Tangle - The latest Epstein files.

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

On Friday, the Justice Department (DOJ) released a trove of files related to the government’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including photographs, handwritten notes on his stationery, and evidence seized at his properties. The latest release is the most substantive disclosure of documents related to Epstein yet; however, lawmakers from both parties immediately raised concerns about significant redactions and omissions from this batch. Over the weekend, the DOJ releasedadditional documents and removed others from the government website. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!Need a last-minute gift?The holiday season is here, which is a good time to remind you: You can give the gift of Tangle to friends and family! There are two great options: Gift a Tangle subscription. Whether it’s an earnest present to a friend or family member who would love our work, or a passive-aggressive gift for your favorite relative who doesn’t share your politics, a Tangle subscription is a great way to find some common ground and keep your loved ones informed. It takes thirty seconds! Hit the merch shop. We have hoodies, shirts, mugs, stickers, hats, and even onesies for the little ones. Snag something fresh with our new logo or grab a vintage Tangle brain on any garment you’d like. You will want to hop on these quickly to make sure they arrive before the holidays!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: Do you think DOJ will release files that incriminate any of Epstein’s associates? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I am your host, Isaac Saul. It is Monday, December 22nd. I'm still congested. No idea how that's even physically possible,

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And with that, we're going to be covering the latest Epstein files release. I'm going to send it over to John for today's main show, and I'll be back from my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. I hope y'all had a wonderful weekend. Usually I use this time to ask a question on Mondays.

It's kind of been a bit of time since I've done that. I'm actually going to wait till tomorrow. We only have today's podcast and tomorrow before we take a break for the holidays. So I'm going to go ahead and get right into today's quick hits. First up, the U.S. is pursuing an oil tanker near Venezuela that it says is flying under a false flag and under a judicial seizure order. The attempted interdiction follows President Donald Trump's announcement of a blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers moving in and out of Venezuela. The U.S. has seized two ships so far. Number two, gunmen killed nine people and injured 10 others in a mass shooting at a bar near Johannesburg, South

Africa. A manhunt is underway for the suspects. Number three, over the weekend, the U.S. military conducted strikes against suspected Islamic State sites. Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth said the strikes were a direct response to the attack on U.S. forces that occurred on December 13th in Palmyra, Syria, killing two U.S. service members and a civilian U.S. interpreter. Number four, New York Governor Kathy Hookle signed a major artificial intelligence safety bill into law. The bill includes incident reporting requirements, creates financial penalties for violations, and establishes a new AI oversight office. The same provisions in California's recently passed AI safety law. At number five, shortly before it was scheduled to air,

CBS News pulled a 60-minute segment about the maximum security prison in El Salvador, where the Trump administration deported groups of unauthorized immigrants earlier this year. Correspondent Sharon Alfonzi accused CBS News editor-in-chief, Barri Weiss, of pulling the segment for political reasons. Weiss said the piece requires more work. New this morning, as a DOJ prepares to release more documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, The department is facing intense criticism over the slow pace of the rollout and the heavy redaction in the initial batch of files. The DOJ says it erred on the side of quote, over redaction to protect victims of Epstein.

Yesterday, the Justice Department republished a photo taken from Epstein's home that featured an image of President Trump. It was deleted Saturday, but reappeared Sunday with the DOJ saying it temporarily removed the picture to make sure it didn't show. show any victims. The heavy redactions and drip, drip of the documents release has angered the bipartisan lawmakers behind the Epstein files legislation. They're now threatening contempt proceedings against Attorney General Pam Bondi. On Friday, the Justice Department released a trove of files related to the government's investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including photographs, handwritten notes on his stationary, and evidence seized at his properties. The latest release is the most substantive disclosure of documents related.

