Was Jeffrey Epstein untouched for years due to ‘ties’ with intel agencies?

They should be called the Farce Files.

Bipartisan lawmakers who pressured Donald Trump to sign the Epstein Files Transparency Act, his critics, and, above all, the late sexual predator’s victims should reconcile to a bitter truth—the dirty dark secrets in the documents, pictures or videos will remain buried for now.

The DoJ will ensure that the most damaging, controversial and incriminating stuff in the files is either untraceable, concealed, deleted or heavily redacted till Trump is in power. If a sensational document is inadvertently released, the DoJ will either term it fake or delete it.

Pam Bondi is proving her fealty to Trump and shielding him despite no charges against the president in Jeffrey Epstein’s global sex trafficking ring—and that makes the cover-up more suspicious.

The most glaringly suspicious aspect of the Epstein files is the involvement of the DoJ’s counter-intelligence officials, the National Security Division (NSD), in heavily redacting the files.

Do the files contain classified documents involving Epstein and intelligence agencies?

Why was Epstein untouchable? He escaped lengthy prison terms despite the first two convictions.

DoJ Flouts Epstein Act, Redacts Almost Everything

Sloppy or deliberate—the DoJ’s actions have stirred up a hornet’s nest, triggering charges of a massive cover-up to protect Trump and other wealthy and powerful men, including politicians and celebs.

First, Bondi flouted the very Act.

The Act required the DoJ to make public “in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices, that relate to Jeffrey Epstein, including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters” within 30 days.

There are reportedly more than 1.45 million records in the Epstein trove.

However, only 3,951 photos, videos, handwritten notes and investigative documents were released in  four volumes  on December 19. Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, said that he expected “several hundred thousand more” to be released in the coming weeks.

Subsequently, more than  30,000 documents  were released on December 22.

On Christmas Eve, the DoJ said that the department and the FBI had “uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case”.

Moreover, the first tranche  includes several materials  already in the public domain and obtained via court filings and lawsuits and the House Oversight Committee’s earlier releases.

It contains photos of several women with their faces redacted, paintings of nude women, photos of Epstein with his now-incarcerated girlfriend-pimp Ghislaine Maxwell and celebs and framed photos of Trump.

Bill Clinton is seen in a hot tub with a woman whose face is redacted and in a pool with Maxwell and several women whose identities are redacted.

The photos also show modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, arrested in France in 2020 in the Epstein case and charged with raping minors, with him and Maxwell aboard the Lolita Express. Suspiciously, Brunel, like Epstein in August 2019, was found hanging in his jail cell in February 2022.

There are photos attached to written notes from an interview with a woman who alleged being raped by Epstein several times as a minor.

The most important document is a 1996 complaint made to the FBI by Epstein victim Maria Farmer, who alleged that he stole the photos and negatives of her two minor sisters to sell them to “potential buyers”.

Second, it was expected that the DoJ would redact several documents and photos. However, a massive level of redaction was unexpected, which made the release useless.

Providing a pathetic excuse, the DoJ said that “machine error” and “instances of human error” could have resulted in the redactions due to the “size and scope” of thousands of documents.

Around 700 pages were redacted, according to an  NBC News analysis .

A  119-page grand jury  report was released after being completely redacted. Subsequently, the DoJ  rereleased it  with “minimal redactions” on December 21.

Evidently, the DoJ has decided not to release damaging files, especially related to Trump and Epstein.

Fumbling DoJ Desperate to Shield Trump

Several documents/photos show Trump’s deep ties to Epstein.

The DoJ is desperate to shield the president using one of the loopholes in the Act.

Per the Act, any information about victims’ names, medical files and identifying information; child sex abuse material; and images of death, abuse or injury can be withheld or redacted.

Bondi has been using the loophole to conceal, redact, remove or delete any damaging content related to Trump.

First, on December 20, the DoJ quietly removed 16 photographs from the first tranche, including a photo of Epstein’s desk showing a picture of Trump inside a drawer with several women with one in a bathing suit.

On December 21, Blanche told NBC News that the DoJ is “not redacting information around President Trump”.

After the removal outraged Democrats and social media users, the department restored the photo on the same day, posting on X that New York federal prosecutors had said that it exposed Epstein’s victims, but a review showed “there is no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted in the photograph”.

Similarly, Blanche also backtracked.

Initially, he claimed to NBC News that the 16 photos were removed because “there are photographs of women. … It has nothing to do with President Trump”. However, when asked whether the women in the Trump photo were Epstein’s victims, a defensive Blanche said, “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

Removing the desk photo was a clear case of a cover-up.

Clinton’s hot tub picture with a woman whose face was redacted wasn’t removed with the DoJ saying that she is “a victim” of Epstein.

