By Richard Cowan, Brad Heath and Bhargav Acharya
WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department released a new trove of documents on Tuesday from its investigation into the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including an email from a prosecutor indicating President Trump had traveled aboard his private jet "many more times than previously has been reported".
The latest release includes around 30,000 pages of documents, with many redactions, and dozens of video clips, including several purporting to be shot inside a federal detention center. Epstein was found dead in 2019 in a New York jail. His death was ruled a suicide.
PRIVATE JET
In one of those emails, dated January 7, 2020, an unidentified prosecutor in New York wrote that flight records showed Trump had flown on Epstein's private jet eight times during the 1990s, which was more than investigators then were aware of. Among those were "at least four flights" on which Ghislaine Maxwell was also aboard. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.
On one flight, the only three passengers were Epstein, Trump and a 20-year-old woman whose name was redacted. "On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case," the document stated.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the email regarding Trump's alleged flights with Epstein in the 1990s.
'UNFOUNDED AND FALSE'
In another email, an unidentified person wrote in 2021 that they had recently been looking through data the government obtained from Steve Bannon's cellphone and found an "image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell". The government redacted the photo.
The Department of Justice posted a statement on X saying: "Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right 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.
"Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims."
TRANSPARENCY LAW
The latest material comes a few days after the Trump administration published a large cache of Epstein files in an attempt to comply with a new law forcing disclosure on the politically fraught topic.
However, the releases on Friday and Saturday contained extensive redactions, angering some Republicans and doing little to defuse a scandal threatening the party ahead of 2026 midterm elections.
On Monday, Trump downplayed the importance of the Epstein files. Speaking to reporters, he said the material was "just used to deflect against tremendous success" by him and his fellow Republicans.
The new transparency law, overwhelmingly passed by Congress last month, mandated the disclosure of all Epstein files, despite Trump's months-long effort to keep them sealed.
(Reporting by Brad Heath and Bhargav Acharya; Writing by Richard Cowan and Mark Bendeich, Editing by Alex Richardson)
