In a recent interview with CNN, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that no new criminal charges are likely to come from the latest release of files from the notorious financier and sex criminal, Jeffrey Epstein.
As of last week, the U.S. Department of Justice has released more than three million pages related to the Epstein investigations, including hundreds of thousands of images and videos.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges and died in prison a month later by apparent suicide.
Since his death, many have speculated that he was running a child sex trafficking ring for the rich and powerful.
According to Blanche, Epstein and his known accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, are the only people who have been arrested.
“The Department of Justice said that we had reviewed the files, the quote ‘Epstein files,’ and there was nothing in there that allowed us to prosecute anybody,” Blanche told the American news cable network.
And yet, recently released federal documents seem to hint otherwise.
Evidence of an ongoing investigation?
As recently as 2019, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating prominent figures mentioned in the Epstein files.
Emails from the FBI’s New York office list primary and secondary suspected co-conspirators.
This list includes Maxwell, who has been arrested and sentenced for child sex trafficking, as well as someone identified as Epstein’s personal assistant.
One of the redacted names on the list had cooperated with the FBI and provided information about the personal assistant.
Several of the co-conspirators on this FBI list had been served subpoenas.
An FBI internal slide deck from 2025 lists details of the claims levied against various high-profile suspected clients.
It sums up allegations against prominent figures such as U.S. President Donald Trump, former Hollywood director Harvey Weinstein, and former U.K. Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Before Blanche was made Deputy Attorney General, he was President Trump’s personal attorney. Trump’s name is found in more than 1,400 of the files released by the DOJ.
Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles by King Charles over his involvement with Epstein and Maxwell.
Shortly after the file release, he was arrested by British police and held on suspicion of misconduct in public life.
These records of allegations from Epstein’s victims were reportedly shown to FBI director Kash Patel in August, according to the Miami Herald.
One month later, Patel testified before Congress that there was no evidence with which to prosecute anyone other than Epstein.
“There is no credible information, none,” said Patel. “If there were, I would bring the case yesterday, that he trafficked to other individuals.”
Despite Blanche and Patel’s claims, there is documented evidence that the FBI attempted to open investigations into people mentioned in the Epstein Files.
The U.S. House of Representatives has also subpoenaed multiple high-profile figures, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, to testify in their ongoing investigation into the “horrific crimes perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein.”
Where are the arrests?
Based on victim testimony and unredacted emails in the files, it appears that individuals were under investigation and that subpoenas were issued to those under suspicion.
So why haven’t these investigations gone anywhere?
Some legal observers say the allegations raised in the files against anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell aren’t concrete enough to spark a prosecution.
“The issue is that the Epstein files, they’re hearsay. They’re not admissible in court,” former U.S. federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told CBC News last month. “Cases aren’t built on documents. They’re built on witness testimony.”
But when it comes to Epstein and his alleged associates, there’s plenty of witness testimony to go around.
Dozens of victims have taken the stand in court against Epstein as part of the 20-plus lawsuits against him, accusing him of sex trafficking and naming the people they allege he trafficked them to.
The FBI slide deck includes details from victim confessions, as well as an entire slide on the victims that has been censored, presumably to protect their identities.
Yet the FBI later decided there wasn’t enough evidence to bring federal charges against the other abusers mentioned by Epstein’s victims.
“Approximately 4-5 victims accused other adult men sexually abused them,” an FBI agent states in an email summary of the investigation last year. “There was not enough evidence to federally charge these individuals, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement.”
Blanche’s claim that no one in the latest batch of files can be prosecuted seems to be backed by the FBI.
However, it’s difficult to take Blanche and Patel’s claims at face value when both men are deeply tied to Trump, whom Epstein himself described as the real estate developer-turned-politician as his “closest friend.”
Before Blanche was deputy attorney general, he was Trump’s personal attorney. NPR reports that Blanche is friends with David Oscar Markus and has appeared twice as a guest on Markus’ podcast.
Markus served as Maxwell’s defence lawyer during her trial for facilitating Epstein’s sex crimes. Maxwell, Epstein’s long-time co-conspirator, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022.
Patel, a former defence lawyer and federal prosecutor, was hired as a national security aide for Trump after authoring the Nunes memo, which accuses federal officials of bias against Trump.
Coinciding with his nomination as Director of the FBI by Trump, Patel was awarded more than $800,000 in shares of Trump Media and Technology Group. TMTG is the parent company of Truth Social, Trump’s social media site.
Are more charges coming or not?
So while Blanche and Patel might be technically correct in saying the most recent release of files might not lead to any investigations, that might be less due to a lack of evidence and more due to the connections both men have to one of the most named individuals in the Epstein files.
The DOJ recently admitted to removing almost 50,000 files from their online database “for review,” including some related to the allegations against Trump.
Critics, however, contend Trump and his justice officials are stonewalling any meaningful investigation with their “political diversion” while pumping out “narratives that discredit and isolate survivors.”