidence at the time suggested that Epstein was soliciting and sexually abusing multiple young women and underage girls, as young as 14, with Maxwell often approaching them and offering them money to act as Epstein’s masseuse. As many as 40 girls had been abused or raped by Epstein, according to court documents.

Palm Beach Police recommended that Epstein be charged with multiple counts of unlawful sex with minors and sexual abuse, but Krischer reduced the charges to a single charge of felony solicitation of prostitution, releasing the multimillionaire on a $3,000 bond. The FBI, however, was still investigating Epstein, and federal prosecutor Marie Villafaña drafted a 60-count indictment. Her boss, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta, brokered a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein and his legal team, which included Dershowitz. Acosta later said that he was told to “leave it alone” and drop the prosecution because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” The deal was also kept secret from Epstein’s victims, contrary to federal law.

Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to the solitary state charge of solicitation but was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade, where he was afforded access to private rooms and a television. His cell door was left unlocked, and he was granted work-release, which allowed him to leave the detention center for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week.

After his first arrest, Epstein shifted his attention to the emerging surveillance industry, meeting with Israeli and Russian officials and American surveillance industry entrepreneurs like Palantir Technologies founder Peter Thiel. He invested in the surveillance startup Reporty Homeland Security (later renamed Carbyne), headed by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli military officers Amir Elihai and Pinchas Bukhris. The financier and now-registered sex offender was reportedly attempting to help the former Israeli officials sell Reporty to Thiel’s venture capital firm, Valar Ventures. Thiel was introduced to Epstein by his tech-world associate Reid Hoffman, a Democratic Party megadonor.

In 2019, Epstein was arrested again by the FBI’s and the New York Police Department’s (NYPD’s) Crimes Against Children Task Force on charges of extensive sex trafficking of children. A raid of his expensive New York City townhouse returned thousands of pornographic photos, including underage girls, and a vault full of compact disks with handwritten labels, naming underage girls alongside influential figures. Epstein offered to post a $100 million bond and remain under house arrest in his townhouse, but a judge denied the request, deeming the serial sex offender a flight risk and a threat to public safety.

‘Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself’

Epstein’s second arrest generated significant media attention at the time, not just because of the depravity of the crimes of which he was accused, but because numerous influential figures were implicated in those crimes. Epstein reportedly collected young girls, many of them underage, and would prostitute them to heads of state, Hollywood elites, technology titans, business magnates, public intellectuals, and others on his private island, Little St. James, or his private jet, nicknamed the Lolita Express. Flight records show that Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private jet nearly 30 different times, despite the former president’s claim that he only flew on the jet four times.

Later court documents and other pieces of evidence, released only in part, would suggest that Epstein and Maxwell recruited and raped girls as young as 11 and would offer underage girls to influential associates for sex. Epstein’s New York townhouse and residence on Little St. James were reportedly wired for video and audio surveillance, with friends or associates of Epstein aware of the surveillance believing that the sex offender was recording influential figures raping children and either using those recordings as an insurance policy to protect himself from reprisal or as a means of blackmailing some of the most powerful people in the world.

In July of 2019, Epstein was placed on suicide watch in the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center after he was found unconscious in his cell with marks around his neck. After six days on suicide watch, Epstein was moved to a special housing unit, where he was to have a cellmate and be checked on by a guard every 30 minutes. On August 9, Epstein’s cellmate was removed, the guards tasked with checking on him fell asleep for a period of roughly three hours, and the cameras in the corridor outside Epstein’s cell malfunctioned. He was found dead the following morning, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr declared the death an apparent suicide.

Since then, questions have persisted surrounding Epstein’s death and the secrets that he took with him to his grave. Did Epstein commit suicide, or was he murdered by powerful people afraid that he might expose their perversions? What was his relationship with powerful figures like Clinton like, and why did the rich and famous continue visiting the private island of a known serial sex offender and sex trafficker? Was Epstein really an intelligence asset, and if so, which agency and which nation was he working for? The answers to these questions may never be known, but it is hoped that at least a few may be gleaned from the “Epstein files.”

The Epstein Files

Just days before the 2024 election that catapulted him back to the White House, Trump appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast and told host Joe Rogan that he would “absolutely” declassify and publish Department of Justice (DOJ) files centered on Epstein, including a rumored “client list” that the deceased sex trafficker used to keep track of wealthy and powerful figures in his sphere of influence. Shortly after Trump reclaimed the Oval Office, Attorney General Pam Bondi led “Phase One” of a public release of the “Epstein files,” handing out binders to Trump-aligned podcasters and social media personalities. The released files included investigative documents already made public over the years since Epstein’s death, along with a directive to the FBI to hand over a series of documents supposedly hidden from the DOJ. The move was met with criticism from conservative and right-wing figures, many of whom saw the highly-publicized release of no new material as a failure on the part of the Trump administration’s transparency pledge.

