The latest Epstein files release.

I'm Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 15 minutes.

Your ICE questions, answered.

For the past few months, we’ve gotten tons of questions from readers about immigration enforcement: Can ICE really arrest U.S. citizens? What are my rights if a DHS agent approaches me? Do these agents need judicial warrants? Why, or why not? Tomorrow, we’re digging into all of it in a special Friday edition.

Quick hits.

1. The Supreme Court rejected a request from a group of California Republicans to block the state’s new congressional map drawn to add five additional Democratic seats. No justices publicly dissented from the ruling, which was delivered as a one-sentence order. (The ruling) 
2. A meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials on Iran’s nuclear program will take place on Friday in Oman after the U.S. threatened to cancel the discussions earlier this week. (The talks)
3. Ukrainian and Russian officials completed the first of two days of U.S.-brokered meetings in Abu Dhabi. Russian strikes on Ukraine are ongoing, though Ukrainian and U.S. officials called the talks productive. (The latest)
4. The Washington Post carried out large-scale layoffs, terminating approximately 30% of its employees, including over 300 journalists in its newsroom. The outlet’s executive editor, Matt Murray, said the Post had been losing money and not meeting readers’ demands, requiring an overhaul of its structure. (The layoffs)
5. Ryan Routh was sentenced to life in prison for attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump in Florida in 2024. (The sentence)

Today’s topic.

The latest Epstein files release. On Friday, the Justice Department published approximately three million pages of materials related to the government’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said this release concluded the department’s review of files related to Epstein, having released roughly 3.5 million pages in total. The release was mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law passed in November 2025 with near-unanimous Congressional approval. 

We covered the first batch of releases here. 

In a Friday press release, the DOJ said the new files were collected from Florida and New York cases against Epstein; a New York case against convicted sex offender and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell; New York cases investigating Epstein’s 2019 death in jail; and a Florida case investigating a former butler of Epstein, among other sources. The DOJ also said it excluded files that were duplicates, protected by attorney-client privilege, depicted violence, or were unrelated to investigations into Epstein or Maxwell. 

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), criticized the release as insufficient, saying the department has not met its legal obligations. Khanna contrasted the 3.5-million-page release to the DOJ’s statement that it reviewed over 6 million “potentially responsive” pages, saying, “This raises questions as to why the rest are being withheld.” 

President Donald Trump, who had a personal relationship with Epstein until the early 2000s but has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing, appears in some form in approximately 5,300 of the Epstein files, according to a New York Times review. Several mentions include accusations of wrongdoing against Trump shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but these claims are unverified and were “submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” according to a note by the Justice Department. Several other notable names appear in the latest release, including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, former President Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and prominent journalists and entertainment figures. As with Trump, none have been accused of criminal wrongdoing, though some of their correspondence with Epstein discusses salacious topics. 

After the Friday release, The Wall Street Journal reported that at least 43 of Epstein’s victims’ names were left unredacted in the files, with some full names appearing over 100 times. Separately, The New York Times found that dozens of unredacted nude photographs were published, many showing young women. Deputy Attorney General Blanche acknowledged that some names and photos should not have been published in full and said the DOJ would remove them if notified by a victim or their lawyer. 

Today, we’ll break down the latest Epstein files release, with views from the right and left. Then, Executive Editor Isaac Saul gives his take.

What the right is saying.

• Many on the right say the Epstein files will never be the smoking gun some hope them to be. 
• Some say the release raises significant privacy issues.
• Others bemoan that the files have become a political tool. 

The New York Post editorial board wrote about “the biggest ‘hidden secret’ exposed in the Epstein doc dump.”

“Nothing will ever satisfy the fever-brained conspiracy obsessives; they’ll be ‘murder boarding’ out the ‘truth’ with their pushpins and yarn for decades — but ever more of us see that there’s no more there there,” the board said. “At this point, anyone pretending to root out the secret meaning of the Epstein files is a fool or a knave… Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) posts a complaint from a three-time psychiatric patient who says that in 1995, she witnessed a rape-and-murder torture ring run by Ghislaine Maxwell and attended by Epstein, Donald Trump and then-President Bill Clinton at Trump’s Rancho Palos Verdes golf course — though Trump didn’t even acquire the course until 2002.”

