A reader asked a good question about U.S. District Judge (S.D.N.Y.) Loretta Preska’s order resulting in the release of hundreds of “Epstein” documents in January 2024. It’s hard to keep the origin of document drops straight in this case. But they keep coming, and that’s the good news.
The source of that batch of some 3,000 documents is the 2015 civil defamation lawsuit filed by Virginia Guiffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, which was settled in 2017. Giuffre alleged that Maxwell defamed her by publicly calling her a liar for her claims of having been sexually abused and trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell when she was a minor.
The terms of the settlement were, of course, undisclosed. The records were sealed. The Miami Herald and investigative reporter Julie K. Brown later successfully sued to have the records unsealed. Judge Preska ruled that the public’s right to access the information outweighed privacy concerns, because many individuals mentioned were already public figures or had been identified in previous legal proceedings or media reports. The judge gave individuals named in the documents a brief window to appeal, since the appearance of names in the documents alone did not imply criminal wrongdoing. The names of victims who were minors and had not spoken publicly were kept confidential. The names of certain “John Does,” found to have an expectation of privacy, remained sealed or redacted.
The documents were released in rolling batches and included deposition transcripts, victim and witness testimony, some trial exhibits, emails and legal memoranda. The documents mention the names of numerous individuals associated with Epstein, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, magician David Copperfield, and attorney Alan Dershowitz. All have denied any wrongdoing.
Investigations into Epstein and Maxwell and associated litigation have generated tens of thousands of documents and what the FBI itself has described as over 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence, including images, videos, and other materials. That’s a hell of a hoax, if that’s your position on the Epstein files.
In addition to the documents released following the rulings from the civil defamation case brought by Virginia Guiffre, documents and information have circulated from the following sources.
The House Oversight Committee has released various documents it has received pursuant to subpoena from the Department of Justice, in addition to interviews it conducted with former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta (both of whom served under #45). The documents from the DOJ largely comprised materials that were already in the public domain from past investigations and court filings, such as older court records, flight logs, and law enforcement interview summaries. Much information remains non-public, for the wide variety of statutory and other reasons agencies rely upon to withhold production.
Current AG Pam Bondi handed out binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” to a group of conservative social media influencers at the White House in late February of this year. Not only was there next to no “new” information in these binders, there was never to be a Phase 2.
Co-conspirator and convicted sex offender/sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, apparently via her loving siblings, released the Jeffrey Epstein “birthday book” in July of this year.
That same month, after what was described as a Herculean redacting effort by allegedly 1,000 FBI agents tasked with blacking out the names of Trump and other prominent public officials in DOJ files, Bondi and Patel announced that releasing additional documents “would not be appropriate or warranted.”
This did not sit well with the American public, including many voters who actually believed #47’s (and his proxies’) campaign promises to “release the Epstein files.”
On October 6, 2025, the US Supreme Court denied Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal of her conviction for sex trafficking of a minor. The denial was without comment and upheld the lower court’s decision, leaving her 20-year sentence in place. The Grand Jury information/documents in this case remain under seal, but presumably most of the trial documents are a matter of public record.
Virginia Giuffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, detailing some of the horror of being groomed and then raped, assaulted and trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell, was released on October 21, 2025. It was published posthumously, after Guiffre died by suicide six months earlier.
Last week, the House Oversight Committee released a few of the estimated 20,000 documents it received in response to a late-August 2025 subpoena served on the Epstein estate. This includes the “humorous,” brotherly email exchange about the photos of a certain someone “blowing Bubba.”
When #47 signs the Epstein Transparency Bill, passed by the House and Senate yesterday, the DOJ is required to release the files within 30 days, with some exceptions for certain information, such as that which would endanger minors. Good thing for them they got a jump on the cover-up. And 30 days will give Bondi a chance to construct a U-turn on the “nothing to see here” conclusions of this past summer. Stay tuned.
Surely you don’t expect someone like me to believe that every effort that has not already been taken to redact and destroy evidence will now be taken posthaste. My experiences with the Michigan State Police, the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office can lead me to no other conclusion.
But here’s the interesting thing–even in the face of redacting and evidence destruction, they always miss something. Whoever redacted the MSP FOIA response sent to my dad missed the information about suspect John Hastings blowing his polygraphs in Georgia in 2009 and their obvious (and obstructionist) failure to follow-up. Whoever was in charge of redacting in fact highlighted what we now realize (thanks to the author of Guarded by Jackals) were ham-handed, criminally obstructionist redactions, concerning the polygraphs administered to Greg Greene and Chris Busch in January and early February of 1977. Physical evidence that was conveniently “misfiled” and other evidence that was certainly mishandled may yet yield usable DNA evidence.
