After years of investigating Jeffrey Epstein’s emails and bank records, the FBI found no evidence to suggest he ran a sex-trafficking ring he used to service his many powerful friends, an Associated Press report revealed.
There is ample evidence that Epstein himself sexually abused underage girls, an AP review of internal Justice Department records shows.
In one of the 2025 memos, prosecutors wrote that videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands did not capture victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes.
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A probe into his financial records, which included his payments to prominent figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, revealed no criminal activity, another 2019 report revealed.
There is only one victim who claimed that Epstein “loaned” her to his wealthy friends. But investigators have not been able to confirm that claim, and there is no other victim who has made a similar claim, according to records seen by the AP.
Dozens of victims arrive
Epstein’s investigation began in 2005 when the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported that she had been molested at his home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Police later identified at least 35 girls with similar stories: A sexual predator paid high school girls $200 or $300 to give him sexualized massages.
After the FBI joined the investigation, federal prosecutors filed an indictment to charge the millionaire and some of his assistants who arranged the girls’ visits as well as the payments. Instead, then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta struck a deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to a state charge of prostitution of an underage girl. He was initially sentenced to 18 months in prison and was released in mid-2009.
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In 2018, the Miami Herald published a series of stories about the plea deal, prompting New York federal prosecutors to take another look at the charges.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019. A month later, he killed himself in his prison cell.
A year later, Epstein’s longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell was indicted by prosecutors, who said she recruited a number of his victims and sometimes joined in the sexual abuse. Maxwell, sentenced in 2021, is serving 20 years in prison.
No client list
U.S. 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 that the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein “with children or child pornography.”
But FBI agents wrote to superiors that the client list did not exist, the AP reported.
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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’ that is frequently discussed in the media exists or does not exist,” according to an email summarizing his inquiry.
A day later, an FBI official responded that the case agent had confirmed that no client list existed.