Jeffrey Epstein had no “client list”, the US Justice Department says, adding no more files related to the wealthy financier’s sex-trafficking investigation will be made public.
The acknowledgement comes despite promises from Attorney General Pam Bondi that raised the expectations of conservative influencers and conspiracy theorists.
The acknowledgement that the well-connected Epstein had no list of clients to whom underage girls were trafficked represents a public walk-back of a theory the Trump administration has helped promote. Earlier in 2025, Bondi told Fox News that such a document was “sitting on my desk” for review.
Even as it released video from inside a New York jail meant to definitively prove that Epstein took his own life, the department also said in a memo it was refusing to disclose other evidence.
Bondi had for weeks had suggested more material was going to be revealed – “It’s a new administration and everything is going to come out to the public,” she said at one point – after a first document dump she had hyped angered President Donald Trump’s base by failing to deliver revelations.
That episode, in which far-right influencers were invited to the White House in February and provided with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain, has spurred conservative internet personalities to sharply criticise Bondi.
After the first release fell flat, Bondi said officials were poring over a “truckload” of previously withheld evidence she said had been handed over by the FBI.
In a March TV interview, she claimed the Biden administration “sat on these documents, no one did anything with them”.
“Sadly these people don’t believe in transparency, but I think more unfortunately, I think a lot of them don’t believe in honesty,” she said.
But after a months-long review of evidence in the government’s possession, the US Justice Department determined that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted”, the memo released on Monday (local time) said.
It noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and “only a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial”.
“One of our highest priorities is combating child exploitation and bringing justice to victims,” the memo said. “Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends.”
The two-page memo bore the logos of the Justice Department and the FBI but was not signed by any individual official.
Conservatives who have sought proof of a government cover-up of Epstein’s activities and death expressed outrage on Monday.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk posted to social media photos of a clown applying makeup, appearing to mock Bondi for saying the client list doesn’t exist after her earlier comments.
It follows Musk’s incendiary tweet amid his feud with Trump in June, when he said it was time to drop “the really big bomb.”
“[Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” Musk wrote on X at the time.
“Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out,” he followed up minutes later.
Trump has repeatedly denied any connection with Epstein.
“I was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island. Strong Laws ought to be developed against A.I. It will be a big and very dangerous problem in the future!” he wrote on social media last year.
The client list hubbub began when Bondi was asked in a Fox News interview whether the department would release such a document.
“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” she said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said Monday that Bondi was referring to the overall Epstein case files.
Among the evidence that the Justice Department said it has, and will not release, are images of Epstein, “images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors”, and more than 10,000 “downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography”.
The memo does not explain when or where the videos were located, who and what they depict and whether they were newly found as investigators scoured their collection of evidence or were known for some time to have been in the government’s possession.
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-with AAP
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