By MICHAEL R. SISAK, DAVID B. CARUSO and LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — The FBI has pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. He searched their homes. He spent years interviewing his victims and examining their connections to some of the most influential people in the world.
But while investigators collected extensive evidence that the mogul sexually abused minors, they found little evidence that he led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, according to a review of internal Justice Department records by The Associated Press.
Videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands did not show victims suffering abuse or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in a 2025 memo.
An examination of Epstein’s financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no links to criminal activity, according to another internal memo from 2019.
Although one of Epstein’s victims made widely publicized claims that he “loaned her out” to his wealthy friends, agents were unable to confirm this nor did they find any other victims who told a similar story, records show.
In a summary of the investigation sent in an email in July, agents said “four or five” Epstein accusers claimed they had been sexually abused by other men or women. However, they noted that “there was not enough evidence to federally charge these individuals, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement.”
The AP and other media organizations continue to review millions of pages of documentsmany of which were confidential, disclosed by the Department of Justice under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and those records may have contained evidence that investigators may have overlooked.
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 additional charges.
Dozens of victims come to light
The investigation into Epstein 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 paid high school students $200 or $300 to give him sexualized massages.
When the FBI joined the investigation, federal prosecutors drafted indictments charging Epstein and some personal assistants who had arranged the visits and payments to the girls. But instead, then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta reached a deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor. Sentenced to 18 months in prison, the tycoon was released in mid-2009.
In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal led federal prosecutors in New York to review the allegations.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019. A month later, he committed suicide in his cell.
A year later, prosecutors charged Epstein’s longtime confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, saying she had recruited several of his victims and sometimes participated in sexual abuse. Sentenced in 2021, Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors find no evidence to support the most sensational claims
Prosecutors’ 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 investigated potential accomplices. Even seemingly outlandish and incomprehensible statements, embedded in lines of information, were examined.
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 sexual encounters with numerous men, including, former British Prince Andrew.
According to her own statements, investigators confirmed that Giuffre had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein. But other parts of his story were problematic.
Two other Epstein victims who Giuffre said were also “loaned” to powerful men told investigators they had no such experience, prosecutors wrote in a 2019 internal memo.
“No other victims have described receiving express orders from Maxwell or Epstein to engage in sexual activity with other men,” the memo reads.
Giuffre acknowledged writing a partially fictional account of her time with Epstein that contained descriptions of things that did not happen. He had also presented changing accounts in interviews with investigators, they wrote, and had “engaged in an ongoing series of public interviews about his allegations, many of which have included sensational, if not demonstrably inaccurate, characterizations of his experiences.” Embedded in those inaccuracies were false accounts of his interactions with the FBI, they said.
Still, federal prosecutors attempted to arrange an interview with Andrew, currently known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who refused to make himself available. Giuffre settled a lawsuit with the former prince in which she had accused him of sexual misconduct.
In a memoir published after her suicide last year, Giuffre wrote that prosecutors told her they did not include her in the case against Maxwell because they did not want her accusations to distract the jury. He insisted that her accounts that she was traded to elite men were true.
Prosecutors say photos and videos do not implicate others
Investigators seized a large amount of videos and photos from Epstein’s electronic devices and homes in New York, Florida and the US Virgin Islands. They found CDs, printed photographs and at least one videotape containing nude images of women, some of whom appeared to be minors. One device contained 15 to 20 images depicting commercial child sexual abuse material, images that investigators say Epstein obtained on the Internet.
None of the videos or photos showed Epstein’s victims being sexually abused, none showed men with any of the 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 such evidence had existed, the government “would have pursued any leads they generated,” Comey wrote. “However, we did not locate such videos.”
Investigators who examined Epstein’s bank records found payments to more than 25 women who appeared to be models, but found no evidence that he was involved in prostituting women with other men, prosecutors wrote.
Epstein’s close associates not charged
In 2019, prosecutors considered charging one of Epstein’s longtime assistants but decided against it.
Prosecutors concluded that although the assistant helped 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 examined the mogul’s relationship with French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who once ran an agency with Epstein in the United States and 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 also weighed whether to charge one of Epstein’s girlfriends who had engaged 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 that there was insufficient evidence,” according to a summary provided to FBI Director Kash Patel in July.
Days before Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, the FBI planned to send agents to serve grand jury subpoenas on people close to Epstein, including his pilots and a longtime business client, retail magnate Les Wexner.
Wexner’s lawyers told investigators that neither he nor his wife had any knowledge of Epstein’s sexual misconduct. The tycoon had managed Wexner’s finances, but the couple’s lawyers said they separated from him in 2007 after learning that he had stolen from them.
“There is limited evidence of 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 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 gave massages at Epstein’s home to guests who attempted to make the encounters sexual. A woman accused private equity investor Leon Black of initiating sexual contact 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 lawyer, Susan Estrich, said her client had paid Epstein for estate planning and tax advice. He said in a statement that Black did not engage in misconduct or have knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities. Lawsuits by two women who accused Black of sexual misconduct were dismissed or withdrawn. One is still pending.
There is no client list
US Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News in February 2025 that Epstein’s never-before-seen “client list” was “on my desk right now.” A few months later, he claimed that the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein “featuring children or child pornography.”
But FBI agents wrote to their superiors that the client list did not exist.
On Dec. 30, 2024, about three weeks before President Joe Biden left office, then-FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate reached out through subordinates to ask “whether our investigation to date indicates that the ‘client list,’ often mentioned in the media, exists or not,” according to an email summarizing his inquiry.
A day later, an FBI official responded that the case agent had confirmed that a client list did not exist.
On February 19, 2025, two days before Bondi’s appearance on Fox News, an FBI supervisory special agent wrote: “Although media coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein case references a ‘client list,’ investigators did not locate such a list during the course of the investigation.”
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Aaron Kessler contributed to this report from Washington.
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The AP reviews documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists in each newsroom work together to examine the files and share information about what they contain. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
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