Redacted Epstein files reveal photos of Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson and others with the convicted sex offender

The United States Department of Justice released a new tranche pictures on Friday from its investigations into the late convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein.

Since Donald Trump's re-election last year, the Epstein files have been Trump's biggest hurdle and his biggest political setback.

Although severely redacted, the newly-released files include photos of Epstein socializing with many prominent personalities like Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton Chris Tucker, Diana Ross and Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's convicted accomplice, features prominently in these files.

Many of the files released by the DOJ were heavily redacted with many of the text blacked out. This prompted many in the opposition to question and criticize the department.

 One of the redacted files, a 119-page document that appeared to contain grand jury testimony, was entirely blacked out. Three more documents of 100 pages each were totally redacted.

Some Democrats decried the Justice Department's failure to release all of the Epstein files by the deadline set by a law passed by Congress in November and signed by President Trump.

Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator, called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to appear before Congress and explain why all the files had not been released.

Another important facet of the documents was the featuring of Former President Bill Clinton.

There were several photos of Clinton, including one of him in a swimming pool with Maxwell and an unidentified person. Others showed Clinton ⁠in a hot tub, and another with a young woman sitting on the armrest of his seat with her arm draped around his shoulders, her face redacted. A fourth was a photo of a painting of Clinton in a blue dress hanging in Epstein's New York home.

The release of the Clinton photos could conflict with Justice Department policy not to release material related to ongoing investigations. Trump, a Republican, has ordered the Justice Department to ⁠investigate Clinton's ties to Epstein, in what critics said was an effort to shift the focus away from his own relationship with ⁠Epstein.

Clinton has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes when the two socialized and traveled together and has said he wishes he had never ‌met Epstein.

Reuters reported that the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress in a letter that the department had identified more than 1,200 victims of Epstein and their relatives during an “exhaustive review” of the documents.

One document was Epstein's masseuse list, which contained 254 names. All the names ‍were redacted.

Blanche said the documents released on Friday included FBI files from its 2018 and 2006 investigations of Epstein and its investigation of his 2019 death, among other materials.

The biggest takeaway from this cache of photos were the lack of files on Trump.

Friday's document dump ⁠of government files containing hundreds of thousands of pages was ‌therefore notable for the lack of mentions of Trump. The Justice Department said more documents will be released over the next two weeks.

There was a single photo of Epstein appearing to hold a check with Trump's name on it, and a separate photo taken inside Epstein's Manhattan townhouse where a copy of Trump's 1997 book, 'Trump: The Art of the Comeback', was tucked inside a bookshelf.

Trump's name appeared in flight manifests listing passengers on Epstein's private plane that ​were included in a first batch of material the Justice Department released in February.

In the coming days, both the DOJ and Trump will invite criticism for the partial release of Epstein files and the fact that they barely mention Trump while Clinton is featured prominently.