Timeline of Epstein investigation and battle to make the recordsdata public

By The Related Press

For a lot of 20 years, police, FBI brokers and prosecutors investigated allegations that Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused underage women. Now, the Justice Division has launched a lot of what they discovered to the general public.

The thousands and thousands of paperwork comprise essentially the most detailed look but on the internal workings of the a number of investigations into Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.

These paperwork embody among the earliest police stories taken by police in Palm Seaside, Florida, in addition to recordings of a few of Epstein’s victims talking on the cellphone and to investigators. And it consists of inside Justice Division emails from as just lately as just a few months in the past.

Here’s a timeline of the Epstein investigations and the efforts to open up the federal government’s recordsdata:

The investigation begins

March 2005: Palm Seaside police start investigating Epstein after the household of a 14-year-old lady stories she was molested at his mansion. A number of underage women, a lot of them highschool college students, would later inform police that Epstein employed them to offer sexual massages.

Could 2006: Police officers signal paperwork to cost Epstein with a number of counts of illegal intercourse with a minor, however the county’s prime prosecutor, State Legal professional Barry Krischer, takes the weird step of sending the case to a grand jury.

July 2006: Epstein is arrested after a grand jury indicts him on a depend of soliciting prostitution. The comparatively minor cost upsets Palm Seaside police leaders, who publicly accuse Krischer of giving Epstein particular remedy. The FBI begins an investigation.

2007: Federal prosecutors put together an indictment, however for a yr Epstein’s attorneys interact in talks with the U.S. legal professional in Miami, Alexander Acosta, a couple of deal that may keep away from federal prosecution. Epstein’s attorneys decry his accusers as unreliable.

Secret deal results in a lightweight jail time period

June 2008: Epstein pleads responsible to state costs: one depend of soliciting prostitution and one depend of soliciting prostitution from somebody beneath the age of 18. He’s sentenced to 18 months in jail. Underneath a secret association, the U.S. legal professional’s workplace agrees to not prosecute Epstein for federal crimes. Epstein serves most of his sentence in a work-release program that permits him to depart jail through the day.

Could 2009: Certainly one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, recordsdata a lawsuit claiming Epstein and Maxwell organized for her to have sexual encounters with “royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen” and others. The lawsuit doesn’t identify the boys.

July 2009: Epstein is launched from jail. For the following decade, Epstein’s accusers wage a authorized battle to get his federal non-prosecution settlement voided.

Information media and lawsuits preserve public curiosity excessive

March 2, 2011: The Day by day Mail publishes an interview with Giuffre by which she describes touring with Epstein to London at age 17 and spending an evening dancing with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then often called Prince Andrew. The story and a photograph of the prince together with his arm round Giuffre creates a disaster for the royal household. FBI brokers subsequently interview Giuffre.

Dec. 30, 2014: Giuffre’s attorneys file courtroom papers claiming she had sexual encounters with Mountbatten-Windsor and different males, together with “international presidents, a well known Prime Minister, and different world leaders.” All these males deny the allegations.

November 2018: The Miami Herald revisits the dealing with of Epstein’s case in a sequence of tales focusing partly on the function of Acosta — who by this level is President Donald Trump’s labor secretary. The protection intensifies public curiosity in Epstein.

New York prosecutors revive case

Dec. 6, 2018: FBI brokers and the U.S. legal professional’s workplace in Manhattan start a brand new investigation into Epstein.

July 6, 2019: Epstein is arrested on new intercourse trafficking costs introduced by the prosecutors in New York, who’ve concluded they aren’t sure by the sooner non-prosecution settlement with Epstein in Florida. Days later, Acosta resigns as labor secretary.

Aug. 10, 2019: Epstein kills himself in his jail cell in New York.

July 2, 2020: Federal prosecutors in New York cost Maxwell with intercourse crimes, saying she helped recruit and abuse Epstein’s victims.

Dec. 30, 2021: After a monthlong trial, a jury convicts Maxwell of intercourse trafficking and different crimes.

June 28, 2022: Maxwell is sentenced to twenty years in jail.

January, 2024: Public curiosity within the Epstein case surges once more after a choose makes extra courtroom information public in a associated lawsuit.

A brand new president and a recent political disaster

Jan. 20, 2025: Trump, who was pals and neighbors with Epstein for years, turns into president once more. Throughout his 2024 marketing campaign, he had advised that he’d search to open extra authorities recordsdata on Epstein.

February 2025: Legal professional Common Pam Bondi suggests in a Fox Information Channel interview that an Epstein “shopper record” is sitting on her desk. The Justice Division distributes binders marked “declassified” to far-right influencers, however a lot of the data had lengthy been public.

April 25, 2025: Giuffre dies by suicide.

July 7, 2025: The Justice Division says Epstein didn’t preserve a “shopper record” and it received’t make any extra recordsdata associated to his intercourse trafficking investigation public.

July 15, 2025: Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduce the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act, which might drive the Justice Division to make its investigative recordsdata on Epstein public.

July 17, 2025: The Wall Road Journal describes a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s identify and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday. Trump denies writing the letter and sues the newspaper.

July 24-25, 2025: In an effort to place a political disaster to relaxation, Deputy Legal professional Common Todd Blanche interviews Maxwell. She denies wrongdoing and says she by no means noticed Trump concerned in any sexually inappropriate exercise. Afterward, she is moved from a low-security jail in Florida to a minimum-security jail camp in Texas.

A prince loses his royal title

Oct. 21, 2025: Giuffre’s posthumous memoir is printed. In it, she revisits her claims that Epstein and Maxwell sexually trafficked her to highly effective males, together with Mountbatten-Windsor.

Oct. 30, 2025: King Charles III strips Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining titles, which means he can now not be known as “prince,” and evicts him from his royal residence.

Nov. 12, 2025: A Home committee releases a trove of electronic mail correspondence between Epstein and others, together with Mountbatten-Windsor, Trump ally Steve Bannon, ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. In a single 2019 electronic mail to a journalist, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew in regards to the women” however didn’t clarify what he meant by that.

Nov. 14, 2025: At Trump’s urging, Bondi proclaims that the U.S. legal professional in Manhattan will examine Epstein’s ties to among the Republican president’s political foes, together with former President Invoice Clinton, a Democrat; Summers; and Hoffman, a outstanding Democratic donor. None of these males has been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s accusers.

Nov. 18, 2025: Congress passes the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act. Trump indicators it into regulation the following day.

Dec. 19, 2025: The Justice Division begins releasing information. The batch consists of snapshots that Epstein saved in his residence of assorted well-known folks he met over time, together with Trump and Clinton. After releasing only a sliver of the accessible paperwork, although, the Justice Division halts disclosures, saying it wants extra time to evaluate the information.

Jan. 30, 2025.: The Justice Division begins releasing what Blanche says are greater than 3 million pages of paperwork, 2,000 movies and 180,000 photographs. The recordsdata are posted to the division’s web site.

Observe the AP’s protection of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.