If Trump’s photo didn’t have a victim(s), as later claimed by the DoJ, why was the photo removed? Either the DoJ missed redacting the face(s) or realised too late that there was a victim(s) with Trump and removed it.

Second, the first tranche also contains a lawsuit filed against Epstein’s estate and Maxwell in 2020 in which the rapist allegedly introduces a 14-year-old victim to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in the ’90s and elbows him to ask, “This is a good one, right?” Trump smiles and nods—then both men chuckle.

If the allegation were true, it would prove that Trump knew that Epstein was raping minors.

Third, the second tranche  panicked the White House , which, according to Axios, took control of the DoJ’s X handle as the department fumbled with redacting and deleting materials.

For example, late into the night of December 22, someone accessed the DoJ’s website’s “staging area” for documents and posted them online. Consequently, the documents were removed after a few hours, sparking accusations of a cover-up.

The documents contain three pieces of important information, of which two are damaging to Trump though they are somewhat doubtful.

First, an email by an assistant US attorney from the Southern District of New York dated January 8, 2020, shows that Trump was aboard the Lolita Express, at least, eight times between 1993 and 1996.

One flight had Trump, Epstein and a 20-year-old woman. “On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case,” the email reads.

The second and third pieces of information alarmed the DoJ.

An FBI case file document dated October 27, 2020, contains an allegation of  rape against Trump —unsurprisingly, all names and other identifying details are redacted.

A limousine driver driving Trump to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in 1995 claims to have overheard him talking to “Jeffrey” and mentioning “abusing some girl”.

In 1999, the driver mentioned the incident to a woman who went “stone cold”. “He [Trump] raped me,” she said adding that “Donald J. Trump had raped her along with Jeffrey Epstein.”

When the driver asked the woman to report the “rape” to the police, she replied, “I can’t. They will kill me.”

However, on Christmas in 1999, she contacted the driver informing him that she had contacted the police. He never heard from her again. On January 10, 2000, someone called the driver informing him that the woman was “found with her head ‘blown off’ in Kiefer, Oklahoma. Officers on the scene and [redacted] stated there was no way it was a suicide. Corner stated it was a suicide”.

The woman’s death, if the FBI case document is to be believed, like Epstein’s at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), NYC, on August 10, 2019, was suspicious.

The DoJ jumped to Trump’s defence insinuating that some of the documents that “contain untrue and sensationalist claims” were submitted to the FBI to harm his electoral prospects 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.”

A few hours later, the DoJ posted the image of a handwritten letter signed by “J. Epstein” sent from jail to Larry Nassar, a former doctor for the USA gymnastics team, serving a 60-year sentence on child pornography charges, in August 2019.

“Our president [Trump] also shares our love of young, nubile girls,” the letter reads, hinting that Trump also abused minors.

Notably, the letter, postmarked three days after Epstein mysteriously died, alludes to Epstein’s plans to commit suicide. “As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck!”

The letter was found returned to sender in the MCC’s mail room on September 29.

Prison authorities read and inspect outgoing mail. Strangely, the letter was allowed to be sent.

A photo of the envelope, postmarked on August 13, 2019, shows that it was sent from the MCC to Nassar, listed as an inmate at a federal prison in Arizona. Besides, CNN  earlier reported  that Epstein appeared to send a letter to Nassar.

In 2020, the FBI, per a DoJ  document , requested a handwriting analysis of the letter.

Initially, the DoJ posted that it was checking the letter’s validity.

Later, the DoJ, without providing any documentation, posted that the FBI confirmed that the letter was fake.

“The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein,” the department said without referring to the handwriting analysis—whether it was analysed or what the conclusion was—and removed it.

According to the department, the letter was postmarked in Northern Virginia, not NYC, and the return address mentioned was of another jail.

It’s either a cover-up or sloppiness.

Why would the DoJ release a fake letter and later remove it?

If the letter was fake, was it deliberately released to assert that Epstein committed suicide?

Epstein’s brother, Mark, has repeatedly alleged that he was murdered because he had “dirt” on Trump and even the Clintons.

If the letter is authentic, was it the DoJ’s sheer sloppiness to release it and debunk it later to shield Trump?

Epstein’s Deep, Dubious Ties

Trump’s deep ties with Epstein, their fondness for young women, the president’s efforts to block the release of the files and the DoJ’s shocking bid to shield him have been widely reported.

However, there’s another angle that hasn’t been explored and could be the reason for the Trump administration’s bid to block the complete and unredacted Epstein files.

Epstein had been sexually abusing minor girls since the mid-1990s, but wasn’t arrested until 2006.

Around three decades ago, Farmer complained to the FBI on August 26, 1996, about Epstein alleging child pornography. Per the FBI complaint, Farmer clicked photos of her two minor sisters (12 and 16 years) for her personal artwork.

