Newly released Jeffrey Epstein files show he was in contact with Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel.
US House Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released six pages of partial records from Jeffrey Epstein's estate, which show the late financier was friends with some of the "most powerful and wealthiest men in the world".
However, there is no evidence in the documents that those people knew about how Epstein was sexually abusing teenage girls.
According to a flight log, Prince Andrew flew with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from New Jersey to Florida in 2000.
Flight logs presented as evidence during Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking trial showed Prince Andrew had flown on Epstein's plane on other occasions.
In 2022, Prince Andrew settled a US lawsuit brought by the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's most prominent accusers.
In the lawsuit, Ms Giuffre accused the prince of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager. Prince Andrew has denied wrongdoing and said he regretted his past association with Epstein.
In 2000, Epstein's general ledger also had two identical messages for an individual identified as "Andrew": "Massage, exercise, yoga."
They were accompanied by financial disclosures "providing possible evidence of payments from Epstein to masseuses on behalf of an individual identified as Andrew", the Oversight Committee said.
The documents also show that Epstein scheduled meetings with venture capitalist and Trump supporter Peter Thiel and far-right activist Steve Bannon.
There is a note of a pending trip by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to Epstein's island.
A spokesperson for Mr Thiel and lawyers who have represented Mr Bannon and Prince Andrew did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The daily calendars do not indicate whether Epstein's meetings with Mr Musk, Mr Thiel and Mr Bannon in fact took place.
The committee said it received 8,544 documents in response to its subpoena in August.
They included:
- Phone message logs from 2002–2005, which were produced previously in litigation.
- Copies of flight logs and flight manifests for aircraft, including helicopters, that Epstein owned, rented, leased, operated, or used from 1990 to 2019.
- Copies of ledgers reflecting transactions recorded as cash transactions for Epstein and business entities. These documents were previously shown to Committee staff in a camera review.
- Epstein's daily schedules between 2010 and 2019.
The records have redacted the names of victims, and the committee plans to release more information once those names are also redacted.
"It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world," Oversight spokesperson Sara Guerrero said in a statement.
"Every new document produced provides new information as we work to bring justice for the survivors and victims. Oversight Democrats will not stop until we identify everyone complicit in Epstein's heinous crimes.
"It's past time for Attorney General Bondi to release all the files now."
FBI Director Kash Patel said in congressional testimony earlier this month that there was no credible information that Epstein trafficked women and underage girls to anyone but himself.
President Donald Trump has been facing criticism in recent months from his conservative base and congressional Democrats over his administration's handling of the Epstein case.
The Justice Department in early July said it would not make public files from its sex trafficking investigation into Epstein, reneging on earlier promises from Mr Trump and his allies to do so.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping recruit and groom teenage girls for Epstein to abuse. She had pleaded not guilty and had asked the US Supreme Court to overturn her conviction.
ABC/AP/Reuters