“The diehards will never give up: If the evidence they’re looking for still hasn’t shown up, then it’s been suppressed … or destroyed; cue fresh demands for the release of ALL the files — and the damning of anyone who questions it as ‘part of the cover-up,’” the board wrote. “Epstein was a pervert who engaged with minors for sex; the insistence that he was selling children to the global elite is just a theory that sounds great to people who enjoy imagining that’s how the world works — or to those who hope to somehow exploit the true believers.”

In The Free Press, Robby Soave asked, “Will we regret the release of the Epstein files?”

“It’s been just days since the majority of the files were released, and a vast campaign is already underway to embarrass, harass, or smear anyone tangentially associated with Epstein—a serial sexual predator—no matter how slight or incidental the connection,” Soave said. “Many sane and decent people rightly want sexual abusers held accountable, and understandably do not believe that justice was properly executed in the case of Epstein and his associates… For partisan political actors, however, it can’t be denied that one of the prime motivating factors here is digging up dirt.”

“Supporters of civil liberties and privacy on both the right and left ought to be more concerned about the federal government releasing investigative files that contain gossip, unverified information, and outright lies. The political nature of the Epstein files must be acknowledged,” Soave wrote. “Releasing the Epstein files, even if justifiable in this specific case, could set a dangerous precedent. Further, the potential to weaponize the disclosure system against disfavored enemies of the party in power is clear: Remember when Democrats released Trump’s tax returns?”

In USA Today, Nicole Russell criticized those “trying to score political points after each document dump.”

“Democrats want to know if President Donald Trump is implicated. As a conservative, I also want to know this. Others want to know the extent to which Democrats like former President Bill Clinton appear in the trove of Epstein emails and other related documents. I’d like to know the answers to this, too,” Russell said. “But as a mom of daughters, I worry that everyone is more concerned about which Epstein email can be used as a tool to bludgeon their political enemy with, rather than how and when Epstein’s many victims can finally receive relief and peace.”

“These released files do not yet definitively show if Trump, Clinton, Musk or anyone else participated in illegal activity. More and more, Epstein seems like a bizarre man and a very unreliable narrator. I reject the notion that everyone in these files is guilty by association. But the scope of that association can’t be ignored,” Russell wrote. “I think this is a scourge on our society. Yet we continue to focus on Epstein's files, because he had access to our country's most famous politicians and businesspeople. Lost in the partisan chaos are the girls Epstein destroyed.”

What the left is saying.

• The left says the DOJ has not fulfilled its duty to release all the files.
• Some criticize the government’s handling of the release. 
• Others say Trump’s ability to shake off scandal is waning. 

In The Guardian, Moira Donegan wrote “don’t be fooled. Millions of files are still unreleased.”

“It is unlikely that the new material will quell the public’s interest in the case, or mitigate their sense that Epstein and his impunity represent a paradigmatic example of the ruling elite’s personal corruption,” Donegan said. “Already, the newly released documents further underscore the extent to which Epstein was integrated into the social life of some of the worlds’ most powerful people, even after he was initially convicted of charges relating to child sexual abuse in 2008. Among other things, the emails show that in 2012, the businessperson Howard Lutnick — now Trump’s commerce secretary — appears to have visited Epstein’s private Island with his wife and children.”

“The Trump administration worked hard throughout 2025 to avoid the release of the Epstein files; once the groundswell of public pressure to publish them became too great for congress to resist, they have worked to minimize the public’s sense that the documents reveal anything particularly damning, at least for the president and his allies,” Donegan wrote. “But the administration cannot contain the Epstein story because by its nature, the scandal reveals the untrustworthiness and mendacity of the very elites that Trump and his movement now represent.” 

In The New York Times, Molly Jong-Fast called the DOJ’s handling of the release “a betrayal of the victims.”