related to Epstein yet. However, lawmakers from both parties immediately raised concerns about significant redactions and omissions from this batch. Over the weekend, the DOJ released additional documents and removed others from the government website. For context, the Senate passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November by unanimous consent immediately after a 427-1 vote in the House. President Donald Trump initially called on Republicans to oppose the bill, but later announced his support after the measure's passage appeared inevitable. He signed the bill into law on November 19th. The law requires the DOJ to publish all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ's possession that relate to

the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, though it allows the department to withhold information, such as personal information of victims and materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation. The deadline for the release was Friday. The release included several photos of former President Bill Clinton and other public figures, though none appear to show any of them engaged in illegal conduct. Other notable documents include transcripts of convicted co-conspirator Galane Maxwell's July interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, surveillance video from the prison where Epstein committed suicide in 2019, grand jury transcripts from cases against Epstein, and police interviews with his victims. On Friday, the New York Times

reported that the document release included a complaint from Maria Farmer, a former employee of Epstein's, alerting the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Epstein's interest in child pornography in 1996. Specifically, Farmer alleged that Epstein had asked her to take pictures of young girls at swimming pools and stolen nude photos of her younger sisters, who were minors at the time. The FBI never acknowledged the report, and it did not contact Farmer until it launched an investigation into Epstein roughly one decade later. Separately on Saturday, the DOJ removed 16 undated images from its Epstein Files website, one of which showed framed photos of famous individuals, including Donald Trump. Deputy Attorney General Blanche said the photos were not removed to protect

Trump, but at the request of victim advocacy groups. Blanche said the photos would be restored to the website after officials review whether additional redactions are necessary. On Sunday, the photo containing Trump's picture was re-added to the DOJ website. Both Republicans and Democrats have criticized the DOJ's handling of the release, questioning why only a portion of the files were published by the deadline. Representatives Roe Kana, the Democrat from California, and Thomas Massey, the Republican from Kentucky, who co-authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, announced on Sunday that they may bring contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Pam Bondi for the

incomplete release, which would impose fines on the Attorney General until all the documents are published. Today, we'll break down the latest on the release documents with views from the left and the right, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. First up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left criticizes the DOJ's rollout saying the release seems deliberately difficult to navigate. Some suggest the limited release downplays the Trump-Epstein relationship.

Others urge caution in reading too much into individual files. In New York magazine, Chas Danner called the release a mess. Trump isn't the only term that fails to return any search results. No term does. There's a disclaimer about how some of the files may not be searchable, but for now, apparently none of the files are. It's unclear if that's because the search function can't keep up with the demand, or if the DOJ just shouldn't have added a search field before making sure searching was possible,

Dana wrote. If you do want to actually scan through what the DOJ has released, you'll need to click on specific court cases and then select PDFs named only with numbers. There's virtually no context. There are a lot of redactions. This one was expected, as the law allowed the Justice Department pretty wide latitude to make redactions, and not just to protect Epstein's victims. That flexibility undoubtedly meant that there would be tons of material kept from public view and a lot of frustration over what was left out. Still, if you start looking through, the files, expect to see a lot of black boxes and no explanations as to why. In The Guardian, Sam Levine wrote,

The trickle release of Epstein files on a Friday signals moves to bury Trump's ties. By the time the department eventually did release thousands of pages of materials on Friday evening, not the hundreds of thousands Blanche promised, many of the documents had been heavily or completely redacted. Other than a few pictures, the materials made no mention of Trump, even though Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly told Trump, earlier this year, his name was in the files, Levine said. The release underscores have the Trump administration is trying to balance both the demand

to release the files, something encouraged in large part by the MAGA base, while also obfuscating with a slow trickle of document dumps to prevent any embarrassment to Trump. While Trump barely made an appearance in Friday's release, Bill Clinton appears in several images. The Daily Wire, a Trump-friendly site, obtained a photo of Clinton and Epstein on Thursday, a day before the release, Levine wrote. Several other celebrities appeared in the images released on Friday, including Mc Jagger, Michael Jackson, Richard Branson, Chris Tucker, David Copperfield, and Kevin Spacey. Like Clinton, none has been accused of any crime in connection to Epstein, but their immediate appearance in the files benefits Trump, creating the impression that it was not unusual for famous men to hang out with Epstein. In Politico, on Cush Cardori shared rules for reading the Epstein files.

