Newly leaked US government files on Jeffrey Epstein prompted the resignation of a senior official in Slovakia and reignited calls in Britain for a former prince to share what he knows with authorities about Epstein’s links to powerful individuals around the world.
The fallout comes just a day after the Justice Department began releasing a massive trove of records offering more details about Epstein’s interactions with the rich and famous after serving time for sex crimes in Florida.
Slovakia’s prime minister on Saturday accepted the resignation of an official, Miroslav Lajcak, who previously served a one-year term as president of the UN General Assembly. Lajcak was not accused of wrongdoing, but left his post after photos and emails revealed he met with Epstein in the years after Epstein’s release.
The disclosures also questions revived to know if a long-time friend of Epstein Andrew Mountbatten-Windsorformerly known as Prince Andrew, is expected to cooperate with US authorities investigating Epstein.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested Saturday that Mountbatten-Windsor should tell U.S. investigators everything he knows about Epstein’s activities. The former prince has so far ignored a request from members of the US House Oversight Committee for a “transcribed interview” about his “long-time friendship” with Epstein.
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said it would release more than 3 million pages of documents as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal most of the material it collected during two decades of investigations involving the wealthy financier.
The files, posted on the department’s website, included documents involving Epstein’s friendship with Mountbatten-Windsor, as well as Epstein’s email correspondence with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, and other significant contacts with people in political, business and philanthropic circles, such as billionaires. Bill Gates And Elon Musk.
Other documents provided a window into various investigations, including those that led to sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019 and his longtime confidant. Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021, and an earlier investigation that found evidence that Epstein abused underage girls, but never led to federal charges.
Slovak official resigns
Robert Fico, the Slovak Prime Minister, said on Saturday that he had accepted the resignation of Lajcak, his national security adviser.
Lajcak, a former Slovak foreign minister, has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but emails showed that Epstein invited him to dinner and other meetings in 2018.
The records also include a March 2018 email from Epstein’s office to Kathy Ruemmler, Obama’s former White House general counsel, inviting her to a meeting with Epstein, Lajcak and Bannon, the conservative activist who served as Trump’s White House strategist in 2017.
Lajcak said his contacts with Epstein were part of his diplomatic duties. Pressure has mounted for his ouster from opposition parties and a nationalist partner in Fico’s governing coalition.
Draft indictment details Epstein’s abuse
The FBI began investigating Epstein in July 2006, and its agents expected him to be indicted in May 2007, according to the newly released documents. A prosecutor drafted a proposed indictment after several underage girls told police and the FBI they were paid to give sexualized massages to Epstein.
The draft said prosecutors were preparing to charge not only Epstein, but also three people who worked for him as personal assistants.
According to interview notes released Friday, an employee at Epstein’s Florida estate told the FBI in 2007 that Epstein once asked her to buy flowers and deliver them to a student at Royal Palm Beach High School to commemorate her performance in a school play.
The employee, whose name was withheld, said some of his tasks included fanning $100 bills on a table near Epstein’s bed, placing a gun between the mattresses in his bedroom and cleaning up after Epstein’s frequent massages with young girls, including throwing away used condoms.
Ultimately, the then-U.S. Attorney in Miami, Alexander Acostasigned a deal that allowed Epstein to avoid federal prosecution. Epstein instead pleaded guilty to a charge of soliciting prostitution from a person under 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Acosta served as Trump’s first labor secretary during his previous term.
Epstein offers to set up a meeting with Andrew
The documents contain thousands of references to Trump, including emails in which Epstein and others shared news articles, commented on his policies or gossiped about him and his family.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s name appears at least several hundred times, including in Epstein’s private emails. During a 2010 exchange, Epstein appeared to set her up on a date.
“I have a friend who I think you would like to have dinner with,” Epstein wrote.
Mountbatten-Windsor replied that he “would be delighted to see her”.
Epstein, whose emails often contain typographical errors, wrote later in the exchange: “She is 26, Russian, intelligent, beautiful, trustworthy and yes, she has your email.” »
Concerns about how the Justice Department handled the cases
The Justice Department is facing criticism over how it handled the latest disclosure.
A group of Epstein accusers said in a statement that the new documents made it too easy to identify people he abused, but not those who might have been involved in Epstein’s criminal activities.
“As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized and re-traumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy,” it read.
Meanwhile, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, pressed the department to allow lawmakers to review unredacted versions of the records as early as Sunday. He said in a statement that Congress must evaluate whether the deletions were legal or whether they unduly shielded people from scrutiny.
Department officials acknowledged that many documents in its files were duplicates, and it was clear from the documents that reviewers took varying degrees of care or applied different standards while obscuring names and other identifying information.
There were several documents in which a name was left exposed in one copy, but redacted in another.
Epstein’s Ties to the Powerful Exposed
The released documents reinforced the fact that Epstein was, at least before running into legal trouble, friends with Trump and former President Bill Clinton. None of the publicized Epstein victims have accused Trump, a Republican, or Clinton, a Democrat, of wrongdoing. Both men said they did not know Epstein was abusing underage girls.
Epstein committed suicide in a New York prison in August 2019, a month after being charged.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York found Maxwell, a British socialite, guilty of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse. One victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, sued Mountbatten-Windsor, claiming she had sexual relations with him starting when she was 17. The former prince denied having sex with Giuffre but settled his lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffré death by suicide last year, at age 41.
