New York — The FBI has looked into it Jeffrey Epstein Bank records and emails. His homes were searched. She spent years interviewing his victims and examining his relationships with some of the world’s most powerful people.
But while investigators gathered enough evidence that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found little evidence that the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records showed.
The prosecutor wrote in one of his 2025 memos that videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands did not depict victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes.
Another internal memo in 2019 said that an examination of Epstein’s financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in global academia, finance and diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity.
While one of Epstein’s victims publicly claimed he “lent” her to wealthy friends, agents were unable to confirm that and could not find any other victims to tell a similar story, records said.
In summarizing the investigation in an email last July, agents said that “four or five” of Epstein’s accusers alleged that other men or women had sexually assaulted them. But agents said there was “insufficient evidence to federally charge these individuals, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement.”
The AP and other media organizations are still reviewing Millions of pages of documentsMany were previously classified, released by the Justice Department under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and these records likely contain evidence that investigators overlooked.
But the documents, which include police reports, FBI interview notes and prosecutor emails, provide the clearest picture yet of the investigation — and why US authorities ultimately decided to close it without filing additional charges.
The investigation into Epstein began in 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at the millionaire’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Police identified at least 35 girls with similar stories: Epstein would pay high school-age students $200 or $300 to give him sexual massages.
After the FBI joined the investigation, federal prosecutors drafted indictments to charge Epstein and some personal assistants who arranged visits and payments to the girls. But instead, then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta Make a deal Allowing Epstein to plead guilty to charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and was free by mid-2009.
In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal prompted federal prosecutors in New York to take a fresh look at the charges.
It was Epstein He was arrested in July 2019. One month later, he said He killed himself In his cell.
A year later, prosecutors charged a longtime Epstein confidant, Ghislaine MaxwellSaying she recruited many of his victims and sometimes joined in the sexual abuse. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Prosecution memos, case summaries and other documents made public in the department’s latest release of records related to Epstein show that FBI agents and federal prosecutors are diligently pursuing potential co-conspirators. Even the seemingly strange and incomprehensible claims, which were called into information lines, were examined.
Some of the allegations could not be verified, investigators wrote.
In 2011 and again in 2019, investigators conducted interviews Virginia Roberts Giuffrewho has accused Epstein, in lawsuits and news interviews, of arranging sexual encounters with several men, including the former British man. Prince Andrew.
Investigators said they confirmed that Giuffre was sexually assaulted by Epstein. But other parts of her story were problematic.
Two other of Epstein’s victims, who Giuffre claimed were also “lent out” to powerful men, told investigators they had no such experience, prosecutors wrote in a 2019 internal memo.
“No other victim described receiving explicit instructions from Maxwell or Epstein to engage in sexual activity with other men,” the memo said.
Giuffre admitted to writing a partly fictional memoir about her time with Epstein that contained descriptions of things that did not happen. She also gave shifting accounts in interviews with investigators, they wrote, and participated in an ongoing series of public interviews about her allegations, many of which included sensationalized if not patently inaccurate descriptions of her experiences. Those errors included false accounts of her interactions with the FBI, they said.
However, US prosecutors tried to arrange an interview with Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He refused to make himself available. Geoffrey Resolve a lawsuit With Mountbatten-Windsor, in which she accused him of sexual misconduct.
in Diary Published after she killed herself last year, Giuffre wrote that prosecutors told her they did not include her in the case against Maxwell because they did not want her allegations to distract the jury. She insisted that her accounts of being trafficked to elite men were true.
Investigators seized a large number of videos and photos from Epstein’s electronic devices and his homes in New York, Florida and the US Virgin Islands. They found CDs, printed photos and at least one videotape containing nude photos of females, some of whom appeared to be minors. One device contained between 15 and 20 images depicting commercial child sexual abuse material, images investigators said Epstein obtained online.
None of the videos or photos showed Epstein’s victims being sexually assaulted, none showed any males with any of the nude females, and none contained evidence implicating anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Comey wrote in an email to FBI officials last year.
If these devices had been in place, Comey wrote, the government would have “followed up on any leads they generated.” “However, we did not find any such videos.”
Investigators who searched Epstein’s bank records found payments to more than 25 women who appeared to be models, but no evidence that he was involved in prostitution with other men, prosecutors wrote.
In 2019, prosecutors considered indicting a longtime Epstein associate, but decided against it.
Prosecutors concluded that although the assistant was involved in helping Epstein pay girls for sex and may have been aware that some of them were minors, she herself was a victim of sexual abuse and manipulation.
Investigators examined Epstein’s relationship with French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who worked at an agency with Epstein in the United States and who was accused in a separate case of sexually assaulting women in Europe. Brunel He killed himself in prison While awaiting trial on rape charges in France.
Prosecutors also considered whether to charge one of Epstein’s girlfriends who engaged in sexual acts with some of his victims. Investigators interviewed her friend, who was between 18 and 20 years old at the time, “but it turned out that there was not enough evidence,” according to a summary provided to FBI Director Kash Patel Last July.
Days before Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, the FBI devised a strategy of sending agents to serve grand jury subpoenas on people close to Epstein, including his pilots and his longtime business client, retail magnate Les Wexner.
Wexner’s lawyers told investigators that neither he nor his wife knew about Epstein’s sexual misconduct. Epstein managed Wexner’s finances, but the couple’s lawyers said they cut off contact with him in 2007 after learning he had stolen from them.
“There is limited evidence regarding his involvement,” an FBI agent wrote about Wexner in an August 16, 2019, email.
In a statement to the Associated Press, a legal representative for Wexner said prosecutors told him he was “neither a co-conspirator nor a target in any way,” and that Wexner cooperated with investigators.
Prosecutors also examined accounts from women who said they provided massages at Epstein’s home to guests who tried to make the encounters sexual. One woman accused private equity investor Leon Black of initiating sexual contact during a massage in 2011 or 2012, prompting her to flee the room.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office later investigated, but no charges were filed.
Black’s lawyer, Susan Estrich, said he paid Epstein for estate planning and tax advice. She said in a statement that Black did not engage in misconduct and had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities. Lawsuits brought by two women who accused Black of sexual misconduct were dismissed or withdrawn. One is waiting.
Prosecutor Pam Bondi said Fox News in February 2025 Epstein’s never-before-seen “client list” was “on my desk right now.” A few months later, she… He claimed the FBI was reviewing “Tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein “containing children or child pornography.”
But FBI agents wrote to their superiors saying that the list of agents did not exist.
On December 30, 2024, about three weeks before President Joe Biden left office, then-FBI Deputy Director Paul Abate reached out through his subordinates to ask “whether our investigation to date indicates that the agent list, often referred to in the media, does or does not exist,” according to an email summarizing his inquiry.
A day later, an FBI official responded that the case agent confirmed that there was no list of agents.
On February 19, 2025, two days before Bundy appeared on Fox News, an FBI supervisory special agent wrote: “While media coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein case refers to a list of agents, investigators found no such list during the course of the investigation.”
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Aaron Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
___ The AP is reviewing documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom work together to examine the files and share information about their contents. Each media outlet is responsible for its independent news coverage of the documents.