“Epstein stole the photos and negatives and is believed to have sold the pictures to potential buyers,” the document reads.

Epstein threatened Farmer, whom he and Maxwell raped in New Albany, Ohio in May 1996, that “if she tells anyone about the photos, he will burn her house down”.

The complaint also included Farmer’s allegation that Epstein had sexually assaulted her sister, Annie, in New Mexico in April 1996.

For almost 10 years, the FBI didn’t take any action against Epstein. In a statement, Farmer said that the FBI had “failed” her and other victims.

During that time, Clinton, with close ties to Epstein, was the president.

It was only in 2006, when Epstein was first arrested—but spent only a day in jail.

In 2005, the stepmother of a 14-year-old high schoolgirl in Palm Beach reported to the police that Epstein molested her stepdaughter. Subsequently, the police started  interviewing more girls  who led them to others who alleged that Epstein molested or raped them.

When the police raided Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, several computers believed to have contained names and photos of victims were missing. Epstein was tipped off.

Prosecutors had an arrest document that listed five rape victims. Epstein, however, was indicted on only one state felony charge of solicitation of prostitution.

He spent only one night in the Palm Beach County Jail and was released the next day on $3,000 bond.

If Epstein was convicted of the felonies against all five girls, he could have been sentenced to 75 years.

There was a second chance to nail Epstein—but the paedophile again avoided a lengthy jail term.

In May 2008, an assistant US submitted a draft indictment mentioning 60 criminal counts against Epstein and a memo summarising the evidence collected against him.

Strangely, Alex Acosta, the top prosecutor at the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and later Trump’s labour secretary in his first term, and Epstein’s attorneys reached the “deal of the century”.

Acosta offered to end the probe if Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges, agreed to a jail term, register as a sexual offender and pay monetary damages to his victims.

Moreover, under a  non-prosecution agreement  (NPA), Epstein, four co-conspirators and any potential co-conspirators were granted immunity.

The FBI kept Epstein’s victims in the dark by not informing them that the investigation had ended under the NPA.

Subsequently, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under 18 and got only an 18-month prison term in a minimum-security facility. However, he was permitted to leave for 12 hours a day to work at a foundation he had recently incorporated.

Epstein didn’t even complete his jail term and was released after less than 13 months.

By 2010, he had settled several lawsuits filed by his victims.

In 2015, Epstein’s primary accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre— who apparently committed suicide in April this year—sued Maxwell for defamation after she called her a liar for alleging to be a victim. In 2017, Maxwell settled Giuffre’s lawsuit.

In 2019, Epstein was arrested by federal agents and charged in the Southern District Court of New York with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. In the same year, Acosta resigned as labour secretary.

On August 10, Epstein was found dead under mysterious circumstances at the MCC.

The sordid saga could have ended in 1996 if the FBI had acted upon Farmer’s complaint against Epstein—instead, he continued to rape scores of girls and traffic several of them to his rich and powerful friends.

Epstein’s ‘Ties’ to Intelligence Agencies

Epstein managed to avoid lengthy jail terms and was convicted only thrice. His third and last conviction was in 2019.

Was it a coincidence that Trump was the president when Epstein was last convicted and died under mysterious circumstances?

Even in Trump’s second term, the DoJ is concealing or redacting damaging information in the files using the Act’s other loophole, which allows only unclassified records to be released.

Protecting the identities of the victims is a legitimate reason for the redactions—but is it the only reason?

Classified information related to “national defence or foreign policy” should be kept secret, per the Act.

It’s baffling that the files/photos about a paedophile who ran a global sex trafficking ring contain classified material of “national defence or foreign policy” importance.

The most suspicious aspect of the DoJ cover-up is that its counter-intelligence officials (NSD), who inherited the redaction work from the FBI, are involved in it.

Manpower shortage could be a reason, but the NSD’s involvement is extremely suspicious.

The NSD’s  mission  is to protect the US from threats to national security by coordinating between prosecutors, law enforcement agencies, intelligence attorneys and the intelligence community.

NSD lawyers don’t handle sex crime documents and neither the department investigated Epstein.

Did Epstein have links to the CIA and Mossad?

In November, Thomas Massie, a GOP representative from Kentucky, one of the two co-drafters of the Epstein files Bill, told the media before the US Capitol that Epstein certainly had “ close ties  to [US] intelligence agencies and Israel’s intelligence agencies”.

Standing beside Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia GOP representative who recently fell out with Trump, asked, “Will the CIA release the files?”

Greene is a conspiracy theorist, but Massie isn’t.

Acosta, during his interview for the post of Trump’s labour secretary, said that the Epstein NPA was signed in 2008 because he was told to back off. “I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone,” he said, according to a Daily Beast  report  in July 2019.

Later, Acosta denied the statement.