There's a difference between being liable for criminal conduct and engaging in embarrassing even morally offensive conduct. The principal purpose of releasing the files was supposed to be to reveal the elites who participated in Epstein's crimes but evaded accountability. But already, we are very far afield from that concept. You may detest former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers or find his sleazy behavior sleazy, but there is no reason to believe that he engaged in criminal misconduct, Cardori said. That distinction is worth me. maintaining. You are free to harshly judge Summers, or anyone else for that matter, for being close with Epstein, particularly after his 2008 conviction, but being friends with a felon is not a crime.

There is a potential risk of literal guilt by association that is important to avoid. This is not an idle matter or part of some effort to downplay what might be revealed in the days or weeks to come. This is about maintaining the integrity of the American legal system, Cordori wrote. Trump has already pushed Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch criminal investigations into adversaries for their alleged dealings with Epstein, which she agreed to with alacrity. The government should not be prosecuting people or threatening to prosecute people who did not commit actual crimes. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right says that Democrats' attempts to link Epstein's crimes to Trump are looking increasingly

far-fetched. Some stress that association with Epstein does not prove wrongdoing. Others say the DOJ's handling of the release invites legitimate questions. In the Washington Examiner, Byron York asked, are Democrats getting desperate about Epstein? For months now, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has been the Democratic Party's go-to subject for attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats always returned to Epstein, much as they did with Russia in the early years of Trump's first term, York wrote. To an extraordinary degree, Democrats have based their opposition to Trump on the hope that somehow, somewhere, they will find evidence of Trump involved in improper behavior related to Epstein. For all the talk about releasing the Epstein files, the fact is

that a lot of the material in the Epstein case has already been made public. Why do we know what Geoffrey said under oath about Trump? Because six years ago, a court released her deposition in a lawsuit she had filed against Epstein's accomplice, Maxwell. There's been plenty of other litigation in the case, and many documents have been made public, York said. Maybe it will change. Maybe there will be some future discovery that will give Democrats the incriminating evidence

they so desperately want, but it doesn't seem likely. And until then, Democrats appear to be happy to make things up. In PJ Media, Matt Morgollis wrote, When it comes to the Epstein files, transparency triumphs over frenzy. The Justice Department released thousands of pages of files on Jeffrey Epstein and Galane Maxwell late Friday, triggering a predictable online frenzy over a parade of famous faces appearing

in the photos, Margulah said. Each image comes with the same caveat, that appearing in a photo does not necessarily imply wrongdoing. However, that distinction did little to slow Democrats eager to weaponize the release against Trump, despite the timing and contents pointing elsewhere. Epstein cultivated relationships with influential people in entertainment, tech, business, and even royalty for decades. Democrats tried to take innocuous photos of Trump and portray them as smoking guns, even though they weren't Marguless wrote. As the flood of Epstein files continues, clear eyes and a level head are essential. The political frenzy surrounding every new photo or document serves only those looking to score points. Not every image proves criminal activity. In the free

Press, Eli Lake said, the country descends into a new stage of the scandal. Angel Yereña, Clinton's deputy chief of staff, took to X on Friday to blast the Donald Trump administration. They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, he wrote, but this isn't about Bill Clinton. Never was, never will be, Lake wrote. Yerania has a point, sort of. Among the more than 13,000 photos, files, receipts, scans, and other items released on Friday, only one photo of President Trump appears. appears to have been released. Trump also had a relationship with Epstein, which he says he broke off around 2004. It strains credulity that the files do not include more photos of Trump. The files also

compromised former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who gave public relations advice to Epstein in 2019 at the same time he was making a documentary about Epstein after the financier had been charged a second time for sex crimes. Yet giving indicted billionaires media advice is also no crime, Lake said. None of the files released yet proved the elaborate theory that is spread about Epstein, that he was running a sex trafficking ring to blackmail America's power elite. Instead, the release has fed another round of innuendo while eroding long-standing rules to keep the politics of personal destruction far away from our justice system. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the writer's saying, which brings us to my take.

