The Feds Keep Changing Their Story About the Epstein Files
The Department of Justice keeps changing its story about documents related to the politically connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, offering contradictory reasons for refusing to release the files.
A billboard in Times Square calls for the release of the Epstein files on July 23, 2025, in New York City. (Adam Gray / Getty Images)
President Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pamela Bondi, recently announced that the Justice Department will not release documents about the politically connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, citing privacy concerns around child pornography allegedly included in the files.
But the department’s recent memo contradicts the agency’s prior legal rationale in a concurrent court case seeking the release of those same files, according to court records reviewed by the Lever.
The Trump administration’s July 2025 memo is the latest in a series of changing Justice Department arguments aiming to block the public records disclosure of more than 11,000 pages of documents the government has amassed related to the 2006 Federal Bureau of Investigation probe of Epstein.
For nearly a decade, a rotating cast of Justice Department officials across administrations has cited in legal briefs at least three conflicting reasons for why these records should be withheld from the public.
The department’s current legal defense argues that the files need to be withheld in order to protect the government’s case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s collaborator, who was convicted of sex trafficking minors and other charges in 2021. This Justice Department argument differs from both its initial argument eight years ago and now the Bondi memo, which claims the Epstein files should not be released because they contain child pornography and other materials that could be traumatizing to Epstein’s victims.
In 2017, two media outlets filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) record requests seeking documents related to the FBI’s 2006 investigation into Epstein’s activities. The bureau declined to release the files, claiming that Epstein’s right to privacy outweighed the public interest of seeing the documents, despite the fact that he had already pleaded guilty to soliciting sex with a minor, and that a defendant’s right to privacy is usually reserved for individuals who were only charged with but never convicted of a crime.
Then after Epstein’s 2019 jailhouse death, federal officials retroactively changed their argument, a dubious legal precedent, according to legal experts. In 2020, the Justice Department, the FBI’s parent agency that is defending the case, fell back on a new legal defense, claiming that the documents would interfere with law enforcement’s ensuing prosecution of Maxwell.
In 2024, the Justice Department continued to argue that the files still needed to be withheld while Maxwell’s conviction was being appealed, even though the government had already presented its evidence in court three years earlier. The government’s current defense relies on an affidavit submitted by former Justice Department prosecutor Maureen Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, who was recently fired by the Trump administration. Maureen Comey prosecuted Maxwell in the 2021 trial.
There are more than 11,000 pages of documents stemming from the 2017 FOIA request filed by Radar Online and National Enquirer, both of which are represented by media attorney Dan Novack.
Now the Trump Justice Department proclaimed this month that the files will not be released because “sensitive information relating to these victims is intertwined throughout the materials” and the department “will not permit the release of child pornography” found in the documents, according to the July 7 memo.
The latest legal defense, regarding child pornography, would not apply to specific documents requested in the FOIA lawsuit, according to Novack.
“I’ve never been conspiratorial about this stuff,” Novack told the Lever, but the coordinated resistance he’s faced from the government has raised questions for him about its underlying motivations. “It’s been a bipartisan blockade to stonewall me.”
On Tuesday, July 22, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that senators were “contacted by a highly credible whistleblower” who claimed that in March, nearly one thousand FBI personnel and other agents were assigned to review Epstein-related documents and were told to “flag any records in which President Trump was mentioned.” The following day, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bondi told Trump in May that his name is among the many mentioned in the Justice Department documents on Epstein.
A Veil of Secrecy
The alleged Epstein cover-up is a wide-ranging political scandal that’s embroiled some of the world’s most famous and well-connected people, including former president Bill Clinton and even Trump himself. The files have been a rallying cry for Trump’s political base, and numerous Trump allies called for the public release of the Epstein files on the campaign trail this past election. Trump himself indicated in interviews that he would consider it and appointed officials who built their media brands in large part on the Epstein story, such as FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino.
The court filings that Novack shared with the Lever come as Trump himself faces widespread backlash over his longtime relationship with Epstein and as new reporting highlights Trump’s connections to other powerful men accused of having inappropriate sexual relationships with young women and girls.
The 2006 FBI investigation is a critical event in the ongoing Epstein saga. Victims of sexual abuse and child trafficking had come to the FBI with testimony about Epstein, but the probe was shuttered two years later in 2008, and federal charges were never brought.
“Victims were not informed of, or consulted about, a potential state resolution or the [nonprosecution agreement]” Epstein signed to avoid federal charges, a 2020 Justice Department document states.
