What You Will — and Received’t — Discover within the Epstein File Dump

Photograph: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg/Getty Photos

The doc’s official title didn’t precisely pop: “Communication From Kenneth W. Starr, Unbiased Counsel, Transmitting a Referral to the US Home of Representatives Filed in Conformity With the Necessities of Title 28, United States Code, Part 595(c).” However instantly upon its September 11, 1998, launch, it was universally rebranded The Starr Report and have become a runaway greatest vendor.

Publishers panic-rushed at the least 1.5 million copies to bookstores. (As a result of the report was a authorities doc, anyone might reprint and promote it with out having to pay for intellectual-property rights.) The Starr Report doubled first-day gross sales of Tom Clancy’s wildly common novel Rainbow Six — and it spurred a collateral spike in demand for Leaves of Grass, the Walt Whitman poetry e-book that President Invoice Clinton had given to his White Home intern, Monica Lewinsky.

Public curiosity in The Starr Report pushed the outer capability of the then-nascent web. The Chicago Tribune famous that whereas some official authorities web sites “just about seized up,” non-public business websites typically fared higher in “one of many greatest assessments but of the worldwide digital community.” The Wall Road Journal marked the event as each a political and technological landmark: “Starr Report Makes Historical past and Marks Net’s Emergence.” As Wired journal put it, “For the primary time, should you didn’t have the online, you have been lacking historical past.”

Anybody who’s close to my age will keep in mind the expertise. Obtain … error message. Obtain … crash. Obtain … nothing. After which, ultimately, obtain, and … holy shit.

It was all there, in lurid, bodice-ripping nuance: all the things in regards to the president’s relationship with Lewinsky — and excess of might ever be legally related. Sol Wisenberg, a senior prosecutor on Starr’s workforce, conceded to me in a 2025 interview that a few of the prurient element “could have been greater than we wanted.” Certainly.

In case you’re anticipating a equally revelatory second of transparency when the Jeffrey Epstein information develop into public subsequent week — one other collective “I keep in mind precisely the place I used to be”–sort expertise — then put together for disappointment.

Final month, Congress handed and the president signed the misleadingly titled Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act. (A extra correct title, as we’ll talk about in a second, could be the Epstein Recordsdata We’ll Produce No matter We Need Act. Not as catchy, admittedly.) The legislation handed after an prolonged show of shameless political hypocrisy by each events. Democrats careered from extended indifference to a sudden self-righteous campaign to launch the identical information they may have made public at any time from 2021 to early 2023 (after they managed the White Home, Senate, and Home) after which till January 2025 (after they nonetheless held the chief department, together with the DoJ).

Republicans, in the meantime, lurched mindlessly between extremes primarily based on shifting political vibes and the fickle whims of President Donald Trump. Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel rode into workplace filled with bluster about how they might blow the lid off the Epstein information for all to see. However after Bondi’s much-hyped February 2025 launch of “Part One” — a dud, composed nearly solely of supplies that have been already public — she slammed it into reverse in July 2025 with a memo decreeing “it’s the dedication of the Division of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no additional disclosure could be applicable or warranted.” After that conclusion spurred near-universal condemnation, Bondi reverted to playacting as a crusader for transparency.

In the meantime, Trump went from furiously lobbying congressional Republicans to stop launch of the information to disingenuously calling for full disclosure, as soon as he noticed that his suppressive effort was doomed. Home Republicans performed proper alongside. They initially refused almost unanimously to signal a discharge petition calling for launch of the information — however days later voted 216 to 1 for disclosure upon getting the inexperienced gentle from the boss. The Senate fell consistent with a completely unanimous vote.

The official White Home assertion upon Trump’s signing of the invoice claims that the brand new legislation “requires the Lawyer Basic to launch all paperwork and data in possession of the Division of Justice regarding Jeffrey Epstein, and for different functions.” However “all paperwork and data” isn’t even shut. In reality, the legislation accommodates two main exceptions that successfully enable the federal government to carry again regardless of the heck it needs.

First, the legislation permits the DoJ to withhold supplies that “would jeopardize an lively federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, supplied that such withholding is narrowly tailor-made and non permanent.” Take into account the timeline:

July 2025: Bondi and the FBI formally declare that, upon a full overview of all Epstein-related supplies, no proof exists “that would predicate an investigation in opposition to uncharged third events.” Case closed.

November 14, 2025, 10:35 a.m.: Trump posts on Fact Social, “I will probably be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Division of Justice, along with our nice patriots on the FBI, to research Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Invoice Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and lots of different folks and establishments… ”

November 14, 2025, 2:12 p.m.: Bondi replies publicly to Trump’s put up, “Thanks, Mr. President” (for what?) and notes that she has assigned the brand new investigations to the Southern District of New York. Case re-opened.

When requested to elucidate her reversal, Bondi stammered, “Data. That has come, uh, data. Umm. There’s data that, new data, extra data.” (This, of us, is the nation’s prime prosecutor.)

So now that the DoJ apparently has opened some new prison investigation into anyone or one thing, it is going to have the facility beneath the brand new legislation to withhold any Epstein-related paperwork that may contact on these probes. But we don’t know precisely who’s beneath investigation or how broadly these inquiries may span. Anybody exterior the DoJ subsequently will probably be primarily blind. We gained’t know what we gained’t know, and we’ll all simply need to take Bondi’s phrase for it.

However certainly the Justice Division — this Justice Division — isn’t investigating Trump himself. So any paperwork about his relationship with Epstein wouldn’t be lined by the criminal-investigations clause. And that brings us to the second exception: The legislation permits the Justice Division to withhold or redact any data that would compromise “nationwide protection or overseas coverage” or “the nationwide safety of the US.”

Effectively, one may moderately surprise, how might details about Trump and Epstein going club-hopping and female-ogling within the Nineteen Nineties presumably put the nation’s security in danger? The reply, once more, lies with Bondi alone. Couldn’t our servile lawyer normal conclude that any supplies that may embarrass the president — our commander-in-chief and chief overseas diplomat — might hurt his standing with different nations, thereby undermining our overseas coverage?

Roll your eyes if you’ll — I’m with you — however that call, once more, will probably be Bondi’s alone. And, once more, neither you nor I, and neither Congress nor the victims and anybody else in any place to object, will know what paperwork Bondi has chosen to withhold and why. All she wants is a hook, and the brand new legislation gives her with sufficient of these to do primarily no matter she needs.

We’ll see the Epstein information, or some portion of them, subsequent week. We will moderately count on to be taught new particulars about Epstein’s prison ring and about dangerous conduct by outstanding males. However the brand new legislation, by its broad exemptions, ensures that we gained’t get a very powerful solutions — particularly when Pam Bondi is the one who will get to determine.

Parts of this text in regards to the Starr Report are tailored from Honig’s new e-book, “When You Come on the King: Inside DOJ’s Pursuit of the President, from Nixon to Trump”