CNN
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Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, his Justice Department has promised, reneged, and then promised again to deliver new and potentially explosive evidence on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged underworld of pedophilia.
The flip-flopped strategy has his allies and his detractors desperate for new evidence in the case, and for answers as to why the government hasn’t released the thousands of records they believe could shed light on longstanding conspiracies about the financier.
In a memo released last week, the department and FBI claimed there was no evidence that Epstein had a list of powerful men who participated in his alleged underworld of sex trafficking and pedophilia. And, the memo said, Epstein was not murdered in his New York jail cell.
The admission was meant to be the end of a review of Epstein’s case by Trump administration officials who had fanned conspiracy theories and sparked a resurgence of accusations that the nation’s top leaders were purposefully concealing incriminating facts about Epstein and those around him.
Just over a week later, however, the effort was reborn as a promise to try and unseal secret testimony about Epstein that took place in front of a grand jury in New York.
But who was Jeffrey Epstein, and how did he go from a college dropout to a politically connected billionaire, and then to a convicted pedophile and accused sex trafficker? Why are there still questions about his jailhouse death, and will the Trump administration really make public the answers some Americans demand?
Epstein, a New York native, started his career with a brief stint as a teacher at a prestigious private school. He didn’t take long to move into investment banking, working first at Bear Stearns before starting his own firm in 1982.
At his firm, Epstein exclusively took on clients worth more than $1 billion, CNN has reported.
By the 1990s, Epstein had managed to accumulate estates and apartments in several countries, according to court documents – even a private island in the Caribbean – and was rubbing shoulders with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world.
Those people included Prince Andrew, former President Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, all of whom deny any wrongdoing.
Details of Epstein’s alleged secret life first emerged in 2005 when several underage girls accused him of offering to pay for massages or sex acts at his Palm Beach mansion. Grand jury testimony unsealed years later included accusations that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14.
Epstein avoided federal charges in the case by striking an agreement to serve 13 months in prison on state prostitution charges and to register as a sex offender. A Justice Department review later found that then-US Attorney Alex Acosta, who oversaw the agreement, exercised “poor judgement” in striking the deal. Acosta went on to serve as Trump’s Labor secretary in his first term.
Dozens of additional women then alleged in 2018 that Epstein had abused them. That reporting pushed the Justice Department to open a new investigation into Epstein, and he was indicted in New York with sex trafficking dozens of underage girls less than one year later. He pleaded not guilty to those federal charges.
In August 2019, Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. It was ruled a suicide.
Theories of blackmail and murder
Almost immediately after Epstein died, members of the public started to question whether Epstein had really died by suicide or if shady and powerful figures had killed him to stop any incriminating material from being released.
It didn’t help that authorities weren’t able to establish even rudimentary facts in the days after his death, such as why was Epstein’s cellmate moved out the day before he died, what surveillance video showed, who found Epstein that morning and the whereabouts of the two guards who were supposed to be watching him.
An autopsy report muddied the waters on Epstein’s death to some, as officials said the broken bones in his neck could theoretically be the result of either hanging or strangulation. Photos of a bedsheet that had been turned into a noose and an apparent suicide note didn’t sway nonbelievers either.
As the conspiracy theories of a murder plot gained traction, so too did the theory that Epstein had kept a so-called client list as blackmail. That list’s release, conspiracy theorists claimed, would not only expose whom Epstein helped abuse underage girls, but could also solve the murder.
In the following years, the Justice Department and the courts released timelines and hundreds of documents that exposed the sordid details of his crimes. Those documents included a trove of flight logs that named who had visited Epstein’s private island.
An internal DOJ watchdog conducted a yearslong investigation and issued a nearly 130-page scathing report that meticulously details what happened in the Manhattan jail the day Epstein died and outlined the federal Bureau of Prisons’ multiple failures.
The report concluded that there was no evidence to contradict the “absence of criminality” in Epstein’s death – meaning that he had died by suicide.
But the conspiracy theories, often pushed by a myriad of right-wing figures, including now-FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, never subsided.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump said that he would consider releasing additional government files on Epstein, promising to fulfill the demand from right-wing figures as part of his push for government-wide transparency.
To some, Monday’s memo abandoned that promise.
“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” the memo states. “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
The department also released 10 hours of jailhouse security footage that shows no one entered Epstein’s jail cell on the day he died by suicide.
“One of our highest priorities is combatting child exploitation and bringing justice to victims. Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends,” it adds.
Backlash against the DOJ was immediate. Calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to resign swarmed social media, alleging that she lied in a February interview on Fox News by saying that a client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” (Bondi has since said that she was referring to all the paperwork related to the Epstein investigation, such as flight logs, and not to a specific client list.)
“All those videos of [Bondi] saying yeah, she’s seen the videos, it’s all coming out and then now it doesn’t exist,” Infowars host Alex Jones said through tears in a video posted on X. “I mean what? What? What?”
Some of Trump’s closest allies grew frustrated behind the scenes with Bondi’s handling of the Epstein case files. One administration official told CNN that Bondi “bungled the case from the start” by overpromising potential bombshell findings.
For his part, Trump on Tuesday at the White House tried to move on, lashing out at reporters who asked about the DOJ memo: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?”
As the days went on, Bondi and Trump faced intensifying backlash and a series of public confrontations. Intense media scrutiny left the administration with one outstanding question: Is it possible to get the country to move on?
That process proved more difficult than they may have expected. Last week, Bongino took the day off from work, telling allies that he was considering leaving his job amid the fallout from the DOJ memo. CNN reported that before his momentary disappearance, Bongino, Bondi, Patel and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles had a heated confrontation in the White House about the case.
After a series of public reassurances from senior DOJ and FBI sources the drama subsided – at least for now – and Bongino returned to work after the weekend.
The controversy continued still as reporters pushed Bondi for any response to the public outcry. In one press conference, the attorney general said that “our memo speaks for itself.”
By the following Friday the administration’s stated intentions took another about-face after the Wall Street Journal published an article about a birthday letter to Epstein in 2003 that bore Trump’s name and an outline of a naked woman. Trump has denied the story.
“Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday night, hours after the article’s publication. “This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!”
Bondi quickly reposted Trump’s comments on X and wrote, “President Trump—we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.”
Unsealing transcripts from a grand jury investigation is a difficult endeavor, as the evidence that a grand jury receives is highly secretive and its release requires input from victims and uncharged individuals who may be mentioned, so it’s likely that any decision to release that testimony take weeks or even months to happen.
And, if they were so inclined, a judge could say that no additional information should be made public.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
