Epstein files lead to resignation in Slovakia and calls in Britain for former prince to cooperate

NEW YORK (AP) — Newly disclosed U.S. government files on Jeffrey Epstein have prompted the resignation of a top official in Slovakia and revived calls in Britain for a former prince to share what he knows with authorities about Epstein's links to powerful individuals around the world.

The fallout comes just a day after the Justice Department began releasing a massive trove of files that offers more details about Epstein's interactions with the rich and famous after he served time for sex crimes in Florida.

The prime minister of Slovakia accepted the resignation on Saturday of an official, Miroslav Lajcak, who once had a yearlong term as president of the U.N. General Assembly. Lajcak wasn't accused of wrongdoing but left his position after photos and emails revealed he had met with Epstein in the years after Epstein was released from jail.

The disclosures also have revived questions about whether long-time Epstein friend Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, should cooperate with U.S. authorities investigating Epstein.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday suggested Mountbatten-Windsor should tell American investigators whatever he knows about Epstein’s activities. The former prince has so far ignored a request from members of the U.S. House Oversight Committee for a “transcribed interview” about his “long-standing friendship” with Epstein.

President Donald Trump's Justice Department said it would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal most of the material it collected during two decades of investigations involving the wealthy financier.

The files, posted to the department’s website, included documents involving Epstein's friendship with Mountbatten-Windsor, and Epstein’s email correspondence with onetime Trump adviser Steve Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and other prominent contacts with people in political, business and philanthropic circles, such as billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

Other documents offered a window into various investigations, including ones that led to sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019 and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021, and an earlier inquiry that found evidence of Epstein abusing underage girls but never led to federal charges.

Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, said Saturday that he had accepted the resignation of Lajcak, his national security adviser.

Lajcak, a former Slovak foreign minister, hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing, but emails showed that Epstein had invited him to dinner and other meetings in 2018.

The records also include a March 2018 email from Epstein’s office to former Obama White House general counsel Kathy Ruemmler, inviting her to a get-together with Epstein, Lajcak and Bannon, the conservative activist who served as Trump’s White House strategist in 2017.

Lajcak said his contacts with Epstein were part of his diplomatic duties. Pressure mounted for his ouster from opposition parties and a nationalist partner in Fico’s governing coalition.

The FBI started investigating Epstein in July 2006 and agents expected him to be indicted in May 2007, according to the newly records released. A prosecutor wrote up a proposed indictment after multiple underage girls told police and the FBI that they had been paid to give Epstein sexualized massages.

The draft indicated prosecutors were preparing to charge not just Epstein but also three people who worked for him as personal assistants.

According to interview notes released Friday, an employee at Epstein’s Florida estate told the FBI in 2007 that Epstein once had him buy flowers and deliver them to a student at Royal Palm Beach High School to commemorate her performance in a school play.

The employee, whose name was blacked out, said some of his duties were fanning $100 bills on a table near Epstein’s bed, placing a gun between the mattresses in his bedroom and cleaning up after Epstein’s frequent massages with young girls, including disposing of used condoms.

Ultimately, the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time, Alexander Acosta, signed off on a deal that let Epstein avoid federal prosecution. Epstein pleaded guilty instead to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18 and got an 18-month jail sentence. Acosta was Trump's first labor secretary in his earlier term.

The records have thousands of references to Trump, including emails in which Epstein and others shared news articles, commented on his policies, or gossiped about him and his family.

Mountbatten-Windsor's name appears at least several hundred times, including in Epstein’s private emails. In a 2010 exchange, Epstein appeared to set him up for a date.

“I have a friend who I think you might enjoy having dinner with,” Epstein wrote.

Mountbatten-Windsor replied that he “would be delighted to see her.”

Epstein, whose emails often contain typographical errors, wrote later in the exchange: “She 26, russian, clevere beautiful, trustworthy and yes she has your email.”

The Justice Department is facing criticism over how it handled the latest disclosure.

One group of Epstein accusers said in a statement that the new documents made it too easy to identify those he abused but not those who might have been involved in Epstein’s criminal activity.

“As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy,” it said.

Meanwhile, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, pressed the department to let lawmakers review unredacted versions of the files as soon as Sunday. He said in a statement that Congress must assess whether the redactions were lawful or improperly shielded people from scrutiny.

Department officials have acknowledged that many records in its files are duplicates, and it was clear from the documents that reviewers took different degrees of care or exercised different standards while blacking out names and other identifying information.

There were multiple documents where a name was left exposed in one copy, but redacted in another.

The released records reinforced the Epstein was, at least before he ran into legal trouble, friendly with Trump and former President Bill Clinton. None of Epstein’s victims who have gone public has accused Trump, a Republican, or Clinton, a Democrat, of wrongdoing. Both men said they had no knowledge Epstein was abusing underage girls.

Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in August 2019, a month after being indicted.

In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse. One victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, sued Mountbatten-Windsor, saying she had sexual encounters with him starting at age 17. The now-former prince denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.

Giuffre died by suicide last year at age 41.

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The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from Versant, CBS and NBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.

Kirka reported from London. Finley reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists from around the country contributed to this report.

Follow the AP's coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

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 a 2009 order of no contact in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

FILE - New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch arrives for NFL owners meetings, in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - Britain’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, looks round as he leaves after attending the Easter Matins Service at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England, April 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

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)

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)

Many have denied having close ties to the late financier, or at least having anything to do with his alleged sexual abuse of girls and young women that led to his arrest on sex trafficking charges.

