NEW YORK (AP) — The FBI has pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. Searched his house. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people.
But while investigators collected abundant evidence that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found little evidence that the well-connected financier led a sex-trafficking ring that served powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows.
Videos and photos recovered from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands do not depict him abusing the victims or implicating anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in a 2025 memo.
An examination of Epstein’s financial records, including payments he made to organizations associated with influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity, another internal memo in 2019 said.
While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he had “loaned” money to his wealthy friends, agents could not corroborate and could not find any other victims who told similar stories, the records said.
Summarizing the investigation in an email last July, agents said “four or five” Epstein accusers claimed they had been sexually assaulted by other men or women. But, agents said, “there was insufficient evidence to charge these individuals federally, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement.”
The AP and other media organizations are still reviewing millions of pages of documents, many of them previously classified, that the Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and it is possible that those records contain evidence overlooked by investigators.
But the documents, which include police reports, FBI interview notes and prosecutor emails, provide the clearest picture of the investigation to date — and why U.S. officials ultimately decided to close it without further charges.
Dozens of victims come forward
The Epstein investigation began in 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported that she had been abused at the millionaire’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Police would identify at least 35 girls with similar stories: Epstein was paying high school-age students $200 or $300 to deliver his sexual messages.
After the FBI joined the investigation, federal prosecutors drafted an indictment to charge Epstein and some of his personal assistants with arranging visits and payments for the girls. But instead, then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta took a plea deal for Epstein to plead guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor girl. Sentenced to 18 months in prison, Epstein was released in mid-2009.
In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal prompted New York federal prosecutors to take a fresh look at the charges.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019. A month later, he committed suicide in his prison cell.
A year later, prosecutors accused Epstein’s longtime confidant Ghislen Maxwell of recruiting many of his victims and sometimes joining in the sexual abuse. Maxwell is serving 20 years in prison after being convicted in 2021.
Prosecutors fail to find evidence to support many sensational claims
Prosecution memos, case summaries and other documents made public in the department’s latest release of Epstein-related records show that FBI agents and federal prosecutors diligently pursued potential co-conspirators. Outlandish and incomprehensible claims called out on tip lines were also investigated.
Some allegations could not be substantiated, the investigators wrote.
In 2011 and again in 2019, investigators interviewed Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who in the lawsuit and in news interviews accused Epstein of arranging sexual encounters with several men, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew.
Investigators said they confirmed that Giuffre was sexually assaulted by Epstein. But other parts of his story were problematic.
Two other Epstein victims who Giuffre claimed had “borrowed” powerful men also told investigators they had no such experience, prosecutors wrote in a 2016 internal memo.
“No other victim described being explicitly directed by Maxwell or Epstein to engage in sexual activity with other men,” the memo said.
Giuffre admitted to writing a partially fictionalized memoir of her time with Epstein that contained accounts of things that did not happen. She also offered to change accounts in interviews with investigators, they wrote, and “engaged in a steady stream of public interviews about her allegations, many of which included sensational if not outright mischaracterizations of her experiences.” Those inaccuracies included false accounts of his interactions with the FBI, they said.
Nevertheless, US prosecutors tried to arrange an interview with Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He refused to make himself available. Giuffre settled a lawsuit with Mountbatten-Windsor in which she accused him of sexual misconduct.
In a memoir published after he killed himself last year, Giuffre wrote that prosecutors did not include him in the case against Maxwell, saying they did not want his allegations to distract the jury. She insisted her account of being trafficked to elite men was true.
Prosecutors say the photos and videos did not implicate others
Investigators recovered numerous videos and photos from Epstein’s electronic devices and homes in New York, Florida and the US Virgin Islands. They found CDs, hard copy photographs and at least one videotape containing nude images of women, some of whom appeared to be minors. One of the devices contained 15 to 20 images depicting commercial child sexual abuse material — images investigators said Epstein obtained on the Internet.
No videos or photos show Epstein sexually abusing victims, no men with naked women, and no evidence that anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell were involved, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Comey wrote in an email to FBI officials last year.
If they existed, the government would “follow any lead they generate,” Comey wrote. “Although we haven’t found any such videos.”
Investigators looking into Epstein’s bank records found payments to more than 25 women who appeared to be models — but no evidence he engaged in prostitution to other men, prosecutors wrote.
Epstein’s closest aides have not been charged
In 2019, prosecutors weighed the possibility of charging one of Epstein’s longtime associates but decided against it.
Prosecutors concluded that the assistant helped Epstein pay girls for sex and may have known that some were underage, she herself was a victim of his sexual abuse and manipulation.
Investigators examined Epstein’s relationship with French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who was once involved in an agency with Epstein in the US, and who was accused in a separate case of sexually assaulting women in Europe. Brunel committed suicide in prison while awaiting trial on rape charges in France.
Prosecutors also weighed whether to charge one of Epstein’s girlfriends who participated in sexual acts with some of his victims. Investigators interviewed the girlfriend, who was 18 to 20 years old at the time, “but determined there was insufficient evidence,” according to a summary given to FBI Director Kash Patel last July.
Days before Epstein’s July 2019 arrest, the FBI strategized about sending agents to serve grand jury subpoenas on people close to Epstein, including his pilots and longtime business client, retail mogul Les Wexner.
Wexner’s attorneys told investigators that neither he nor his wife knew about Epstein’s sexual misconduct. Epstein managed Wexner’s finances, but the couple’s attorneys said he cut him off in 2007 after learning he had stolen from them.
“There is limited evidence regarding his involvement,” an FBI agent wrote about Wexner in an Aug. 16, 2019, email.
In a statement to the AP, a legal representative for Wexner said prosecutors had informed him that he was “neither a co-conspirator nor a target in any respect” and that Wexner had cooperated with investigators.
Prosecutors also examined accounts from women who said they had given massages to guests who tried to have sex at Epstein’s home. A woman accused private equity investor Leon Black of sexually assaulting her during a massage in 2011 or 2012, prompting her to flee the room.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office later investigated, but no charges were filed.
Black’s attorney, Susan Estrich, said he paid Epstein for estate planning and tax advice. She said in a statement that Black was not involved in the misconduct and had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities. Lawsuits by two women who accused Black of sexual misconduct were dismissed or withdrawn. One is pending.
No customer list
Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News in February 2025 that Epstein’s never-before-seen “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now.” A few months later, he claimed that the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein’s “child or child porn.”
But FBI agents wrote to superiors saying the client list did not exist.
On December 30, 2024, about three weeks before President Joe Biden left office, then-FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbott reached out to subordinates to ask if “our investigation indicates a ‘customer list,’ which is often mentioned in the media, does not or does not exist,” according to an email summarizing his questions.
A day later, an FBI official responded that the case agent had confirmed that no client list existed.
On February 19, 2025, two days before Bondi’s Fox News appearance, an FBI supervisory special agent wrote: “While media coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein case referred to a ‘client list,’ investigators found no such list during the investigation.”
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Aaron Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
___ The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in cooperation with reporters from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what they contain. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the papers.
