For much of two decades, police, FBI agents and prosecutors investigated allegations that Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused underage girls. Now, the Justice Department has released much of what they found to the public.
The millions of documents comprise the most detailed look yet at the inner workings of the multiple investigations into Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.
Those documents include some of the earliest police reports taken by police in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as recordings of some of Epstein's victims speaking on the phone and to investigators. And it includes internal Justice Department emails from as recently as a few months ago.
Here is a timeline of the Epstein investigations and the efforts to open up the government’s files:
The investigation begins
March 2005: Palm Beach police begin investigating Epstein after the family of a 14-year-old girl reports she was molested at his mansion. Multiple underage girls, many of them high school students, would later tell police that Epstein hired them to give sexual massages.
May 2006: Police officials sign paperwork to charge Epstein with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor, but the county’s top prosecutor, State Attorney Barry Krischer, takes the unusual step of sending the case to a grand jury.
July 2006: Epstein is arrested after a grand jury indicts him on a count of soliciting prostitution. The relatively minor charge upsets Palm Beach police leaders, who publicly accuse Krischer of giving Epstein special treatment. The FBI begins an investigation.
2007: Federal prosecutors prepare an indictment, but for a year Epstein's lawyers engage in talks with the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, about a deal that would avoid federal prosecution. Epstein’s lawyers decry his accusers as unreliable.
Secret deal leads to a light jail term
June 2008: Epstein pleads guilty to state charges: one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. He is sentenced to 18 months in jail. Under a secret arrangement, the U.S. attorney’s office agrees not to prosecute Epstein for federal crimes. Epstein serves most of his sentence in a work-release program that allows him to leave jail during the day.
May 2009: One of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, files a lawsuit claiming Epstein and Maxwell arranged for her to have sexual encounters with “royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen” and others. The lawsuit doesn't name the men.
July 2009: Epstein is released from jail. For the next decade, Epstein’s accusers wage a legal fight to get his federal non-prosecution agreement voided.
News media and lawsuits keep public interest high
March 2, 2011: The Daily Mail publishes an interview with Giuffre in which she describes traveling with Epstein to London at age 17 and spending a night dancing with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Prince Andrew. The story and a photo of the prince with his arm around Giuffre creates a crisis for the royal family. FBI agents subsequently interview Giuffre.
Dec. 30, 2014: Giuffre's lawyers file court papers claiming she had sexual encounters with Mountbatten-Windsor and other men, including “foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” All those men deny the allegations.
November 2018: The Miami Herald revisits the handling of Epstein’s case in a series of stories focusing partly on the role of Acosta — who by this point is President Donald Trump’s labor secretary. The coverage intensifies public interest in Epstein.
New York prosecutors revive case
Dec. 6, 2018: FBI agents and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan begin a new investigation into Epstein.
July 6, 2019: Epstein is arrested on new sex trafficking charges brought by the prosecutors in New York, who have concluded they aren’t bound by the earlier non-prosecution agreement 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 charge Maxwell with sex crimes, saying she helped recruit and abuse Epstein's victims.
Dec. 30, 2021: After a monthlong trial, a jury convicts Maxwell of sex trafficking and other crimes.
June 28, 2022: Maxwell is sentenced to 20 years in prison.
January, 2024: Public interest in the Epstein case surges again after a judge makes more court records public in a related lawsuit.
A new president and a fresh political crisis
Jan. 20, 2025: Trump, who was friends and neighbors with Epstein for years, becomes president again. During his 2024 campaign, he had suggested that he’d seek to open more government files on Epstein.
February 2025: Attorney General Pam Bondi suggests in a Fox News Channel interview that an Epstein “client list” is sitting on her desk. The Justice Department distributes binders marked “declassified” to far-right influencers, but much of the information had long been public.
April 25, 2025: Giuffre dies by suicide.
July 7, 2025: The Justice Department says Epstein didn’t maintain a “client list” and it won’t make any more files related to his sex trafficking investigation public.
July 15, 2025: Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduce the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which would force the Justice Department to make its investigative files on Epstein public.
July 17, 2025: The Wall Street Journal describes a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump denies writing the letter and sues the newspaper.
July 24-25, 2025: In an effort to put a political crisis to rest, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviews Maxwell. She denies wrongdoing and says she never saw Trump involved in any sexually inappropriate activity. Afterward, she is moved from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.
Oct. 21, 2025: Giuffre’s posthumous memoir is published. In it, she revisits her claims that Epstein and Maxwell sexually trafficked her to powerful men, including Mountbatten-Windsor.
Oct. 30, 2025: King Charles III strips Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining titles, meaning he can no longer be referred to as “prince," and evicts him from his royal residence.
Nov. 12, 2025: A House committee releases a trove of email correspondence between Epstein and others, including Mountbatten-Windsor, Trump ally Steve Bannon, ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. In one 2019 email to a journalist, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls" but didn't explain what he meant by that.
Nov. 14, 2025: At Trump’s urging, Bondi announces that the U.S. attorney in Manhattan will investigate Epstein’s ties to some of the Republican president’s political foes, including former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat; Summers; and Hoffman, a prominent Democratic donor. None of those men has been accused of misconduct by Epstein's accusers.
Nov. 18, 2025: Congress passes the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Trump signs it into law the next day.
Dec. 19, 2025: The Justice Department begins releasing records. The batch includes snapshots that Epstein kept in his home of various famous people he met over the years, including Trump and Clinton. After releasing just a sliver of the available documents, though, the Justice Department halts disclosures, saying it needs more time to review the records.
Jan. 30, 2025.: The Justice Department begins releasing what Blanche says are more than 3 million pages of documents, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The files are posted to the department’s website.
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