In July, the administration released more materials, including a partially-redacted transcript of an interview with Maxwell, who assisted Epstein in grooming, recruiting, and prostituting underage girls and was convicted of child sex trafficking in 2021. In September, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a more extensive series of Epstein-related documents, but even the more than 33,000 pages published were met with criticism from the Republican base, who demanded full transparency. In a two-page memo, the DOJ and FBI refuted claims that Epstein had kept a “client list,” blackmailed influential leaders, or been murdered in his jail cell.

Meanwhile, Trump disappointed much of his base when he began disparaging continued calls for transparency on the Epstein issue. “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!” he said in a Truth Social post responding to criticism of the “Epstein files” release. “I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again,” he continued. The president then said that Democrats “created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?” He further urged his supporters to “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”

However, Democrats took up the “Epstein files,” arguing that Trump must be blocking the release of further documents because he himself is implicated. In response, the president claimed that Epstein’s political allies were Democrats and ordered the DOJ to investigate links between Epstein and prominent Democrats. “Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures,” the president shared in a Truth Social post, “I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.”

The president then seemingly reversed his opposition to releasing the “Epstein files,” urging House Republicans to back a bipartisan House bill to force a full release of all Epstein-related documents. “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,’” Trump said in a Truth Social post Monday, the day before House members were slated to vote on the bill. He averred that the fixation on Epstein was distracting the GOP from touting Trump administration victories and preparing for the midterms. “Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive and, if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our Landslide Election Victory,” the president charged. “Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used,’ and we can’t let that happen. Let’s start talking about the Republican Party’s Record Setting Achievements, and not fall into the Epstein ‘TRAP,’ which is actually a curse on the Democrats, not us.”

On Monday night’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said that he expects the bill to pass the House but wondered if the Senate would take it up and send it to the president’s desk. “I don’t have any idea. Who knows what’s going on over there,” he said of the Senate. “I would hope they’d bring it up. I think they just need to. If I was them, I would bring it up the day, the minute we did it, the minute we passed it. Run it over there, get it to them, get it to the president’s desk. Let’s put it to rest this week so we can continue on,” the congressman suggested. “But I’m afraid what they’re going to do is fall into this trap of delay, delay, delay, delay, have hearing after hearing after hearing, and they drag it out and just make the public suspect further cover-up.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins also suggested that releasing the “Epstein files” in full could be a means of restoring trust in the federal government. “The government, in terms of the American people having trust in the government, is at an all-time low. And so, I think transparency is the best approach,” Perkins said. He also argued that Trump should have collected all the “Epstein files” in the DOJ’s possession, redacted the names of victims, and published them quickly, rather than staggering their release. “First they said they were going to release it, then they didn’t. I think if he would have taken your approach and just said, ‘Hey, put it all out there,’ they wouldn’t have had an issue to deal with. They wouldn’t have anything to say.”

The House voted on the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Tuesday, which would require the DOJ to create a searchable, downloadable publication of all unclassified and declassified documents relating to the investigation and prosecution of both Epstein and Maxwell, including the names of Epstein’s clients and any government officials involved in his crimes, his investigation, or his prosecution. The legislation includes a provision allowing the names of victims to be redacted.

In debates ahead of the vote, Republicans and Democrats traded barbs and accusations on the House floor, with Democrats repeatedly faulting Trump and the GOP for stalling the release of the “Epstein files,” while Republicans pointed out that Democrats did nothing to publish Epstein documents under former President Joe Biden, when Democrats held a majority in the House, and accused Democrats of weaponizing the “Epstein files” as a political tool to attack the president. “We’re all going to vote for this resolution, but I think a little perspective is important,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said, arguing that Democrats have an “obsession” with smearing Trump. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has expressed reservations over technical aspects of the legislation, called the vote a “political exercise” by Democrats to distract the House from more important issues. He further predicted that “almost everyone will” vote to approve the legislation.

Johnson was right: 427 House members (216 Republicans and 211 Democrats) voted to approve the Epstein Files Transparency Act, with only five (two Republicans and three Democrats) not voting and a solitary Republican, Rep. Clay Higgins (La.), voting against the measure. The legislation will now go to the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has not committed to bringing it to the floor for a vote.