The Sad Quest for a Secret 'Epstein Client List'
The Trump administration’s spectacle rehashed information that journalists, lawyers, and victims had already unveiled.
The Trump administration had promised to reveal bombshell information on Jeffrey Epstein, the infamous sex trafficker who rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous before dying in custody in 2019. "It's sitting on my desk right now to review; that has been a directive by President [Donald] Trump," Attorney General Pam Bondi said last week. "Donald Trump doesn't make empty promises."
On Thursday, a group of conservative media personalities were photographed grinning outside the White House, binders labeled "Epstein Files: Phase 1" in hand. But the documents in question turned out to be underwhelming. The index of evidence seized from Epstein's homes has already been extensively reported on. So have the flight logs. The version of Epstein's phone book released on Thursday is actually more heavily redacted than the version circulating online. And the final document is completely pointless: a list of Epstein's 254 "masseuses," redacted with a black highlighter from start to finish "to protect potential victim information."
The haul was so unimpressive that the Republican House Judiciary Committee's X account posted a link to the "Epstein Files" that turned out to be a Rickroll prank video—a pretty tasteless joke, considering that the subject matter is sex crimes against minors.
After receiving a disappointed response from conservative media, Bondi tried to blame deep-state sabotage. "Late yesterday, l learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein. Despite my repeated requests, the FBI never disclosed the existence of the files," she wrote in a letter to FBI director Kash Patel on Thursday afternoon.
The truth, however, is a lot more mundane. Journalists, lawyers, and victims themselves have already uncovered most of the people who Epstein surrounded himself with. These private sleuths haven't been forced to redact information by the restrictions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or by judges' decisions.
The real damning information, the evidence of specific crimes by specific people, will have to be released as part of a criminal trial. (Some of it, such as the sexually explicit photos found in Epstein's mansion, likely won't be displayed to the public.) There is unlikely to be new evidence that's explosive enough to interest the public but harmless enough to release on a whim.
Epstein's contact list, known as the Little Black Book, was first published by the news site Gawker in 2015. Epstein wrote in an email, later revealed in court documents, that publishing it "should not be legal." Although Gawker later went out of business, the DocumentCloud page associated with the article still exists, and volunteers have made a website with a searchable version of the book.
At the time, Epstein was a free man. He had been given only 13 months in jail under a 2008 plea deal. The federal government arrested Epstein again in 2019 after a Miami Herald article and a lawsuit by several victims brought new public attention to the case.
Epstein flew his victims and clients around on a private jet nicknamed the Lolita Express, and journalists have worked assiduously to piece together who flew on the plane, using information from FOIA requests and lawsuits. In 2020, the Federal Aviation Administration denied Business Insider's FOIA request for the Lolita Express flight logs, then accidentally mailed the records anyway. Business Insider has put together an interactive database of the Lolita Express' known flights and passengers.
Some of the world leaders who rubbed shoulders with Epstein include Britain's Prince Andrew, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and Trump himself. Trump also shared a lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, with Epstein.
Of course, those lists only demonstrate who spent time with Epstein, not which ones were his "clients." Most of the people named insist that they never participated in his criminal activities. Specific allegations about his sexual abuse—and the men who participated in it—have come out in lawsuits by the victims. But many of these lawsuits have been settled, dropped, or dismissed.
TrueAnon, a podcast founded to discuss the Epstein case, noted last year that most of the relevant information had already been uncovered and there probably would never be a decisive revelation.
"There's still people talking about a client list, and I'm like, what list are you talking about? The list is out," cohost Brace Belden said. "Part of me understands the emotional appeal of that, because you want some final atom bomb that will incinerate your enemies."
There have also been rumors floating around for years that Epstein was a spy—and hopes (or fears) that opening the Epstein files would reveal his intelligence connections. Trafficking minors to powerful men, the theory goes, was a way to collect blackmail material for a government agency.
After all, Epstein, who had a fake Austrian passport that listed his residence as Saudi Arabia, reportedly boasted to many different people that he was involved in spying. Former U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who negotiated Epstein's plea deal in 2008, reportedly said during a cabinet vetting that "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone." (When asked about the report, Acosta gave a bizarre non-denial.) And Epstein met with U.S. diplomat and future CIA chief William Burns in 2014.
These allegations are tantalizing—and their content points to exactly why they're unlikely to be proven or disproven in a big document dump. It's already known that Epstein had contacts with officials and shadowy figures. The content of those conversations is unlikely to have been written down, and even if it was, it's probably not in an FBI archive.
Chasing down the one last secret of the Epstein case might even be missing the forest for the trees. The information that's already out there about the powerful figures and institutions who enabled Epstein is damning enough in itself.
"The activities of the figures in this story, across sexual exploits and criminal activity and financial criminal activity and everything in between, are all products of a system," TrueAnon cohost Liz Franczak said last year. "All of that gets lost in this fucking meme spectacle of this bullshit list that doesn't even fucking exist."