So anyone waiting for a smoking gun to imprison Donald Trump or Bill Clinton or some other big name is likely to be disappointed. Yet, slowly, but surely, more questions about Jeffrey Epstein are getting answers. Questions like, how did this go on for so long? How did nobody notice? And how did he get away with it. One new detail from this release gives us the beginnings of an answer. In 1996, a woman who worked for Epstein actually tried to tell the FBI that he was interested in child pornography, almost a decade before the Bureau officially started investigating him. The woman, Maria Farmer, said that Epstein stole two photos of her younger sisters, age 16 and 12, in which they were nude. Farmer said she had taken the photos for her own personal artwork, which on a separate

note strikes me as odd, but Epstein stole them and the negatives. She also alleged Epstein asked her to take more photos of young girls at swimming pools and then threatened to burn her house down if she told anyone about the request. When Epstein's crimes came to light, Farmer shared her story publicly, including an interaction with Trump in 1995. According to Farmer, she was wearing running shorts in Epstein's office when Trump entered and began hovering over her, staring at her legs, before Epstein came in and told Trump, no, she's not here for you. She claims to have overheard Trump commenting that he thought she was 16 years old as she left the room. The FBI never responded to the report about the photos and no evidence of any such report was ever produced. For years,

Farmer endured accusations that she had fabricated the entire thing. Yet the Epstein files release shows the FBI received and filed the report and never did anything about it. Other hallucinating details come from an interview transcript with Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. In 2008, Acosta approved a plea deal for Epstein that was widely panned as a sweetheart deal. Trump appointed him Labor Secretary during his first term, and after Epstein's high-profile sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Acosta stepped down over controversy related to the 2008 deal. In a now-disclosed closed-door interview with the DOJ's office of professional responsibility, Acosta answers questions about an 11-month gap in his email

records. This gap comes right around the time his office was constructing the plea deal for Epstein and despite the legal requirement for a U.S. attorney to maintain and archive his records. Acosta also said he had no idea where the allegation that he had called Epstein an intelligent asset came from. He then defended the prosecution and the approach his office took, which will not win him much praise from the people who have been following this case. The same files also redacted the names of the prosecutors involved in the case, inviting questions about whether lesser-known prosecutors are being shielded from responsibility. As the Acosta interview answers some questions, it raises more. That has become a theme with this latest release, and there's one that I expect to see

repeated again and again as additional files continue to come out. Among other unanswered questions, I was left wanting more information about the Steve Bannon-Jepstein relationship. The latest batches of photographs show the two together repeatedly, and Bannon has never sufficiently explained their seemingly close relationship, or what happened to the dozens of hours of recordings he says he has of Epstein. The DOJ is also opening itself up to questions about how it is handling this disclosure. In one blatant example, Trump's name is redacted from a damning and explicit part of the files where one of his sexual relationships is described in detail by an Epstein victim. We know it's Trump because the same document was released in 2024 with his name unredacted,

yet this time the DOJ redacted it. That's in addition to the 16 or more files that disappeared from the DOJ webpage of these documents after publication, including one that featured a photo of Trump. That photo has now been restored. Importantly, clarity about who Epstein was and what he did is not only coming from the government's file dumps. Earlier this month, the New York Times released a tour-to-force of reporting that examined the question of how Epstein made his millions. This has been a critical curiosity about his life, and in a vacuum of credible narratives, explanations like he was a Mossad agent have filled the gaps. But the Times reporting offers new light. Ruthless cons, cunning schemes, and a lot of young beautiful women use this leverage. Reporters, David

Enrick, Stephen Eater, Jessica Solver Greenberg, and Matthew Goldstein found a trail of scorned former colleagues and bosses and partners who regretted working with or hiring Epstein, who then shared stories of how he tricked them into handing over money or equity or trust. Here's just one illustrative example. In the late 1980s, Epstein was tapped by debt collector Stephen Hoffenberg to help manage a slush fund and help run a massive Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of close to $500 million for takeover attempts of iconic companies. He eventually was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Epstein allegedly helped him solicit millions of dollars for what he said were win-win investments, and then the two would announce a takeover bid of the company. When news broke and

the stock shot up, they'd cashed their funds out and secure a profit. The legal market manipulation was no secret, but the Times reporting uncovered that dozens of the investors who gave Epstein money were never repaid their investment. He walked away with millions of dollars and no consequences. These kinds of stories permeate the Times piece, and they do a lot to explain how Epstein amassed his fortune and climbed the social ladder despite being a college dropout who did not come from wealth. Obviously, given the partial answers and the new questions, the sum total of the last few weeks is not going to satisfy a lot of people. Some of Epstein's victims, whose stories should continue to be centered here, have already expressed their displeasure with the DOJ's release.

