I Covered the Epstein Case for Decades. These Are 9 Questions We Actually Need Answered.

 

Opinion

Guest Essay

I Covered the Epstein Case for Decades. These Are 9 Questions We Actually Need Answered.

July 23, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/opinion/epstein-files-fbi-trump.html?searchResultPosition=1

By Barry Levine

 

Mr. Levine is the author of “The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.” He began reporting on Mr. Epstein in the mid-2000s.

 

President Trump and members of his administration teased us with the prospect of making public Jeffrey Epstein’s F.B.I. files. Instead, we got zilch.

 

Mr. Trump then ordered the Department of Justice to seek the release of some grand jury testimony — a request that a federal judge in Florida denied on Wednesday. But even that information, though it might have filled in some gaps in the Epstein story, would have been only a sliver of what’s in the F.B.I. files — which include a mind-boggling “300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence,” according to the Department of Justice and the F.B.I.

 

The American people — and above all, the victims of Mr. Epstein’s crimes — deserve answers to outstanding questions about how he operated, with whose help and in whose service. With the exception of redactions required to protect the innocent and materials that must be withheld while under court seal, the complete F.B.I. files should be released.

 

Here are nine unanswered questions about the Epstein case — ones that a curious, non-conspiracy-minded citizen might have — that the files might help answer:

 

No. 1: How did Mr. Epstein make his money, and how did he finance his sex trafficking over two decades?

At the time of Mr. Epstein’s death in 2019, his estate was worth an estimated $600 million. He worked briefly on Wall Street and built his wealth with the help of several billionaires, including the L Brands founder Leslie Wexner and the Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black, for whom Mr. Epstein provided consulting, tax advice and other financial services. But it’s still not clear how Mr. Epstein amassed such a large fortune — or how he was able to fund such a complex trafficking scheme.

 

(Neither Mr. Wexner nor Mr. Black has been accused of wrongdoing by law enforcement in connection with Mr. Epstein’s crimes, and both men have said that they did not know about his criminal behavior.)

 

In addition to trafficking underage victims within the United States, Mr. Epstein imported young women and children from Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Turkmenistan, according to an investigation conducted by the office of Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. This trafficking was presumably expensive. Treasury Department files reviewed by Mr. Wyden’s staff members detail, among other things, 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion associated with just one of Mr. Epstein’s bank accounts.

 

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We need to follow the money. The F.B.I. files may reveal more about the funding and other financial mechanics of Mr. Epstein’s operation.

 

No. 2: Did Mr. Epstein have any ties to spy agencies?

Some have speculated that Mr. Epstein might have been acting as an intelligence asset. One suggestive comment was apparently made by Alexander Acosta when, after the 2016 presidential election, he was being vetted for secretary of labor in Mr. Trump’s first administration. In 2008, as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Acosta agreed to a lenient — and heavily criticized — plea deal that ended a federal investigation into Mr. Epstein. When asked in 2016 to explain that decision, Mr. Acosta reportedly said, “I was told Mr. Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

 

Attorney General Pam Bondi said this month that she did not know whether Mr. Epstein was an intelligence asset. “To him being an agent,” she told reporters, “I have no knowledge about that.”

 

The F.B.I. files could help resolve this matter.

 

No. 3: Are there references to Mr. Trump in the files that add to our knowledge of his relationship with Mr. Epstein?

Mr. Trump has acknowledged being friendly with Mr. Epstein for about 15 years, ending with a falling out over a real estate matter in 2004. Mr. Trump has not been accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein, but his relationship with Mr. Epstein has come under scrutiny.

 

During the 2024 presidential campaign, a model named Stacey Williams accused Mr. Trump of groping her in the presence of Mr. Epstein at Trump Tower in 1993 — a claim his campaign denied. The Times recently reported that one of Mr. Epstein’s victims, Maria Farmer, said that in 1996 and in 2006 she urged the F.B.I. to investigate Mr. Trump and others who had been in Mr. Epstein’s orbit.

 

On Wednesday, The Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Ms. Bondi told Mr. Trump this spring that his name appeared in the Epstein files. The context in which his name was raised remains unclear.

 

No. 4: What about Bill Clinton?

Collecting famous friends seemed to be integral to Mr. Epstein’s business model — and Bill Clinton was the most famous. In a contact book, Mr. Epstein listed 21 phone numbers for Mr. Clinton.

 

The two men met decades ago, most likely through Mr. Epstein’s close friend and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. The Daily Beast has reported that she and Mr. Epstein attended a reception hosted by Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1993.

