In the United States, “the Epstein Files” has again become a slogan that promises revelation and delivers confusion. The phrase is not a legal term. It is a political nickname for a vast, uneven record left behind by Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of girls and by the state’s repeated failures to deliver justice. The latest surge follows the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) January 30 publication of more than three million additional pages, plus over 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, which the department says brings the total released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act to nearly 3.5 million pages. The law was signed by President Donald Trump in November 2025.
Referring to all this material as “files” invites a dangerous misunderstanding: that somewhere inside is a tidy, authoritative list of villains. What exists instead is an ecosystem of documents, some evidentiary, some hearsay, some administrative, and some simply names in phone books or message logs. It also includes court releases outside the executive branch, such as the early 2024 unsealing in the defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, which put famous names into the public bloodstream without establishing what, if anything, they did.
This is why the “files” are so controversial. Partial transparency can be toxic. The public sees heavy redactions and assumes bad faith. Survivors see identifying details and fear retraumatisation. Attorneys for survivors have said that names and identifying information appeared in recent releases even as alleged male abusers’ names remained redacted or obscured. The DOJ insists redactions are legally required to protect victims, medical records, grand jury secrecy, and any ongoing investigative sensitivities. Both claims can be true at once, and that is exactly the problem: a disclosure process can be legally compliant and still morally disfiguring.
The deeper scandal sits behind the paperwork. Epstein’s is not only a story of individual depravity, but of institutional deference to wealth and status. The most damning record is not a celebrity mention. It is the trail of prosecutorial decisions that helped Epstein contain consequences for years. The 2008 federal non-prosecution agreement in Florida curtailed broader federal exposure, and the DOJ later examined the handling of that deal in an internal review. That review is public and worth reading precisely because it shows how official language can launder extraordinary leniency into routine procedure.
That brings us to Trump and the present US administration. This is Trump’s second term, and the releases are being executed by a DOJ led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche publicly defending the scope and redactions. The administration’s problem is structural. When a sitting president has a documented past social association with Epstein, every redaction becomes dubious by default, even if it is legally justified.
Trump’s past proximity to Epstein raises legitimate questions, even if it does not establish criminal conduct. Trump publicly praised Epstein in a 2002 magazine profile, calling him a “terrific guy” and remarking that Epstein liked women “on the younger side.” Epstein’s recruitment pipeline also intersected with Trump’s Florida orbit, with Giuffre describing being recruited after working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The responsible conclusion is not “guilty by association.” It is that an administration with proximity to the subject cannot credibly ask the public for trust without radical transparency and independent verification. Trump’s first administration intersected with Epstein’s impunity in a way that is harder to dismiss as tabloid noise. Alexander Acosta, the federal prosecutor who approved the 2008 deal, later joined Trump’s cabinet and resigned amid backlash after Epstein’s 2019 arrest. This is proof of a governance culture where reputational risk is managed until it becomes unmanageable, and where accountability is often triggered by embarrassment rather than principle.
There is also the myth that keeps the outrage permanently renewable: the promise of a secret “client list.” In July 2025, the DOJ and the FBI issued a review memo saying they found no evidence of such a list or of a blackmail scheme, and reaffirmed the official conclusion that Epstein died by suicide. In a healthier information environment, an official finding might narrow the story. In today’s America, it often widens it, because the gap between institutional credibility and public belief has become a permanent marketplace for rage.
Where does that leave us today? The state has released a mountain of material but still controls interpretation. It says it has complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act while acknowledging that far more pages were identified as potentially responsive and that significant portions remain withheld or redacted. Maxwell remains the only federally convicted accomplice, and the US Supreme Court has declined to hear her appeal, leaving her conviction and 20-year sentence in place. If the public expects dramatic new prosecutions, the record offers little basis. The more sobering lesson is how elite impunity is built: discretion, delay, and information management.
If the Epstein files are to be more than a partisan weapon, they should be treated as an audit of governance. That means transparent criteria for redactions, an intelligible public index, and independent oversight that is not captive to the administration of the day. It means a survivor-first standard that never sacrifices victims for performative openness. Above all, it means refusing to treat documents as verdicts. Evidence belongs in court, and accountability belongs in institutions that can withstand scrutiny, including scrutiny of their own failures. Until the United States can do that, the paperwork will keep coming, the trust will keep eroding, and the real lesson of Epstein will remain unlearned.
Barrister Khan Khalid Adnan is advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, fellow at the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and head of the chamber at Khan Saifur Rahman and Associates in Dhaka.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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