The OCP and the OCSD met with “Bob” in 2012 (see https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/mystery-man-claims-to-have-new-information-about-oakland-county-child-killer/) and yet claim to have no documents whatsoever concerning this meeting. Gary Miller of the OCSD met with my dad and videotaped the meeting and yet the OCSD claims to have not one single record in the OCCK case. My dad was not informed of the videotaping (assholes) but learned of it via a FOIA response and later asked for a copy of the videotape. Of course they never handed it over. (And don’t even try to tell me this agency shares all of its shit in this case with the MSP. Too many have told me of the great animosity-fest they have with the MSP.)
No one ever acted on the whistleblower information concerning Jessica Cooper’s document shred the week Karen McDonald was elected to replace her. No one ever had to answer for Cooper’s office taking OCCK files to Sheriff Bouchard’s office to “safeguard” them from future FOIA responses. So I know the extent these fuckers will go to to cover their asses.
But in the Epstein case, while DOJ may order the destruction of evidence and redact like only the FBI knows how to redact, there may be multiple copies of documents/tapes/photos, or sources not yet learned of. The survivors certainly know who they were trafficked to. Epstein documents in the public domain are already up online in searchable data bases and the world is filled with people who will gladly scrutinize them and report their findings. We should be so lucky in the OCCK case.
The OCCK case is rife with corruption, as is the Epstein case. But most of the predators and the enablers in the Epstein case are still alive. They might not ever see the inside of a prison cell like the King Pins, Epstein and Maxwell, but they are eventually going to get outed. This will be in spite of this administration’s false claims that they care about transparency or the survivors.
Will that slow down the next Frank Shelden or the next Jeffrey Epstein? Maybe not. But it might help choke off the supply of willing deviants who now may be a little less willing to risk blowing up their entitled life to rape a kid, or to protect or finance those in society who do.
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This is so true. Something is always missed. I personally liked the one where they redacted Hastings name throughout all of the individual pages of a FOIA, but neglected to redact Hastings name on the binder cover that contained all the individual pages. That one always makes me laugh.
That is just another reason why it is so important to post all documents. So many sets of eyes on the documents is so important. It may lead to something newly discovered. I know I miss things all of the time, and then one reader spots something that nobody else may see. I certainly need to read more carefully, or read several times.
Hahaha–that is a good one, G-Man–and the coversheets (I think there are 2) are written in big handwriting announcing they are the John Hastings Documents. And the request for documents related to the suspect in Georgia (Hastings) was an add-on to the original FOIA request my dad made for documents relating to Busch and Greene (both deceased)–a second FOIA request added by my brother. They folded the Hastings documents into the response on Busch and Greene. I should post the actual initial FOIA requests and those cover sheets again in a separate post.
Every time I reread those documents I find something else or it triggers another connection with information readers have sent or suggested. And these some 3,500 pages (including many duplicate documents in the response) are just a tiny fraction of the documents in the OCCK case. Imagine if a newspaper, with access to its own FOIA-expert attorneys, had filed an extensive FOIA request for all of the documents in this very case as newspapers in Florida did in then unsolved case of Adam Walsh. The judge did not allow the Hollywood, FL police department to pull an MSP and try to charge almost $18,000 (as they did Helen Dagner) or some other prohibitively excessive amount. The court gave the PD a couple of months to scan the records and told them to charge a nominal sum to anyone who wanted access. Problem solved. I wrote about that many years ago–but no one in the press was motivated to get to the bottom of this cold case, the way it was being treated and why.
No, the press would primarily rely on the documents we obtained and paid for. And those documents alone are indeed eye-opening. As the 50-year anniversaries of these four murders starts rolling around in February, the press will stir–but not enough to ask the hard questions of the agencies involved, examine their own weaknesses in evaluating the failures and corruption in this case, or even read my blog. It will just be a sad rehash of each disappearance and the scary time for the community.
Imagine if the entire case file had been digitized, as Detectives Gray and Robertson told my dad and my brother would be done–20 years ago. Imagine if they were not rewarded by their terrible record-keeping, improper evidence storage, and a “file room” in this case that should inspire nothing but shame. They overcharge for any FOIA response because they can’t find a fucking thing in that mess. How about that angle for the 50 year story–or a comparison to other cold cases being handled successfully/strategically around the country?
Thanks, though, for the laugh. Loved those coversheets.
Back in July you posted a Jason Appelman interview. In the interview he said that a FOIA for all the documents in the OCCK case would cost $780,000. Ridiculous.
You are right, G-Man. I don’t know where the $18K came from–it was a 6-figure sum. I have a copy of that letter, too. I need to break that one out again.
That some asshole actually spent the time to make the rough calculations for that sum and then send such an absurd letter (I know she enjoyed writing it), once again proves the MSP’s obstinate refusal to do the right thing in this case. I say that knowing that the genesis of the fuckery in this case is at the 1977 Oakland County Prosecutor’s office. The corrupt football could not have been handed off to a “better” agency with the most bizarre and counterproductive culture you can imagine.