THE NEW YORK TIMES: Powerful men including Trump, Clinton in new release of Epstein photos

House Democrats have released new images from the estate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that highlight his ties to celebrities, financiers and other powerful men, including President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton.

The 19 photos, selected by Democrats on the Oversight Committee from a trove of 95,000 images in Epstein’s email account and on one of his laptops, offer little new detail to illuminate Epstein’s well-documented relationship with prominent men in politics, business, media and academia.

It was not clear whether Epstein, who is not in all of the images, took some of the photos or how they ended up in his possession.

Democrats provided no context for the images they released, including any email messages that might have accompanied them.

They also redacted the faces of women in some of the photos, which they said was an effort to protect the identities of any potential victims of Epstein.

But Democrats argued that it was appropriate to release the photographs before a deadline next Friday for the Justice Department to make public, with significant exceptions, its investigative files about the Epstein case.

Epstein died by suicide in a federal prison in 2019 while in custody on sex-trafficking charges. Many of the wealthy and famous men who were once in his orbit have faced questions for years about what they knew about his lurid lifestyle and the accusations that he was trafficking girls as young as 14 for sex.

“These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.

“We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, now.”

A law passed by Congress last month requires the Justice Department to release its files on Epstein by Dec. 19, though the measure includes several exceptions that could delay or block full disclosure.

The photographs released Friday were part of a separate trove of information that Epstein’s estate has turned over to Congress in recent months in response to a subpoena from the oversight panel.

Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused Democrats of selectively releasing the images to fuel a misleading and debunked narrative about Epstein’s ties to the president.

A spokesperson for the Republicans, who insisted on anonymity because she did not want her name associated with Epstein, said that nothing in the documents received by the panel showed any wrongdoing.

Most of the images released by Democrats document ties that had already been known. As well as Clinton and Trump, they show Epstein with Lawrence Summers, the Harvard University economist and former Treasury secretary; film director Woody Allen; tech billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates; and Steve Bannon, the right-wing media personality who has said that he videotaped interviews in Epstein’s mansion in 2019.

Bannon and representatives for Clinton, Gates, Summers and Allen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The selection of images appeared intended at least in part to insulate Democrats from Republicans’ criticism that they have been overly focused on Epstein’s links to Trump while ignoring his ties to figures on the left.

The series of photos does include three images of Trump. One, which was previously public, shows Epstein and Trump together at a Victoria’s Secret party in New York City in 1997.

Two others depict Trump with unidentified women, and their locations are not clear. One of them, in black-and-white, shows Trump standing with six unidentified women wearing plastic leis.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, accused House Democrats of “random redactions” to perpetuate a “Democrat hoax.” Trump used that phrase earlier this year as he dismissed calls to release the Epstein files, before Congress forced the issue with a law.

Jackson, pointing to ties between Epstein and Democratic figures, asserted that “the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents, and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends.”

Trump has acknowledged that he and Epstein were once friendly, and both men lived in Manhattan and in Palm Beach, Florida. But he has repeatedly and emphatically denied any knowledge of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, and the two men had a falling-out sometime in the mid-2000s.

In emails previously released by the Oversight Committee, Epstein cast himself as an insider with potentially damaging information about Trump. After his death, Epstein was at the center of theories that he might be running a blackmail operation, but the Justice Department concluded in July that there was no credible evidence that “Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”

Some of the other photos show sex toys. One depicts a satirical “Trump condom” that also appears to be part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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