“What a lot of us wanted for these victims was some accountability. We wanted them to know that they had spent Democratic and Republican administrations having the federal government ignore their pleas. And these women just wanted to know that they were going to find some accountability, that these powerful men were not going to get away with it,” Jong-Fast said. “[The files] looked like they hadn’t been looked through. We saw things that weren’t redacted that should have been. We see powerful men redacted. We see victims victimized again with their pictures and videos plastered on the internet.”

“What should have happened is that the Trump D.O.J. — and the Biden D.O.J. before it — should have written a report, had a special master, had hearings, explained what was in those files and what should have weight and what shouldn’t and then gone from there. But instead, what happened was Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna had to force this D.O.J. to release these files,” Jong-Fast wrote. “There’s still time to have hearings. The Epstein files should be the beginning of an investigation and not the end of the Epstein story.”

In MS NOW, Ryan Teague Beckwith said “Trump’s latest argument on the Epstein files was predictable.”

“On Saturday, Trump was asked about the latest release of files. ‘I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left,’ he said,” Beckwith wrote. “Reader, he was not absolved. According to a New York Times review of the millions of documents using a proprietary search tool, more than 5,300 files contain more than 38,000 references to ‘Trump, his wife, his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and other related words and phrases.’ Previous releases included a separate 130 files with Trump-related references.”

“For controversies such as the Russia investigation or even Trump’s first impeachment, the personal stakes were low for most voters. But the more serious Trump’s problems become — whether that’s inflation, immigration agents pepper-spraying or shooting bystanders, attacks on voting or the president’s history of palling around with a sex trafficker — the more likely it is that the average voter stops filtering out arguments on autopilot and starts to truly listen,” Beckwith said. “Trump will keep using these tricks, but the magic is wearing off.”

My take.

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• New releases will never dispel the many conspiracy theories about Epstein.
• These files don’t make anyone look good, but they don’t demonstrate widespread criminality either.
• I worry that each new Epstein release takes us further from justice and closer to mob rule. 

Executive Editor Isaac Saul: Public anger over Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and his enablement by those closest to him has not abated, which is good. The crimes are horrific, and his enablers (and co-conspirators, if there are more we don’t know about) should face consequences. The push to learn more about how his vast, horrendous abuses took place over decades has reasonably turned into demands for more and more information. But the pursuit of justice can easily turn into mob rule, and with every Department of Justice release, we seem to be getting closer to the latter.

Today is the fifth Epstein files release or Epstein-related edition we’ve published since July. As expected, the emails show that many of our society’s most elite figures were willing to look the other way to maintain their relationships with Epstein. From Bill Gates to Noam Chomsky, wealthy and well-connected people continued to curry Epstein’s favor, spend time with him, and seek out his advice well after his offenses had come to light. 

After scouring the files myself and reading all the various news articles, I’m just left feeling despondent. Not only did this file dump complicate the lives of so many people (innocent and unsavory alike), and not only did it fail to dissuade the insatiable conspiracy mongering, but it also inadvertently named the Epstein victims we are supposed to be fighting for and included unredacted nude photos of women and possibly teenagers.

At the same time, millions of new documents and thousands of explored rabbit holes have produced no new evidence of an elite pedophilic sex ring — no smoking gun, no legitimate leads, no real vindication of the thing many people have been screaming from the rooftops for years. This leaves a lot of people grasping at straws with every new drip of evidence, often going after individuals who only have a passing association with Epstein.

Take Nellie Bowles, for example. Bowles is the wife of Free Press founder and recently anointed head of CBS News Bari Weiss. Like Weiss, Bowles is a former New York Times reporter. Given Weiss’s meteoric rise and her controversial status among many on the left — and Bowles’s public-facing work as a writer — they are both natural targets for public criticism. The latest file dump provided an opening when it revealed an email exchange in which Bowles tried to set up a meeting with Epstein. 

