By Sarah Fitzpatrick
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
Nearly two years ago, Donald Trump kicked off the
presidential-campaign season with a declaration: “I was never on Epstein’s
Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island,” he posted on Truth Social in January 2024.
Reports to the contrary, he insisted, were the fault of AI—and of his political
rivals: “This is what the Democrats do to their Republican Opponent, who is
leading them, by a lot, in the Polls.”
But this week, the documents released by Trump’s own
Justice Department—including flight logs and emails—told a different story.
Federal prosecutors determined in January 2020 that Trump had been a passenger
on the notorious private jet owned by Jeffrey Epstein—who would later be
charged with sex trafficking—far more often than they had realized.
Many of the flights on what came to be known as the
Lolita Express took place “during the period we would expect to charge in a
Maxwell case,” a federal prosecutor in New York told colleagues. Epstein’s
co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell was subsequently convicted and is now serving
a 20-year prison sentence for her role in the sex-trafficking operation,
including using the plane for “transporting a minor to participate in illegal
sex acts.”
There are many other mentions of Trump. The president’s
name appears more than 100 times in files released yesterday as part of the
DOJ’s compliance with legislation requiring it to disclose everything it has on
the Epstein case. Trump fought Congress’s demand for transparency for months
before abruptly pivoting and endorsing the bill once he realized he had lost.
Although many references to Trump are clearly from news reports or from
seemingly unverified tips to the FBI, one conclusion from the files is that
Trump’s relationship with Epstein, a former friend, was of interest to federal
law enforcement for years.
A White House official told me that Trump was never
contacted by law enforcement regarding his interactions with Epstein during the
time period for which Epstein and Maxwell were charged. The president has
denied wrongdoing, though his characterizations of his relationship with
Epstein—including about his presence on the plane—have shifted over time.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, declined to answer questions about
the discrepancy between the president’s prior statements and the material released
by the DOJ but said in a statement, “The truth remains: Donald Trump did
nothing wrong.”
Trump has also insisted that he knew nothing of Epstein’s
criminal activity—though his critics have questioned how that could be true
given their close relationship and history of chasing women together. Members
of Congress from both parties have said they will continue to probe the issue
in the upcoming year. Representatives I spoke with told me their takeaway from
reading the files is that top officials in the Trump administration have not
been honest about what was in them, and that they intend to press Attorney
General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for more information.
“Although the files are overly redacted, they’ve already
demonstrated that the narrative painted by Patel in hearings, Bondi in press
statements, and Trump himself on social media wasn’t accurate,” Thomas Massie,
the Kentucky Republican who co-authored the Epstein legislation, told me. “A
complete disclosure consistent with the law will show there are more men
implicated in the files in possession of the government.”
***
Representatives and staff on the House Oversight
Committee told me they were drafting subpoenas in response to the documents
released yesterday, seeking more information related to law enforcement’s
identification of 10 alleged “co-conspirators” shortly after Epstein’s arrest
in July 2019. The case that prosecutors were building related to those unnamed
co-conspirators appears to have been substantial. One document released
yesterday is a November 2020 overview presented to the deputy attorney general
from an acting U.S. attorney titled “Anticipated Charges and Investigative
Steps.” But what, if any, next steps were taken remains a mystery: The rest of
the page is redacted.
Oversight Committee members are also drafting a contempt
resolution to penalize Bondi for not ensuring that the DOJ fully complied with
the law. The resolution, spearheaded by Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, will
give Bondi 30 days to fully release all of the remaining Epstein materials,
then fine her $10,000 each day that she doesn’t release them after that. They
told me they expected to introduce the resolution when Congress returns in
January. They are also moving ahead on articles of impeachment for Bondi, and
said they were optimistic that they could get them passed in the House.
Khanna told me that there was an emerging “coalition of
the right and left to fight for justice.” That alliance, he added, “has proven
to be the kryptonite that marks the beginning of the end of the Trump era.”
The files released yesterday—and Trump’s prominence in
them—appear to have changed the calculation for senior Democratic Party leaders
as they prepare for the midterm elections. Party leadership had previously
sought to convince junior members not to focus on Epstein. But this week Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he will push for the Senate to hold the DOJ
accountable for not fully complying with the legislation, citing a missed
30-day deadline for all files to be released and excessive redactions in those
that have been.
“The Department of Justice needs to shed more light on
who was on the list, how they were involved, and why they chose not to
prosecute. Protecting possible co-conspirators is not the transparency the
American people and Congress are demanding,” Schumer said in a statement.
The Justice Department has acknowledged there are still
many more files to be released—and the known backlog grew longer today when the
DOJ announced that the FBI and New York prosecutors had uncovered “over a
million more documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case” and that the
process of reviewing them could take “a few more weeks.” Deputy Attorney
General Todd Blanche had earlier said on Meet
the Press that the delay was due to the need for additional redactions
in order “to protect victims.” Behind the scenes, his office has requested
additional “emergency” help from U.S. attorneys’ offices to continue reviewing
and redacting Epstein-related material over the Christmas and New Year
holidays, CNN
reported.
The DOJ did not respond to my questions, but on X, the
department’s public-affairs office has sought to downplay mentions of Trump in
the files, saying that yesterday’s documents “contain untrue and sensationalist
claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before
the 2020 election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they
had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against
President Trump already.”
When asked if the president still has confidence in his
attorney general’s handling of the release of the Epstein files, Jackson said,
“The president’s entire Cabinet, including AG Bondi, has done a great job
implementing the president’s agenda.”
Survivors of Epstein’s abuses reacted with both
excitement and anger as they reviewed the new files, lighting up group chats.
Some were working retail jobs on one of the busiest days of the year; others
were caring for children home from school. Lisa Phillips told me that there
were still too many unanswered questions, but that the months of work she and
other Epstein survivors had put into lobbying Congress were finally delivering
results. “This is the first news that has made me feel like we are making headway,”
she told me.
Sigrid McCawley, an attorney who represents several of
Epstein’s victims, said it would take time to know the true impact of the
“avalanche” of new documents released yesterday. But she told me that one thing
is clear: “These brave survivors were absolutely correct that the government
was withholding critical information from the public.”
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