WASHINGTON (AP) — A huge new tranche of files on millionaire financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released Friday revealed details of his communications with the wealthy and powerful, some not long before he died by suicide in 2019.
The Justice Department said it was disclosing more than 3 million pages of documents, as well as thousands of videos and photos, as required by a law passed by Congress. By Friday evening, more than 600,000 documents had been published online. Millions of files that prosecutors had identified as potentially subject to release under the law remain under wraps, however, drawing criticism from Democrats.
Here's what we know so far about the files now being reviewed by a team of Associated Press reporters:
The documents show Epstein exchanged hundreds of friendly texts with Steve Bannon, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, some months before Epstein's death.
They discussed politics, travel and a documentary Bannon was said to be planning that would help salvage Epstein's reputation.
In March 2019, Bannon asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome.
A couple of months later, Epstein messaged to Bannon, “Now you can understand why trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”
The context is unclear from the documents, which were released with many redactions and little clear organization.
Another 2018 exchange focused on Trump’s threats at the time to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he had named to the post just the year prior.
Around the same time, Epstein also communicated with Kathy Ruemmler, a lawyer and former Obama White House official. In a typo-filled email, he warned that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a Mafia-type figure even as he derided the president as a “maniac.”
Bannon did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comment. Ruemmler said through a spokesperson she was associated with Epstein professionally during her time as a lawyer in private practice and now “regrets ever knowing him.”
Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk e-mailed Epstein in 2012 and 2013 about visiting his infamous island compound, the scene of many allegations of sexual abuse.
Epstein inquired in an email about how many people Musk would like flown by helicopter, and Musk responded that it would likely be just him and his partner at the time. “What day/night will be the wildest party on =our island?” he wrote, according to the Justice Department records.
It’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Spokespersons for Musk’s companies, Tesla and X, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday.
Musk has maintained that he repeatedly turned down the disgraced financier’s overtures. “Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED,” he posted on X in 2025
Epstein also invited Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to the island in Dec. 2012. Lutnick's wife enthusiastically accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. The two also had drinks on another occasion in 2011, according to a schedule. Six years later, they e-mailed about the construction of a building across the street from both of their homes.
Lutnick has distanced himself from Epstein, calling him “gross” and saying in 2025 that he cut ties decades ago. He didn’t respond to an e-mailed request for comment on Friday afternoon.
Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019, and found dead in his cell just over a month later.
The latest batch of documents includes emails between investigators about Epstein’s death, including an investigator's observation that his final communication doesn't look like a suicide note. Multiple investigations have determined that Epstein's death was a suicide.
The records also detail a trick that jail staffers used to fool the media gathered outside while Epstein’s body was removed: they used boxes and sheets to create what appeared to be a body and loaded it into a white van labeled as belonging to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The reporters followed the van when it left the jail, not knowing that Epstein’s actual body was loaded into a black vehicle, which departed “unnoticed,” according to the interview notes.
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Associated Press reporters across the country contributed to this story, including Michael R. Sisak and Philip Marcelo in New York, Cal Woodward in Washington, Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, and Meg Kinnard in South Carolina.
An email that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, and shows the cell where Epstein was found unresponsive. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
A document included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, that illustrates several people who handled Epstein's financial affairs or who were close to him (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
FILE - Documents that were included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files are photographed Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.
“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”
The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman presided over a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.
McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.
“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”
McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.
McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.
He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.
“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”
WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.
“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. “There is Greats of the 80s, Sounds of the 70s, 90s Rewind.”
LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.
“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”
And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.
The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is in McIntire’s basement.
Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.
They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.
“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.
After 10 years on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.
“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”
They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.
They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”
Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRPTV and WKRPDT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.
“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”
Whatever they do with the call sign, he hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.
“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”
D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