The exchange was about as innocuous as it could be. Bowles took a friendly tone in the thread, and afterwards turned the meeting into two separate stories for The New York Times. No criminality. No wrongdoing. Nothing really interesting at all, aside from a look at how some journalists approach a potential source even when that person is a Bad Guy. Yet The Daily Beast ran with the headline that the “MAGA-curious” wife of Bari Weiss was “busted ingratiating herself with Epstein.” A Columbia Journalism professor impugned Bowles’s character further, claiming she “got along well” with Epstein and met up with him “just for fun.”

This is a smear that Bowles doesn’t really need me to defend her from — she gave a rip-roaring retelling of her meeting with Epstein and a reminder to hack journalists (and professors) that, yes, sometimes journalism requires being nice to bad people. 

Another good example is Glenn Dubin, a hedge fund manager. One of the files released last week contains a picture of Dubin with his arms around his children on a couch. The DOJ redacted his kids’ faces, making Dubin seem to be in an intimate position with anonymous minors. Social media posts with the image went viral; one account depicted it as Dubin “fondling and making out with what appears to be children on Jeffrey Epstein’s Island.” This one post has hundreds of thousands of views. That description doesn’t even match what the photo shows, and of course, once you know it’s his children, the image becomes completely benign. 

How many people who saw the initial posts about Bowles and Dubin will never see the responses? How many will go on believing Dubin is a pedophile roaming free in society? 

Less sympathetic characters are also getting their moment in the cannon. Take Peter Attia, the health guru (and CBS News contributor) who apparently advised Epstein for many years and also used Epstein’s considerable connections in elite circles to advance his career. In some exchanges with Epstein, Attia makes crude, crass, offensive comments about women and sex. In some exchanges as recent as 2016, he even tells Epstein’s assistant he wants to visit the island (though there is no indication he ever does). They are cringe-worthy to read, and they reflect poorly on his character. He is rightly ashamed and embarrassed; he may even lose his job at CBS.

I don’t mourn for Attia, a best-selling author who is likely making millions of dollars a year selling “longevity practices” that sound, frankly, a bit like quack medicine. I don’t even think it’s a disproportionate response if he loses his job and fans for being friendly with a sex offender. At the same time, I can’t say I feel totally comfortable with this treatment, either. I don’t think hundreds of his private communications with a dead criminal should be sprayed across the internet, years after they took place, with zero goal or purpose aimed at bringing justice to any victims. It’s cathartic for a moment, yes. But after the initial rush of seeing someone like him “get what they deserve,” it still doesn’t feel like real justice — more like digital vigilantism.

I even have questions about the treatment of the truly inexcusable and worst-looking people here, like Bill Gates. In a batch of emails Epstein sent to himself, he seems to be noting for the record that Gates had engaged in extramarital sex, and that Epstein had helped get him drugs to deal with “the consequences of sex with Russian girls.” He also noted — again, in emails to himself — that Gates had requested he delete emails about a sexually transmitted disease and wanted antibiotics to give to his then wife Melinda.

Melinda’s response to this story is powerful. Her incredible sadness (as she puts it) is palpable, and she gives a poignant reminder of the impacts Epstein’s influence had on real people — even second- or third-hand. But, again… something is just odd here, isn’t it? The public is taking emails Epstein sent to himself with accusations about Gates as fact; but why would Epstein send himself such emails or leave a record like this, and why should we believe that everything in the emails was written in good faith or truthful?

Worse yet, the file release doesn’t dispel any of the broadest and least believable conspiracy theories. For example, the latest files contained a video Epstein recorded of a conversation he was having with then-Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. It is a remarkable, fascinating clip where Barak is seeking advice from Epstein about how to live a profitable life in the private sector once he leaves office. It’s all very slimy, but it also adds the predictable and obvious context for Epstein and Barak’s relationship: Far from being a Mossad spy, Epstein was just a wealthy, well connected guy who advised people like Barak on something like how to get rich in exchange for more connections and social status.

