A top US Justice Department official says it is unlikely further criminal charges will be laid in relation to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, saying the existence of "horrible photographs" and troubling emails in the latest cache of released files does not necessarily mean prosecutions can go ahead.
Department officials said last year that a review of Epstein-related records did not establish a basis for new criminal investigations and that position remains unchanged, Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche told CNN on Sunday morning, local time.
Mr Blanche acknowledged victims of Epstein's sex abuse "want to be made whole", but said that "doesn't mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of come up with a case that isn't there".
"There's a lot of correspondence. There's a lot of emails. There's a lot of photographs. There's a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr Epstein or people around him," he said.
"But that doesn't allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody."
Mr Blanche's comments followed a massive document dump on Friday that focused fresh attention on Epstein's links to powerful people around the world and revived questions about what, if any, knowledge the wealthy financier's associates had about his crimes.
The release, which contained more than 3 million pages of documents, more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, was undertaken to comply with a law passed by Congress last year forcing the department to reveal most of the material it collected during two decades of investigations into Epstein, a notorious child sex offender with connections to the rich and powerful.
However, House Democrats have criticised the scope of the release, calling attention to the fact that more than 200,000 pages were redacted or withheld, as well as the department's original claim to be reviewing 6 million files potentially related to the case.
In a letter requesting access to the unredacted files, the House Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, Jamie Raskin, called the situation "particularly urgent" in light of the department's claim that the latest document dump fulfils its obligations under the law, and few further files will be released.
Disturbing revelations continue
Despite the numerous redactions, the fallout from the latest release has been furious and swift.
A top national security adviser in Slovakia resigned on Sunday after a number of emails between himself and Epstein talking about young women were made public, saying while he denied any wrongdoing, he would step down to avoid his situation being used to attack the prime minister.
Peter Mandelson, a British politician who briefly served as ambassador to the United States last year, resigned from the Labour Party, saying he did not want to cause "further embarrassment" to the government beyond his already known associations with Epstein, due to suggestions in the files that he had received payments from Epstein in the early 2000s.
The head of the Los Angeles Olympics organising committee was also forced to put out a statement in which he said he "deeply regret[ted]" corresponding with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's girlfriend, who is currently imprisoned for child sex trafficking.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also suggested that longtime Epstein friend Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, should tell US investigators what he knew about Epstein's activities.
"I've always said anybody that [has] information should be prepared to share that information in whatever form they are asked to," Mr Starmer said.
"You can't be victim-centred if you are not prepared to do that."
One-time Trump adviser Steve Bannon, former US president Bill Clinton and billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk were also mentioned in the latest document release — as was former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, who was referred to in passing as associates of Epstein, a financier with ties to think tanks and charities, tried to secure a meeting between the two men that does not appear to have taken place.
Simply being mentioned in the Epstein files does not indicate any wrongdoing.
The name most commentators have been looking for in the files, however, is that of US President Donald Trump, who shared a close friendship with Epstein throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Among the newly released records was a spreadsheet created last August that summarised calls made to the FBI's National Threat Operation Center or to a hotline set up by prosecutors from people claiming to have some knowledge of wrongdoing by Mr Trump.
That document included a range of uncorroborated stories involving many different celebrities, occasionally with notations indicating what follow-up, if any, was done by agents.
Mr Blanche, who used to be Mr Trump's personal lawyer, said on Sunday that there were a "tonne of people" named in the Epstein files besides Mr Trump, and that the FBI had fielded "hundreds of calls" about prominent individuals that were "quickly determined to not be credible".
'This review is over'
In a separate appearance on the US network ABC, Mr Blanche said that though there were still a "small number of documents" for which the Justice Department was waiting on a judge's approval to release, when it came to the department's own scouring of documents, "this review is over".
"We reviewed over 6 million pieces of paper, thousands of videos, tens of thousands of images," he said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson also told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that he thought the Department of Justice had complied with the law requiring public disclosure of the Epstein files.
But Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of Congress, who co-sponsored the bill requiring the full release of the files, said he did not believe the department had fully complied with the law.
He said survivors were upset that many of their names had accidentally come out without redactions, and they wanted to make sure the rest of the files were made public.
Mr Blanche said each time the department learned that a victim's name was not properly redacted, it moved quickly to fix the problem — but that those mistakes accounted for a tiny fraction of the overall materials.
ABC/AP
