STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Days after a legal deadline, the Justice Department is still releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Yeah, the Trump administration is responding to an act of Congress that required it to make public every possible document about the sex offender who died in 2019. The latest batch includes 30,000 pages, including references to famous people and also a letter that the government says is fake.
INSKEEP: We're going to talk it through with NPR political correspondent Sarah McCammon. Sarah, good morning.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK, so let's - there's some questionable documents here, but what in this batch appears to be true?
MCCAMMON: These documents continue to reveal just how well-connected Epstein was to people from President Trump to former President Bill Clinton. For example, there are flight logs from the 1990s showing Trump and some members of his family taking several trips on Epstein's plane, along with other high-profile people. Now, it was already well established that Trump knew Epstein, and we should say Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing here - nor has Clinton, for that matter. But these documents do highlight the relationship between the president and Epstein, and they raise questions about what Trump might have known about Epstein's behavior.
INSKEEP: OK. There's also a letter in this batch of documents that - I mean, it was a real letter. Somebody seems to have actually mailed it. But people have questions about who really wrote it. What is it?
MCCAMMON: Right. Well, I should say it's pretty disturbing. And the Justice Department says it is not real, but the letter was purportedly written in 2019 by Epstein to Dr. Larry Nassar, who was accused of molesting hundreds of gymnasts and convicted on multiple charges. Epstein supposedly wrote, quote, "our president shares our love of young, nubile girls."
Now, the DOJ addressed this letter in a couple of posts on X yesterday, first saying they were looking into it. And then, less than two hours later, the DOJ announced that, quote, "the FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is fake." Now, the FBI declined to comment to NPR. And that post from DOJ also pointed out several apparent inconsistencies in this letter, including the fact that it was postmarked three days after Epstein's death in Virginia, even though he'd been jailed in New York.
So, you know, these documents were collected by the DOJ over several years. It's not clear what's real and what's not. And I will note there are multiple items the DOJ says are fake, like a video that purports to show Epstein killing himself. It wound up in the files because someone submitted it to the FBI to see if it was real.
INSKEEP: Now, you mentioned that in some of the more genuine-seeming documents, Trump's name comes up again. What is the White House saying about all this?
MCCAMMON: Well, you know, Trump has been trying to distance himself from all of this and complaining about the sense of guilt by association that has hung over some of the people mentioned in these files. Here's Trump speaking to reporters on Monday, hours before these latest files were released.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Bill Clinton's a big boy. He can handle it. But you probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago - many years ago - and they're, you know, highly respected bankers and lawyers and others.
MCCAMMON: And in a statement on X, the Department of Justice defended Trump and said these files, quote, "contain untrue and sensationalist claims" against him.
INSKEEP: Sarah, how do the Justice Department disclosures so far compare with their legal requirement to release all the files?
MCCAMMON: Well, DOJ has been under a lot of pressure, at least from some members of both parties, to disclose more information. They had a deadline to release all of their files on Friday, and they only released an initial batch, which further angered the White House's critics. More documents have been trickling out since then. And there's still a lot to sort through, but the contents of the files appear to be, if nothing else, embarrassing for the president and potentially a lot of other people.
INSKEEP: NPR's Sarah McCammon, thanks so much.
MCCAMMON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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