NEW YORK (AP) — The FBI has scrutinized Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. They searched their houses. He spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most powerful people.
But while investigators gathered ample evidence that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found little evidence that the well-connected financier ran a sex-trafficking ring that catered to powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows.
Videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands do not show victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in a 2025 memo.
A review of Epstein’s financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no link to criminal activity, another 2019 internal memo said.
While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he “loaned” her to his wealthy friends, agents could not confirm that and found no other victims to tell a similar story, records say.
Summarizing the investigation in an email last July, agents said “four or five” of Epstein’s accusers had alleged that other men or women had sexually abused them. 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 confidential, that the Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and those records may contain evidence overlooked by investigators.
But the documents, which include police reports, FBI interview notes and emails from prosecutors, provide the clearest picture yet of the investigation — and why U.S. authorities 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 molested at the millionaire’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Police would identify at least 35 girls with similar stories: Epstein paid high school students $200 or $300 to give him sexualized massages.
After the FBI joined the investigation, federal prosecutors drafted indictments to charge Epstein and some personal assistants who had arranged the girls’ visits and payments. But instead, then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta struck a deal in which Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Sentenced to 18 months in prison, Epstein was free until mid-2009.
In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal prompted federal prosecutors in New York to take a fresh look at the charges.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019. A month later, he committed suicide in his jail cell.
A year later, prosecutors charged Epstein’s longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, saying she recruited several of his victims and sometimes joined in the sexual abuse. Sentenced in 2021, Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors are unable to find evidence to support most of the sensational claims
Prosecution memos, case summaries and other documents made public in the department’s latest release of records related to Epstein show that FBI agents and federal prosecutors have been diligently pursuing potential co-conspirators. Even seemingly strange and incomprehensible statements were examined, called to receive information lines.
Some allegations could not be verified, investigators wrote.
In 2011 and again in 2019, investigators interviewed Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who in lawsuits and news interviews had accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with numerous men, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew.
Investigators said they confirmed Giuffre was sexually abused by Epstein. But other parts of her story were problematic.
Two other Epstein victims whom Giuffre claimed were also “loaned” to powerful men told investigators they had no such experience, prosecutors wrote in a 2019 internal memo.
“No other victim described being specifically directed by Maxwell or Epstein to engage in sexual activity with other men,” the memo said.
Giuffre has admitted to writing a partially fictional memoir of her time with Epstein that contains descriptions of things that did not happen. She also gave shifting accounts in interviews with investigators, they wrote, and “engaged in a continuous stream of public interviews about her allegations, many of which included sensationalized, if not proven inaccurate, characterizations of her experiences.” Those inaccuracies include false accounts of her interactions with the FBI, they said.
However, 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 had accused him of sexual misconduct.
In a memo released after she killed herself last year, Giuffre wrote that prosecutors told her they didn’t include her in the case against Maxwell because they didn’t want her accusations to distract the jury. She insisted that her accounts of trafficking in elite men were true.
Prosecutors say the photos and videos do not implicate others
Investigators seized a trove of videos and photos from Epstein’s electronic devices and homes in New York, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They found CDs, paper photographs and at least one videotape containing nude images of women, some of whom appeared to be minors. One device contained between 15 and 20 images depicting commercial child sexual abuse material — images that investigators said Epstein obtained on the Internet.
None of the videos or photos showed Epstein’s victims being sexually abused, none showed men with naked women, and none contained evidence implicating anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey wrote in an email to FBI officials last year.
If there had been, the government “would have pursued any possibilities they generated,” Comey wrote. “However, we have not found any such video.”
Investigators poring over Epstein’s bank records found payments to more than 25 women who appeared to be models — but no evidence that he was involved in prostitution of women with other men, prosecutors wrote.
Close associates of Epstein remain uncharged
In 2019, prosecutors considered charging one of Epstein’s longtime aides, but decided against it.
Prosecutors concluded that while the nurse was involved in helping Epstein pay the girls for sex and may have been aware that some were underage, she herself was a victim of his sexual abuse and manipulation.
Investigators have been looking into 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 a rape charge in France.
Prosecutors were also weighing whether to charge one of Epstein’s girlfriends who participated in sexual acts with some of his victims. Investigators interviewed the girlfriend, who was between 18 and 20 years old at the time, “but it was determined there was insufficient evidence,” according to a summary given to FBI Director Kash Patel last July.
Days before Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, the FBI developed a strategy of 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 lawyers told investigators that neither he nor his wife had knowledge of Epstein’s sexual misconduct. Epstein had managed Wexner’s finances, but the couple’s lawyers said they terminated him in 2007 after learning he had stolen from them.
“There is limited evidence of his involvement,” an FBI agent wrote of Wexner in an Aug. 16, 2019, email.
In a statement to the AP, a legal representative for Wexner said prosecutors have informed him that he is “neither a conspirator nor a target in any way” and that Wexner has cooperated with investigators.
Prosecutors also examined accounts from women who said they gave massages at Epstein’s home to guests who tried to have sex. A woman accused private equity investor Leon Black of initiating sexual contact during a massage in 2011 or 2012, prompting her to leave 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 had not engaged in any wrongdoing 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” is “sitting on my desk right now.” A few months later, she claimed the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein “with children or child pornography.”
But FBI agents wrote to their superiors saying the client list did not exist.
On Dec. 30, 2024, about three weeks before President Joe Biden left office, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate contacted subordinates to ask “whether our investigation so far indicates the ‘client list,’ often referred to in the media, exists or not,” according to an email summarizing his question.
A day later, an FBI official responded that the caseworker had confirmed that there was no client list.
On February 19, 2025, two days before Bondi’s appearance on Fox News, an FBI supervisory special agent wrote: “While media coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein case refers to a ‘client list,’ investigators have located no such list during the course of the investigation.”
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Aaron Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
___ The AP is reviewing documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with reporters from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom work together to review files and share information about what’s in them. Each channel is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.