The Epstein Files

December 19

Don't expect to much.

The Justice Department is sitting on photographs, travel records, communications, and investigative files that could expose the most powerful sex trafficking operation in American history. Jeffrey Epstein's network. His clients. His leverage.

December 19 is the deadline to release them.

Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act 427-1, forcing Trump to sign a bill he spent months trying to kill. His White House called supporting it "a very hostile act to the administration." Mike Johnson stalled the vote for weeks. He delayed the swearing-in of the congresswoman whose signature would trigger it. He relented only when he had no choice.

Now Attorney General Pam Bondi has thirty days to comply.

Don't expect much.

These files have been in the care of people who cannot be trusted with them. Not because I say so. Because they've already shown us who they are.

Start with the FBI's prison video—the footage from outside Epstein's cell the night he died. Bondi's Justice Department released it in July, calling it "full raw" and "unedited." Proof, they said, that no one entered or left the cell block. Case closed.

Except it wasn't raw. WIRED magazine worked with forensic analysts to examine the metadata. The video had been edited in Adobe Premiere Pro. It was assembled from at least two separate clips. Nearly three minutes of footage had been cut. The file was saved at least four times over a 23-minute span. A cursor was visible moving across the screen—meaning someone recorded their screen rather than exporting directly from the prison's surveillance system.

Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at UC Berkeley, reviewed the footage. "If a lawyer brought me this file and asked if it was suitable for court, I'd say no," he said. "Go back to the source. Do it right. Do a direct export from the original system—no monkey business."

Bondi blamed the gap on a "nightly system reset." Surveillance experts told CBS News that resets aren't a feature of most video systems. Then a government source told CBS that the FBI, Bureau of Prisons, and DOJ inspector general all have a copy of the video without the gap.

The unedited version exists. They released an edited one and called it raw.

That's your Justice Department. That's who's handling the files.

Bondi told Fox News in February that Epstein's client list was "sitting on my desk right now to review." The interviewer asked specifically about the list. She said it was on her desk.

By July, her department released a two-page memo saying no such list exists. No client list. No new documents. Investigation closed.

The MAGA faithful—the same people who'd been promised the files would expose Democratic elites—erupted. Laura Loomer called for Bondi's resignation. Joe Rogan accused the administration of gaslighting the public. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene broke with Trump over it.

Bondi went into a monthlong media lockdown. When she emerged, friendly interviewers didn't ask about Epstein.

Trump himself tried to bury the story. "He's dead for a long time," he told reporters. "He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don't understand what the interest or what the fascination is."

He understands. His name is all over these files.

They were best buddies. Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that Epstein was "a terrific guy" who "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

He knew about the girls. He said so.

Here's what else we know about Trump and young women—court findings and his own words.

A jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room. The jury didn't call it rape—New York law has a narrow definition. The judge clarified: what Trump did to her was rape by any common understanding of the word. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the verdict. He owes Carroll $88.3 million across two trials.

More than two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct spanning five decades. Groping. Forced kissing. Hands up skirts. Fingers in underwear. He denies all of it.

He bragged on tape about grabbing women "by the pussy." He told Howard Stern he walked into pageant dressing rooms while contestants were naked: "I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant. And therefore I'm inspecting it."

Five former Miss Teen USA contestants—girls as young as fifteen at the time—said he did exactly that to them in 1997. One recalled him saying, "Don't worry, ladies, I've seen it all before." His daughter Ivanka, then sixteen, was co-hosting that pageant. When Mariah Billado told Ivanka that her father had walked in on the girls, Ivanka reportedly said, "Yeah, he does that."

This is the man whose name keeps appearing in Epstein's files.

Michael Wolff is a controversialist. His books have provoked fury from their subjects and claims of inaccuracy. Trump's people call him a liar. The White House communications director called him "a lying sack of shit."

I believe what Wolff says he saw.

Wolff was talking to Epstein while writing Fire and Fury. He says that during one visit to Epstein's New York townhouse, Epstein went to his safe, pulled out photographs, and spread them on his dining table like playing cards.

The photos showed Trump at Epstein's Palm Beach house—the same house where Epstein victimized dozens of underage girls. In the photos, according to Wolff, topless young women of uncertain age were sitting in Trump's lap. In one, Trump had a stain on the front of his pants, and the girls were pointing at it and laughing.

Wolff says he urged Epstein to release the photos after Trump won in 2016. Epstein refused. "I can't now," he said. "I may be such and such, but I'm not crazy"—implying he feared what Trump would do.

Wolff says those photos were probably in Epstein's safe when the FBI raided his homes in 2019. That raid happened under Trump's FBI, led by Trump's attorney general Bill Barr. Prosecutors announced they'd seized "hundreds of photographs of girls and young women." Those photos have never been made public.

Epstein's own emails, released by the House Oversight Committee, confirm he was holding compromising material on Trump.

In December 2015, he offered a New York Times reporter "photos of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen." The reporter said yes. It's unclear whether Epstein ever sent them.

In another email, Epstein told the reporter to "ask my houseman about donald almost walking through the door leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door."

In 2017, Epstein told Larry Summers—the former Treasury Secretary—that he'd "met some very bad people" but "none as bad as trump. Not one decent cell in his body."

In 2018, after Michael Cohen pleaded guilty, Epstein wrote: "I know how dirty donald is."

And in December 2018, someone whose name is redacted told Epstein not to worry about the legal heat. "It will all blow over," they wrote. "They're really just trying to take down Trump."

Epstein's response: "Yes thx. It's wild. Because I am the one able to take him down."

Then there's the birthday book.

For Epstein's fiftieth birthday in 2003, Ghislaine Maxwell assembled a leather-bound album of messages from his friends. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that one page bore Trump's signature, surrounding a hand-drawn outline of a nude woman. Trump's name was signed below the waist, mimicking pubic hair. The typewritten message ended: "Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret."

Trump denied it. "I never wrote a picture in my life," he said. "I don't draw pictures of women."

Then the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Epstein's estate and got the book. The page exists. It looks exactly as the Journal described. Democrats posted it. Republicans released all 238 pages.

Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion. That's one way to respond to evidence.

When reporters noted that Trump had, in fact, drawn and auctioned sketches during his first term, he amended his denial: "Sometimes people say, 'Would you draw a building?' And I'll draw four lines and a little roof. But I'm not a drawing person. I don't do drawings of women, that I can tell you."

The drawing exists. The signature exists. The "wonderful secret" exists.

So what should we expect on December 19?

The law says Bondi must release "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" related to Epstein. It says no record can be withheld "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."

That language exists because the people who wrote the bill knew what they were up against.

Expect redactions. Expect delays. Expect claims of protecting victims that conveniently protect perpetrators. Expect "ongoing investigations" that justify withholding whatever they don't want us to see. Expect technical difficulties, missing files, and bureaucratic fog.

The person enforcing this law is the same attorney general who said the client list was on her desk, then said it never existed. Who released "raw" video that forensic experts say was edited. Who reports to a man whose name keeps showing up in the evidence.

They're not going to release what they don't want us to see.

The only question is who's going to make them.