Epstein didn’t traffick victims to elite, FBI concluded
The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails, searched his homes, and spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people.
But while investigators gathered ample evidence that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found little evidence that the well-connected financier ran a sex trafficking ring that catered to powerful men, according to an Associated Press review of internal U.S. Justice Department records.
A prosecutor wrote in a 2025 memo that the videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands did not depict the victims being abused or show him implicating anyone else in his crimes.
Another internal memo in 2019 said a review of Epstein’s financial records, including payments to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no links to criminal activity.
While one Epstein victim claimed he “lent” her to wealthy friends, agents were unable to verify this and were unable to find another victim who told a similar story, records show.
Summary of the investigation email Last July, agents said “four or five” Epstein accusers claimed other men or women had sexually assaulted them.
However, agents said there was “insufficient evidence to charge these individuals federally, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement.”
Media organizations still reviewing millions of pages documentsMany are previously classified documents released by the Justice Department under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and it’s possible these records may contain evidence missed by investigators.
But the documents, which include police reports, FBI interview transcripts and prosecutor emails, show why U.S. authorities decided to close the investigation without additional charges.
The Epstein investigation began in 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported being abused at the millionaire’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Police have identified at least 35 girls with similar stories: Epstein was paying high school-age students US$200 or US$300 ($A290 or US$A430) to send him sexually explicit messages.
After the FBI joined the investigation, federal prosecutors filed an indictment to charge Epstein and some of the personal assistants who arranged the girls’ visits and payments.
But instead, then-Miami U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta negotiated a deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
Epstein, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison, was released in mid-2009.
In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal prompted New York federal prosecutors to take a new look at the charges.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019.
He was found dead in his prison cell a month later.
The New York City medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.
A year later, prosecutors indicted Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime confidant of Epstein, saying she recruited several of his victims and sometimes participated in their sexual abuse.
Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021, is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Prosecutor’s notes, case summaries and other documents made public in the department’s latest records on Epstein show that FBI agents and federal prosecutors were diligently tracking potential conspirators.
Even seemingly outlandish and incomprehensible allegations called into tip lines were examined.
Investigators wrote that some allegations could not be verified.
In 2011 and 2019, investigators interviewed Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who accused Epstein in lawsuits and news interviews of arranging for sexual encounters with multiple men, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew.
Investigators said they confirmed Giuffre was sexually abused by Epstein, but other parts of her story were problematic.
An internal memo from prosecutors in 2019 stated that two other Epstein victims, whom Giuffre claimed were “loaned” to powerful men, also told investigators they had no such experience. memory.
“No other victims disclosed that they were explicitly manipulated by Maxwell or Epstein into engaging in sexual activity with other men,” the memo said.
Giuffre has acknowledged writing a partially fictionalized memoir about her time with Epstein that includes descriptions of things that did not happen.
In her memoirs, published after her suicide last year, Giuffre wrote that prosecutors told her they excluded her from the case against Maxwell because they did not want her allegations to distract the jury.
She insisted that her statements about being sold to elite men were true.
via Reuters
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