None have been charged with a crime connected to the investigation. Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019. Yet some of them maintained friendships with Epstein, or developed them anew, even after he became known as a predator of young girls and registered sex offender.

Here’s a primer on some of the notable names in the Epstein files:

The man formerly known as Britain’s Prince Andrew has long been dogged by questions about his relationship with Epstein, including allegations from the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre that she was trafficked by Epstein and instructed to have sex with Mountbatten-Windsor when she was 17.

The former prince has repeatedly denied that it happened, but his brother, King Charles III, still stripped him of his royal titles late last year, including the right to be called a prince and the Duke of York.

Mountbatten-Windsor’s name appears at least several hundred times in Friday’s document release, including in Epstein’s private emails.

Among the correspondence is an invitation for Epstein to dine at Buckingham Palace, Epstein’s offer to introduce Mountbatten-Windsor to a 26-year-old Russian woman, and photos that appear to show Mountbatten-Windsor kneeling over an unidentified woman lying on the floor.

The billionaire Tesla founder turns up at least a few times in Friday’s document release, notably in email exchanges in 2012 and 2013 in which he discussed visiting Epstein’s infamous Caribbean island compound.

But it’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Spokespersons for Musk’s companies, Tesla and X, didn’t respond to emails seeking comment Friday or Saturday.

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.

The New York Giants co-owner is mentioned more than 400 times in the files released Friday. Correspondence between the two shows Epstein offered to connect Tisch to numerous women over the years.

In one 2013 email exchange with the subject line “Ukrainian girl,” Epstein encouraged Tisch to contact a particular woman, whose physical beauty he praised in crude terms.

“Pro or civilian?” Tisch asked in reply.

Tisch, a scion of a powerful New York family that founded the Loews Corporation, has acknowledged knowing Epstein but denied ever going to his infamous Caribbean island.

“We had a brief association where we exchanged emails about adult women, and in addition, we discussed movies, philanthropy and investments,” said Tisch, who also won an Academy Award in 1994 for producing “Forrest Gump.” “As we all know now, he was a terrible person and someone I deeply regret associating with.”

President Donald Trump’s commerce secretary visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island with his family on at least one occasion, records released Friday show.

That appears to contradict prior statements he’s made claiming he cut ties with the disgraced financier, who he’s called “gross,” decades ago.

But emails show Lutnick and his wife accepted an invitation to Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands in December 2012 and planned to arrive by yacht with their children.

The former chairman of Newmark, a major commercial real estate firm, also had drinks on another occasion in 2011 with Epstein and corresponded with him about the construction of a building across the street from both of their homes.

The Commerce Department, in a statement, said Lutnick had “limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.”

The billionaire Google co-founder made plans to meet with Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell at his townhouse in New York years before he was publicly accused of sexually abusing underage girls, emails show.

In one exchange in 2003, Maxwell invited him to join her at a screening of the Renee Zellweger film “Down with Love” in New York.

She followed up a few weeks later to invite him to a “happily casual and relaxed” dinner at Epstein’s house. Brin offered to bring along Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt.

Spokespersons for Google didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Saturday.

The one-time adviser to Trump exchanged hundreds of friendly texts with Epstein, some sent months before his 2019 arrest and jailhouse suicide.

The two discussed politics, travel and a documentary Bannon was said to be planning that would help salvage Epstein’s reputation.

One 2018 exchange, for example, focused on Trump’s threats at the time to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. In a 2019 message, Bannon asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome.

Bannon hasn’t responded to emails seeking comment.

A national security adviser to the Slovakian prime minister, Lajcak resigned Saturday after his past communications with Epstein appeared in Friday’s document release.

Opposition parties and a nationalist partner in Fico’s governing coalition had called for him to step down.

Lajcak, a former Slovak foreign minister and a onetime president of the U.N. General Assembly, has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but was photographed meeting with Epstein in the years between his initial release from jail and his subsequent indictment in 2019 on sex trafficking charges.

He said his correspondence with Epstein were part of his diplomatic duties.

Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin Group Limited, invited Epstein to his private island in 2013, telling him in an email: “Any time you’re in the area would love to see you. As long as you bring your harem!”

Besides discussing Epstein visiting Branson’s Necker Island, in the British Virgin Islands, the two exchanged messages about philanthropy, Epstein’s ideas for a “disruptive” financial system and a “social good currency."

In one email, in 2011, Epstein said he offered Branson’s staff the use of his helicopter to transport an accident victim in the Virgin Islands.

In a Sept. 11, 2013 correspondence, Branson suggested Epstein could boost his public image if he could get Bill Gates to say “you’ve been a brilliant adviser to him, that you slipped up many years ago by sleeping with a 17 1/2 year old woman and were punished for it, that you’ve more than learnt your lesson and have done nothing that’s against the law since.”

A Branson spokesperson told the British news outlet the Independent that Branson’s “harem” comment referred to adult members of Epstein’s staff.

Branson later decided to sever ties with Epstein, the spokesperson said, after learning more about the “serious allegations” that had been made against him.

“Had they had the full picture and information, there would have been no contact whatsoever,” the spokesperson said.

Associated Press reporters from around the world contributed to this story.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

FILE - New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch arrives for NFL owners meetings, in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - Britain’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, looks round as he leaves after attending the Easter Matins Service at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England, April 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)