In 2008, then US attorney Alex Acosta in the Southern District of Florida brokered a favorable plea deal for Epstein on state charges of soliciting minors, only serving thirteen months of an eighteen-month sentence before Epstein walked free. Acosta would go on to become labor secretary in 2017 during Trump’s first term, but he was forced to step down in 2019 amid public outrage about the plea deal once federal charges were brought against Epstein.
Justice Department officials announced on Monday that they plan to meet with Maxwell, seeking “information about anyone who has committed crimes” against Epstein’s victims. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted to subpoena Maxwell on July 22, seeking further information about Epstein’s criminal actions. Additionally, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the Justice Department a letter of inquiry last week regarding the July 7 memo’s contradictions. And on Wednesday, a Second Circuit Appeals Court ordered a judge to review records related to a separate case against Maxwell to determine if any records should be unsealed in that case.
A Long Road to FOIA
Novack’s current court case hinges on the Freedom of Information Act, a 1967 anti-corruption law that grants the public the “right to request access to records from any federal agency.” The law is commonly used by journalists and researchers to access troves of government communications and records, but it allows the government to deny access to certain documents, including ones that “protect interests such as personal privacy, national security, and law enforcement,” according to the Justice Department.
Court records stemming from the 2017 FOIA request reveal that federal law enforcement officials possess more than 11,500 pages of Epstein-related documents from that 2006 FBI probe and have released just 181 of those pages. Those unreleased pages include interviews with Epstein, witnesses, subpoenaed third parties, receipts of Epstein’s monetary transactions, and business records, which may shed light on many unanswered questions about the bureau’s handling of the case.
The FBI has released 1,051 partially redacted documents and cited FOIA exemptions more than 10,000 times in denying the full release of documents that federal law enforcement officials possess about Epstein.
Throughout Novack’s eight-year legal battle, the Justice Department has blocked the release of these documents, employing conflicting legal arguments to defend its decision.
“The FBI continues to properly withhold the records . . . on the basis that release of the records could reasonably be expected to interfere with the criminal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell,” wrote Biden-era Justice Department legal counsel Damian Williams in a motion from 2023.
Novack notes that the Justice Department has continued to pursue this defense well after they presented their evidence in the Maxwell trial in 2021, rendering the argument moot. In January 2024, federal prosecutors asked a judge to deny the release of documents, this time claiming that the documents could interfere with Maxwell’s pending legal appeals. Maxwell is currently petitioning the US Supreme Court to take up her case for a mistrial.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has also denied Novack’s requests to “disaggregate” the FOIA documents, separating the files it deems would jeopardize their prosecution of Maxwell from ones that wouldn’t.
Available court documents show that the FBI is in possession of phone, travel, shipping, and financial records involving Epstein’s illicit activities. These records include “the names, addresses, phone numbers, and other identifying information of numerous witnesses,” federal prosecutors wrote in a 2024 court filing. These records and others have been called the “Epstein client list” by online commentators and other media figures.
The July 7 memo denies the existence of an “incriminating ‘client list’” and refuses to release any of the department’s three million existing case documents, which include those that would fulfill Novack’s clients’ FOIA request.
Bondi’s current argument deviates from what the government has claimed in Novack’s court case for years, where they instead reasoned that the documents would jeopardize the prosecution of Maxwell, Epstein’s coconspirator. But its new explanation about child pornography would not apply to the types of documents requested in the FOIA lawsuit, such as FBI notes and interviews with Epstein — the scope of his client’s FOIA request does not entail videotapes related to Epstein’s sex acts, Novack said.
Government transparency advocates say the release of these documents would help people assess why the bureau chose not to pursue a case despite the overwhelming evidence that shortly after came to light about the sex trafficking ring Epstein orchestrated.
“The FBI is embarrassed and looks after itself, that’s always been my theory — but now the way they’re acting in public makes me think there really is something else going on there potentially,” said Novack, regarding the Bondi memo.
Bondi’s department may even have inadvertently disclosed for the first time that never-before-seen records were denied to Novack eight years ago without explanation. In February, Bondi “declassified” a limited slice of three million documents in the government’s possession related to Epstein, which included evidence from government investigations into Epstein, as part of a “first phase” of declassification, which has not been followed by further document releases. Several of those items appear to have been procured from the 2006 investigations and had never been presented to Novack in his FOIA case.
Now following public outrage, the White House is pressuring the Justice Department and the FBI to move forward with releasing more documents if they deem it prudent.
“The president has said if the Department of Justice and the FBI want to move forward with releasing any further credible evidence, they should do so,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on July 21.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) implemented an early recess break for the House, thus sidestepping a vote to release more information regarding Epstein’s illicit actions.
“There’s no purpose for the Congress to push an administration to do something they’re already doing,” Johnson said, regarding a House bill that would force disclosure of Epstein-related files.