Is this really how we want this to go? Everyone who ever exchanged an email with Epstein is now “in the files” — time, context, and facts be damned? Even if you didn’t email him, if Epstein emailed himself and talked about you, his statements are true and your guilt is obvious? This kind of character assassination was always a risk of bringing more and more of Epstein’s workings to light, but the velocity and breadth of it has me genuinely unsure if the “err towards transparency” principle is right in all cases.

It’s all a mess, and it feels like we have little left to responsibly learn from it. Now, with Bill and Hillary Clinton set to testify publicly, and Democrats and Republicans gearing up to smear each other with whatever evidence they can, I fear we’re just at the tip of the irresponsibility iceberg. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Is it possible to explore the Russia tanker thing? The internets are saying the seizure of the Russia ship is an act of war. Is that right? 

— Merrian from Philadelphia, PA

Tangle: This story is a bit complicated. On January 7, after the United States captured and arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. also captured the Bella-1, a Russia-flagged tanker, after a pursuit beginning in the Caribbean Sea. In a vacuum, this seems like an aggressive act that could lead to war. But important context is missing from that read.

First, the U.S. and several other countries have sanctioned Russia for its aggression in Ukraine since 2014, well before Putin’s all-out invasion. Those sanctions include limitations on the sale of Russian oil and have always included the threat of enforcement. However, years of caution led to a delicate dance whereby Russia would use a “shadow fleet” of unflagged tankers — usually older vessels that travel without insurance provided by reputable companies in the global financial system — to get around sanctions as the West looked the other way to avoid a major escalation.

Second, to take advantage of this state of play, some oil traders sail under a Russian flag to allow for illicit trading, knowing that the U.S. and other naval powers wouldn’t stop them for fear of starting a crisis. In fact, The Bella-1, which briefly changed its name to the Marinera, was a stateless vessel that had only recently started flying the Russian flag. Also in January, the U.S. captured the M/T Sophia, which was not Russia-flagged but was part of what U.S. Southern Command called “a stateless, sanctioned dark fleet.”

Bluntly, the boarding and seizing of these tankers are not acts of war — they’re acts of enforcement against either Russia’s shadow fleet or fraudulent stateless vessels. And it’s not just the U.S. enforcing these sanctions and maritime laws, either. In late January, 14 European nations, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany, warned they could start intercepting shadow fleet vessels, and France has already seized one in the Western Mediterranean.

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Under the radar.

On Saturday, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation served a search warrant at a house in Las Vegas, Nevada, and recovered evidence of an alleged illegal biological lab. Officials said the house is registered to a Chinese national who is connected to an investigation into another illegal biolab in California. More than 1,000 samples were collected from the Las Vegas house, and the house’s property manager was also arrested and charged with illegally disposing of and discharging hazardous waste. The FBI is testing the recovered samples, but officials said there is no ongoing threat to the public. Fox News has the story.

Numbers.

• 500. The approximate number of attorneys and reviewers from the Department of Justice who contributed to the review and release of the Epstein files. 
• 2,000. The approximate number of videos published in Friday’s release. 
• 180,000. The approximate number of images published in Friday’s release. 
• 6 million. The approximate number of Epstein-related pages reviewed by the Justice Department, according to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. 
• 3.5 million. The approximate number of pages released so far. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we published a special edition rounding up stories we hadn’t covered.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the wave of resignations from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.
• Nothing to do with politics: It’s Tinder — for books?
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,916 readers responded to our survey on funding the Department of Homeland Security with 34% thinking a funding deal will come well after the deadline. “For the politicians we have now it is always what’s best for their party and not what’s best for the country,” one respondent said. “I didn’t think Tangle had become a prediction market! This is a ridiculous survey question,” said another.

Have a nice day.

A rare drawing of a lioness by the 17th-century artist Rembrandt van Rijn has added to the Dutch master’s legacy in a surprising way. The picture, titled “Young Lion Resting,” is expected to sell at auction for $20 million — and the proceeds from the sale will benefit the global wild cat conservation group Panthera. The auction is timed to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the nonprofit, which was founded by art collector and philanthropist Thomas Kaplan. Nice News has the story.