But why did Acosta strike the sweetheart deal with Epstein during the Bush administration?

Who pressured Acosta?

Why did the FBI mislead Epstein’s victims and keep the NPA a secret from them?

In April 2023, Epstein’s private calendar revealed that the US’s then-deputy secretary of state, William Burns—Joe Biden’s future CIA director— met him thrice  in Washington and at his Manhattan house in 2014.

The CIA later denied Burns knowing “anything” about Epstein or having any relationship despite the paedophile’s two convictions and arrests (2006 and 2008).

It’s highly suspicious that an Obama Cabinet official who advised on foreign policy and supervised the State Department’s operations met Epstein thrice.

The sex trafficking ring aside, there’s another sensational period in Epstein’s life not reported by the mainstream media—rather deliberately.

Epstein, not formally named or convicted in the Iran-Contra affair (1981-86), was  connected to some of the key figures in the CIA scandal , like the late Stanley Pottinger, the former assistant attorney general for civil rights under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

The Ronald Reagan administration was trafficking arms to Iran—despite the embargo—via Israel during the Iran-Iraq War and using the proceeds of the sale to fund the Contras, an anti-communist rebel group fighting the Marxist Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua.

Pottinger, later an attorney for Iranian banker Cyrus Hashemi, Ayatollah Khomeini’s arms broker in NYC, was  assisting  the Iranians with the CIA’s help in bypassing the arms embargo using fake invoices and foreign shell companies.

Pottinger was operating from a penthouse he rented along with his brother and Epstein in Central Park South, NYC. When Pottinger was identified in a federal indictment against Hashemi for illegal arms exports, the banker fled to England.

The CIA, however, continued trafficking arms to Iran using Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and Israel.

Coincidentally, the person who supervised the CIA’s first arms delivery to the Contras was Epstein’s close friend and client Barak, who headed Aman, the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate.

The CIA, which owned the Southern Air Transport airline from 1960 to 1973, was using its planes to smuggle arms to Iran via Israel. When one of the jets was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, the Iran-Contra affair was exposed.

Subsequently, the Miani-headquartered airline relocated to Columbus, Ohio.

Epstein, then a little-known financier and money manager for the wealthy, played a critical role in the airline’s relocation to Columbus with the help of his client and Ohio-based fashion and retail mogul Les Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret.

Farmer publicly alleged that Epstein and Maxwell raped her at Wexner’s property in New Albany, Ohio.

The DoJ’s second tranche of documents contain redacted emails showing that the FBI was looking into Wexner as one of Epstein’s 10 alleged co-conspirators. One email dated July 9, 2019, between investigators from an FBI’s Violent Crimes Section for Crimes Against Children Human Trafficking Unit mentions a “wealthy businessman in Ohio”.

Under Epstein’s supervision, the Southern Air Transport jets were repurposed to deliver clothes to Wexner’s network of retail chains, including Victoria’s Secret.

Exactly a week before the CIA inspector general released its report linking the airline to allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking, Southern Air Transport declared bankruptcy on October 1, 1998. Ohio officials dropped the investigation and Epstein’s role remained buried.

Epstein’s  ties with Israel  are in the public domain.

Documents released earlier show the closeness of Epstein and former Israeli PM and defence minister Ehud Barak, who, according to Giuffre, repeatedly raped her.

In her posthumous memoir,  Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice , Giuffre recalled that a famous prime minister “repeatedly choked me … Horrifically, the Prime Minister laughed when he hurt me and got more aroused when I begged him to stop” on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands in 2002.

An archive of leaked emails released by the Handala hacking group and documents released by the House Oversight Committee in October show how Epstein was involved in Israel’s West African security negotiations in 2012 while Barak was the defence minister.

With Epstein’s assistance, Barak presented a proposal to Côte d’Ivoire in 2014 for mass surveillance of phone and Internet communications designed by former Israeli spies. With Israeli technological help, President Alassane Ouattara, who won a fourth term in October by defying the constitutional limit, has  tightened his grip  on power.

In Mongolia, Epstein again used his political and financial connections to help Barak in a  security cooperation agreement  between Mongolia and Israel in 2017, according to the leaked emails.

According to Drop Site News  reporting , Epstein also hosted an Israeli military intelligence officer and Barak aide.

If Epstein wasn’t involved with intel agencies, why does the Act bar the release of classified information related to “national defence or foreign policy”?

It’s obvious that the files contain classified information related to national defence or foreign policy—and Epstein was involved.

In November, Mark alleged that the  FBI was  “sanitising these [Epstein] files,” at a Virginia facility.

“There’s a facility in Winchester, Virginia, where they’re scrubbing the files to take Republican names out of it. That’s what I was told by a pretty good source,” he added.

(The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. He tweets as @FightTheBigots. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)