The FBI investigation into Jeffrey Epstein began in 2005 after the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported that she had been molested at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida home, according to the account laid out in internal Justice Department records reviewed by the Associated Press. Then-Miami U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta struck a deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution involving an underage girl, AP reported. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in jail and was free by mid-2009, the review said.
In 2018, the AP said, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea prompted federal prosecutors to take another look at the accusations. Epstein was later arrested in July 2019 and died by suicide a month later in his jail cell. Prosecutors subsequently charged Ghislaine Maxwell in 2020, saying she had recruited several of Epstein’s victims and sometimes joined in the sexual abuse; she was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison term, AP reported.
The AP review said that, while the internal documents describe investigators pursuing potential coconspirators, the record ultimately did not support a broader federal trafficking case. In a 2025 memo cited by the AP, a prosecutor wrote that videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands did not depict victims being abused and did not implicate anyone else. The AP reported that the prosecutor said the government had not located such videos, adding that had they existed, authorities would have pursued any leads they generated. The AP also said other seized materials included CDs, hard copy photographs and at least one videotape containing nude images of females.
Investigators also examined what the AP described as Epstein’s financial records, including payments to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy. A 2019 internal memo, as described by the AP, said investigators found no connection to criminal activity. The AP review also said prosecutors weighed charging some close associates—such as an assistant and business clients—but decided against it because of lack of evidence.
On allegations involving other men or women, the AP review said federal agents summarized in an email last July that “four or five” Epstein accusers claimed others had sexually abused them. But agents said there was “not enough evidence to federally charge these individuals,” according to the AP account of the internal records. The review said investigators interviewed Virginia Roberts Giuffre multiple times, including in 2011 and again in 2019, and that they confirmed she had been sexually abused by Epstein. It also said investigators wrote that other parts of her story were problematic, including her acknowledgement of writing a partly fictionalized memoir and providing shifting accounts in interviews.
The AP review further described interviews in which two other Epstein victims, whose stories Giuffre had claimed involved being “lent out” to powerful men, told investigators they had not experienced that. In addition, prosecutors wrote that investigators searched bank records and examined whether victims’ accounts or seized materials could support charges beyond Epstein, but they did not find evidence for broader prosecution, AP said.
The AP also reported on a dispute over whether authorities found an Epstein “client list.” The department’s internal records, as described by the AP, said FBI agents told superiors that such a list did not exist, including messages in late December 2024 and later February 2025. In the AP account, then-FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate asked through subordinates whether investigators to date indicated the existence of the “client list,” and an FBI official later replied that the case agent had confirmed no client list existed. Two days before Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Fox News appearance in February 2025, an FBI supervisory special agent wrote that investigators had not located such a list during the investigation, the AP review reported.
The AP said it and other media organizations are still reviewing millions of pages of Epstein-related documents released by the Justice Department under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. The AP said the review is ongoing and that it is possible the newly released records contain evidence investigators overlooked when closing the investigation without additional charges.