They want ground-moving news to change the trajectory of all of this, and they want the Department of Justice to take down some well-known powerful people in Epstein's orbit, who can blame them. But that was, unfortunately, never how this was going to work. far more likely is what we've gotten so far and what I expect we'll continue to get a drip, drip, drip of new details, disclosures and stories and hundreds of intrepid reporters

and internet sleuths trying to put together the pieces after the fact with persistence, hopefully we'll eventually have more answers than we do questions. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take today, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Tracy in Greenwell Springs, Louisiana.

Tracy said, regarding the $1,776 warrior dividend, if this money was already appropriated in the one beautiful bill, weren't these service members already going to receive this housing supplement? In that case, is this really anything new? Okay, so yes, you are correct that the money was already appropriated in OBBB, but how Trump decided to disperse this benefit is the story here. The text of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act apportions $2.9 billion for the Department of Defense to supplement the military's basic allowance for housing, or BAH, which was instituted in 1998 to help members of the armed services afford basic housing. The warrior dividend that Trump announced is funded by that clause in the bill, and that funding

is new this year. So, in effect, what Trump is framing as a bonus to military members is him drawing on previously appropriated money to cut a one-time check. The administration says pulling from this will not impact the future of BAH, but Congress will have to appropriate more money to replenish the program down the line for that to be true. Here are a few important additional facts to add some context here. So for those unfamiliar with BAH, it is calculated based on a number of factors, so experience, cost of living, and number of dependents, and is part of a service member's regular payments. For those who are receiving the basic allowance for housing, the warrior dividend will not change your normal monthly BAH, according to the Trump administration. DoD will send these

payments outside the regular payment cycle, but more specific details have not yet been announced. The OBBA did not specify how this supplement was going to be apportioned, and over the next four years, the OBBA has authorized a $150 billion increase in the DOD's budget. The BAH supplement and thus the Warrior dividend is a portion of that budgetary increase. All this taken into account, the dividend Trump announced, does appear to be an additional payment on top of benefits that service members are eligible for, though we're still waiting for more details about its implementation. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under-the-radar story for today, folks.

On Monday, a Russian general was killed in Moscow by a bomb that detonated underneath his car, making him the third Russian general to be killed in a bombing in the past year. Lieutenant General Faneel Sarvarov served as the head of the operational training department of the general staff of Russia's armed forces for nearly a decade and was involved in military campaigns in Chechnya and Syria. No suspect in the bombing has been identified, but Russian authorities said they are looking into possible involvement by Ukrainian intelligence services. The Moscow Times has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. According to a CBS News announcement,

analysis, 550 pages in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department on Friday were fully redacted. The number of days after the release by which the government is required to give Congress a list of redactions is 15. According to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, approximately 200 Justice Department attorneys were involved in reviewing the files before they were released. According to a December 2025 Reuters-Ipsos poll, 23% of U.S. adults say they approve of President Trump's handling of the Epstein case, while 502 percent disapprove. 17% of U.S. adults said they approve of President Trump's handling of the Epstein case in July of 2025, while 54% disapproved. And 70% of U.S. adults think that the

federal government is hiding information about Epstein's alleged clients, while 9% do not believe that. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. Scientists have discovered a site in Bolivia that boasts the largest number of dinosaur footprints anywhere in the world. So far, researchers have documented 16,600 footprints forming dozens of trackways in what is now the coastline of Bolivia's Carreras-Pampas. The tracks belong to a group of dinosaurs called theropods, meat-eating bipeds that include the T-Rex, and provide insight into how the animals actually moved in the soft mud between 101 million and 66 million years ago. Scientists say the tracks are not only informative, but also very cool. When you visit Carreras Pampas, you know you're not.

you are standing where a dinosaur walked, said Dr. Jeremy McClaherty, director of the Dinosaur Science Museum and Research Center at Southwestern Adventist University in Texas. CNN has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to reetangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both.

We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul and our executive producer is John Lull. Today's episode was Edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman

with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Canuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Dietz 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.