Top Justice Department official plays down chance for charges arising
from Epstein files revelations
[February 02, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Justice Department official played down the
possibility of additional criminal charges arising from the Jeffrey
Epstein files, saying Sunday that the existence of “horrible
photographs” and troubling email correspondence does not “allow us
necessarily to prosecute somebody.”
Department officials said over the summer that a review of
Epstein-related records did not establish a basis for new criminal
investigations, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that
position remains unchanged even as a massive document dump since Friday
has focused fresh attention on Epstein's links to powerful individuals
around the world and revived questions about what, if any, knowledge the
wealthy financier's associates had about his crimes.
“There’s a lot of correspondence. There’s a lot of emails. There’s a lot
of photographs. There’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be
taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him,” Blanche said Sunday on CNN's
"State of the Union." "But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to
prosecute somebody.”
He said victims of Epstein's sex abuse “want to be made whole,” but that
“doesn’t mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of
come up with a case that isn’t there."
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said Friday that it would be
releasing more than 3 million pages of documents and more than 2,000
videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal most of the
material it collected during long-running investigations into Epstein.
The fallout from the release of the files has been swift.
In the United Kingdom, Lord Peter Mandelson announced his resignation
from the governing Labour Party on Sunday following further revelations
about his relationship with Epstein. He said he was stepping aside to
avoid causing “further embarrassment," even as he denied allegations he
had received payments from Epstein two decades ago.
A top official in Slovakia, meanwhile, left his position after photos
and emails revealed he had met with Epstein in the years after Epstein
was released from jail. And British Prime Minister Keir Starmer
suggested that longtime Epstein friend Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor,
formerly known as Prince Andrew, should tell U.S. investigators whatever
he knows about Epstein's activities.
The revelations continue
The files posted to the department’s website included documents
involving Epstein’s friendship with Mountbatten-Windsor, along with
Epstein’s email correspondence with onetime Trump adviser Steve Bannon,
New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and other prominent contacts with
people in political, business and philanthropic circles, such as
billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.
The Epstein saga has long fueled public fascination in part because of
his past friendships with Trump and former President Bill Clinton. Both
men have said they had no knowledge Epstein was abusing underage girls.
Among the records was a spreadsheet created last August that summarized
calls made to the FBI’s National Threat Operation Center or to a hotline
set up by prosecutors from people claiming to have some knowledge of
wrongdoing by Trump. That document included a range of uncorroborated
stories involving different celebrities, and somewhat fantastical
scenarios, occasionally with notations indicating what follow-up, if
any, was done by agents.
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Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche takes a question from a
reporter during a news conference after the Justice Department
announced the release of three million pages of documents in the
latest Jeffrey Epstein disclosure in Washington, Friday, Jan. 30,
2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Blanche said Sunday that there were a “ton of people” named in the
files besides Trump and that the FBI had fielded “hundreds of calls”
about prominent individuals where the allegations were “quickly
determined to not be credible."
Some of Epstein’s personal email correspondence contained candid
discussions with others about his penchant for paying women for sex,
even after he served jail time for soliciting an underage
prostitute. Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in August
2019, a month after being indicted on federal sex trafficking
charges.
In one 2013 email, a person whose name was blacked out wrote to
Epstein about his choice “to surround yourself with these young
women in a capacity that bleeds — perhaps, somewhat arbitrarily —
from the professional into the personal and back.”
“Though these women are young, they are not too young to know that
they are making a very particular choice in taking on this role with
you,” the person wrote. "Especially in the aftermath of your trial
which, after all, was public and could be — indeed was — interpreted
as a powerful man taking advantage of powerless young women, instead
of the other way around.”
In a 2009 email, not long after Epstein had finished serving jail
time for his Florida sex crime, another woman, whose name was
redacted, excoriated him for breaking a promise that they would
spend time alone together and try to conceive a baby.
“I find myself having to question every agreement we have made (no
prostitutes staying in the house, in our bed, movies, naps, two
weeks Alone, baby...),” She wrote. “Your last minute suggestion to
spend THIS weekend with prostitutes is just too much for me to
handle. I can’t live like this anymore.”
‘This review is over’
Blanche said in a separate appearance on ABC's “This Week” that
though there are a “small number of documents” the Justice
Department was waiting for a judge's approval before it can release,
when it comes to the department's own scouring of documents, “this
review is over.”
“We reviewed over six million pieces of paper, thousands of videos,
tens of thousands of images,” Blanche said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on
Sunday that he believed the Justice Department was complying with
the law requiring disclosure of the files.
But Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of the law, said he did
not believe the department had fully complied. He said survivors
were upset some of their names had inadvertently come out without
redactions.
Blanche said each time the department has learned a victim's name
was not properly redacted, it has moved quickly to fix the problem
and that those mistakes account for a tiny fraction of the overall
materials.
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