Takeaways From the FBI’s Second Batch of Epstein Files

The justness section released a indorse trove of files related to to the late Jeffrey Epstein, including a fake video that purported to show the sex offender’s suicide.

Roughly 11,000 documents were posted on the department’s website on Tuesday. The included court records and emails tied to the cases against Epstein, many of which had redactions.The files were initially posted on Monday and then removed a few hours later. The Justice Department didn’t respond to requests for comment about the changes. Officials have said they would release materials as the department reviews and redacts them.

On Friday, the Justice Department released its first batch of files as mandated by Congress, including images of former President Bill Clinton and celebrities.

The Justice Department has come under fire from lawmakers for Friday’s release, which was incomplete and heavily redacted. The agency temporarily removed some of those materials on Saturday, including an image with President Trump, citing the need to redact victims.

Among the new files was a fake video that purported to show Epstein’s 2019 suicide inside his Manhattan jail cell. The grainy 12-second clip was part of the case file because it was sent in 2021 to the FBI by an individual who asked investigators whether it was real.

In his email, the individual said he was documenting “a substantial cover-up of a suicide scandal” at another federal prison and ended the message with: “Busting government pedophiles since 1987. Epstein was a friend of a friend (although never heard of him until after).”

Epstein died in jail in what the New York City medical examiner said was a suicide. The Justice Department has previously released footage of the hallway outside his cell — showing nobody entered before he was found dead.

Among the new documents are a redacted photosheet documenting the “inmate suicide” and chain of custody log which describes a “homemade noose.”

The release also includes images of an expired Austrian passport that was found in a safe in Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse by FBI agents in 2019. It bears Epstein’s photograph but the name of Marius Fortelni, a real estate developer, and lists his residence as Saudi Arabia. Fortelni couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Much of what was released were court records and emails related to Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution agreement, 2019 prosecution, as well as the 2020 case against his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Some showed friction between government teams as the various cases moved through the court system. An email chain among federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York lamented the disorganized documents shared by the FBI.

“Notwithstanding their many promises to us about quick and effective processing of the 60+ devices they seized, the FBI is completely fucking us on this,” one person, whose name is redacted, wrote in March 2020.

The materials were heavily redacted, often hiding the names of the individuals sending or receiving messages. Among the materials was a 2021 email describing a photograph of Trump and Maxwell that had been retrieved from an iPhone 7 belonging to Steve Bannon. The attached screenshot of the photo, however, was redacted.

When Epstein was being investigated in the 2000s for abusing teenage girls in Florida, he was represented by some high-profile lawyers, including Alan Dershowitz and the late Kenneth Starr.

In one email released Monday, Starr argued for why Epstein shouldn’t be prosecuted.

“After careful consideration of the record, and as much as it pains me to say this, I simply do not believe federal prosecutors would have been involved at all in this matter if not for Mr. Epstein’s personal wealth and publicly-reported ties to former President Bill Clinton,” Starr wrote in June 2008.

Epstein’s team negotiated a plea deal with an 18-month state jail sentence, down from federal prosecutors’ demand for two years. But Epstein apparently tried to convince officials to shorten his Florida confinement claiming he was cooperating on the federal prosecution of Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme rocked Palm Beach.

“The AUSA prosecuting the Madoff case called me asking who Epstein was and stating in no uncertain terms that Epstein is not cooperating,” one assistant U.S. Attorney wrote in a 2009 email.

On Monday, President Trump told reporters that it was “a terrible thing” that photos of Epstein with former President Bill Clinton and other people were being made public. Trump said there were also photos of him in the government’s files, though few of those have yet to surface. “There are photos of me too. Everybody was friendly with this guy, either friendly or not friendly, but he was around.”

“I believe they gave over 100,000 pages of documents, and there is tremendous backlash,” Trump said. “A lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein, but they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues.”

Write to Becky Peterson at becky.peterson@wsj.com, Brian Whitton at brian.whitton@wsj.com and Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com

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