 

After he left office in 2001, Mr. Clinton flew on Mr. Epstein’s private jets for 26 flights from 2002 to 2003, according to flight logs. Virginia Giuffre, the first of Mr. Epstein’s victims to go public, once claimed that Mr. Epstein told her that Mr. Clinton “owes me a favor.” (Mr. Clinton has denied having a close relationship with Mr. Epstein and has said that he knew nothing about the crimes that Mr. Epstein was accused of.)

 

A full accounting of the F.B.I.’s Epstein files might help clarify the nature of Mr. Clinton’s relationship with Mr. Epstein.

 

No. 5: Who were the clients implicated in Mr. Epstein’s sex trafficking operation?

The lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who joined Mr. Epstein’s legal team in 2005 when Mr. Epstein was first under investigation, said that young women and girls interviewed by the F.B.I. claimed to identify several of Mr. Epstein’s clients. Mr. Dershowitz wrote recently that their identities “should be disclosed but the courts have ordered them sealed.” He added: “I know who they are. They don’t include any current officeholders. We don’t know whether the accusations are true.”

 

Ms. Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, said that Mr. Epstein trafficked her to multiple men — including Mr. Dershowitz. Mr. Dershowitz denied her allegation and sued Ms. Giuffre for defamation. Ms. Giuffre later said she might have made a mistake in accusing him. Others she accused, including politicians in the United States, have denied wrongdoing. Prince Andrew of Britain, whom she also accused, denied wrongdoing and settled out of court a lawsuit that she brought against him.

 

What, if anything, did the F.B.I. do to corroborate Ms. Giuffre’s claims about Andrew? Did it investigate the authenticity of a photo showing her with Andrew — a photograph he has claimed may be a fake?

 

No. 6: Who helped Mr. Epstein overseas?

One associate of Mr. Epstein was the French modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel, who faced his own allegations of sexual assault and died behind bars in Paris in 2022 while awaiting trial on rape charges.

 

Mr. Brunel was accused of grooming minors and trafficking them to Mr. Epstein. After Mr. Epstein’s conviction in Florida, court documents assert that Mr. Epstein continued his abuse of girls and had a steady supply of victims ferried to him in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

 

According to a lawsuit filed by the attorney general of the Virgin Islands, Mr. Epstein used private planes, helicopters, boats and other vehicles to bring young women and girls to his island residence there. The scheme led to the molestation and exploitation of “numerous” girls between 12 and 17 years old, according to legal papers.

 

The Miami Herald has reported that the U.S. Marshals Service recorded the names of passengers on Mr. Epstein’s planes when they arrived at airports in New York and the Virgin Islands. The Department of Homeland Security released some of those documents pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Herald, but the names were redacted, with the exception of Mr. Epstein’s.

 

There is probably revealing information about Mr. Epstein’s operation in the Virgin Islands in the F.B.I. files.

 

No. 7: What did investigators find in Mr. Epstein’s safe, computers and other property?

An evidence inventory made during multiple investigations of Mr. Epstein by law enforcement resulted in a three-page index generated by the F.B.I. According to the index, the evidence included 40 computer and electronic devices, 26 storage drives, more than 70 CDs and six recording devices — along with approximately 60 pieces of physical evidence, including photos, travel logs and employee logs. The records, according to ABC News, also included three discs containing the outcome of court-authorized intercepts of a phone number previously belonging to Ms. Maxwell.

 

This evidence represents a wealth of potential detail, and we’re being denied access to it. Why hold this material back if properly redacted?

 

No. 8: What do the videos show?

Victims have said that Mr. Epstein had cameras in his homes. The Department of Justice and the F.B.I. have said that the Epstein files contain more than 10,000 downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex material and other pornography. The A.P. recently reported on a court filing in which Mr. Epstein’s estate was said to have located an unspecified number of videos and photos that it said might contain child sex abuse material. The F.B.I. files could provide more details about when and where this material was uncovered.

 

No. 9: What is in Mr. Epstein’s autopsy report?

The autopsy was performed by Kristin Roman, a forensic pathologist, at the direction of Barbara Sampson, New York’s chief medical examiner at the time. Dr. Sampson determined that Mr. Epstein died by suicide, but many are skeptical. Were DNA tests performed on the bedsheet that Mr. Epstein was said to have used to hang himself? If so, was any foreign DNA detected? Did investigators question inmates in nearby cells about what they heard or saw?

 

Seeking answers to this and the other eight matters is the least we can do not only for Mr. Epstein’s victims but also for a nation that badly needs to restore its trust in government.

 

Barry Levine is the author of “The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell” and an author, with Monique El-Faizy, of “All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator.”