Jeffrey Epstein’s international sex trafficking operation has prompted 10 ongoing investigations worldwide, in addition to three in the United States that are inching closer to delivering justice for his victims.
In the U.S., a high-stakes congressional investigation, a local criminal investigation in New Mexico and a lawsuit filed by former newcaster and lawyer Katie Phang have forced the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) to stonewall on all fronts.
The DOJ’s actions fly in the face of President Trump’s campaign promise to release all of the Epstein files in the government’s possession and his signing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Much of the attention recently has been focused on France, where investigators have identified 13 new alleged victims. Epstein, lived in Paris off and on during his lifetime, according to The New York Times.
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Epstein recruiters in France trafficked as many as 26 victims, French prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a radio interview last week.
“We’re covering a very wide area. The Epstein network, as far as we’re concerned, is a labyrinthine network. You have to pull on dozens and dozens of threads.”
The French government and other nations began investigating Epstein’s local ties after the DOJ released more than 3 million files from its cache of Epstein documents. An estimated 2.5 million to 3 million more files are still being withheld.
In some cases, international investigations are netting high-profile individuals on corruption charges.
In Norway, the government has charged former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland and senior diplomats Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul.
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Jagland was charged with gross corruption by Økokrim (Norway’s economic crime unit) in February. Jagland allegedly made paid solo and family trips to Epstein’s properties in Paris, New York, and Palm Beach. He also ask for Epstein’s help with a bank loan.
All have denied wrongdoing.
In the United Kingdom, the highest profile investigation so far involves Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Windsor was stripped of all his royal titles after he was accused of having sex with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre and compromising photos were released of him straddling a child on the floor.
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Windsor is also under active investigation for allegedly leaking state secrets. Additionally, Britain’s U.S. ambassador, Peter Mandelson, was forced to resign from his post and the House of Lords amid an active investigation by the European Union’s Anti-Fraud Office.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has ordered a specialized government task force to comb through the 3.5 million pages of Epstein files as part of its investigation. Baltic and Scandinavian regions are pursuing several secondary leads.
Latvia State Police launched a full criminal case after successfully identifying a Latvian national victim in the documents. Sweden and Lithuania have initiated state-level reviews and accepted immediate resignations from officials linked to the unredacted files.
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In Sweden, Joanna Rubinstein, chair of Sweden in the UN’s Refugee Agency, resigned after unsealed documents showed she had visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island with her family in 2012, long after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution. Emails showed her thanking Epstein for the stay.
In Latvia, President Edgars Rinkēvičs ordered an immediate, widespread criminal human trafficking investigation after passport data, travel records, and names of several Latvian women appeared in the files. They were linked to local modeling agencies to Epstein’s network.
In Lithuania, Valdas Petreikis, an arts promoter, appeared in the files for receiving payments from Epstein. He denied wrongdoing, stated he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes, and stepped down from organizing the Midsummer Vilnius festival.
Simona Petreikė, another festival organizer, ballet dancer and Petreikis’s wife, was reportedly left $3 million in Epstein’s will.
Several local models and arts figures have also surfaced in the files, prompting concerns about local recruitment networks targeting financially vulnerable teens.
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During the 1990s, starting after the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, U.S. modeling agencies scoured Eastern Europe for young models.
Under the direction of founder John Casablancas, Elite Modeling Agency aggressively expanded into the former Eastern Bloc nations. Casablancas was later accused in a lawsuit of sending a 15-year-old model to meet Epstein for a fake casting call. The victim said Epstein raped her.
Jean-Luc Brunel of MC2 Model Management, was tied to Epstein through financial links to Epstein and the recruitment of models. Brunel hung himself in 1992 while inside his cell at La Santé Prison in Paris, awaiting trial on charges involving the rape and trafficking of minors.
Several boutique or specialized U.S. agencies targeted Eastern European teens during the ’90s using highly predatory methods—often involving debt bondage, visa manipulation, or acting as fronts for illicit networks.
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Paolo Zampolli, a close Trump associate and member of his current administration, founded ID Models, which specialized in recruiting young, Eastern European models allegedly using specific immigration and visa loopholes. Among his recruits was Slovenian model Melania Knauss, now Trump’s third wife.
Trump was also heavily involved in recruiting Eastern European girls through Trump Model Management, founded by Trump in 1999. It was part of the pipeline that brought foreign models—including many from Eastern Europe—to the United States.
While investigative records and lawsuits heavily implicate the agency in exploitative visa practices and systemic overlap with Epstein’s social circle, there is no evidence that Epstein had financial stakes or an official recruiting role within Trump Model Management.
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Instead, the ties between Trump’s agency and Epstein operated through a shared social ecosystem and a primary recruiter, Paolo Zampolli, a a central figure at Trump Model Management and a close associate of both Trump and Epstein, who frequently organized and attended parties at Mar-a-Lago.
Zampolli and other agents regularly brought young vulnerable, newly arrived foreign teens to high-profile Mar a Lago parties attended by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the only person, so far, convicted of Esptein relatd sex trafficking in the United States, according to Vanity Fair magazine.
While European nations are aggressively moving to prosecute public officials and track down local trafficking networks, none have opened a formal, independent investigation targeting Trump, though his name appears more than 38,000 times in Epstein documents released so far, including allegations of raping children.
Unraveling the Epstein scandal in the United States has fallen to Congress, a New Mexico state investigation, journalists and Phang’s groundbreakng lawsuit.
Billionaire investor Leon Black, who paid Epstein an estimated $170 million for what he claimed was tax and estate work, has been subpoenaed to testify before a House committee, but has refused to appear. The House Oversight Committee is officially advancing a resolution to hold Black in contempt.
Black responded with a lawsuit against the committee and its Chairman, James Comer, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing the subpoenas are an overreaching. Lawmkers want to question him regarding his relationship with Epstein and a “birthday book.”
The House Oversight Committee is targeting other individuals tied to Epstein’s financial network, including American Express travel booked for women and minors. Investigators recently uncovered ex-JPMorgan Chase executive, who had shared confidential banking data with Epstein.
In New Mexico, Epstien’s ties center on the infamous Zorro Ranch, a sprawling 10,000-acre private estate in Stanley, New Mexico.
Several alleged victims say Epstein used the isolated New Mexico compound’s 26,000-square-foot mansion and a private airstrip—to recruit, traffic, and sexually abuse young women and underage girls, including some of the more bizarre claims of torture, forced pregnancies and murder.
The federal government never investigated the ranch, but in Feburary, the New Mexico state house allocated $2.5 million and full subpoena power to a commission to get to the bottom of allegations surrounding the ranch.
The goal is to create a full narrative of trafficking that occurred and federal failures that kept Epstein off New Mexico’s sex offender list. A final report is expected by the end of the year.
But investigators in both Europe and the United States have publicly accused the DOJ of refusing to cooperate or respond to mutual legal assistance requests. Attorney General Blanche stated earlier this year that the Epstein files “should not be a part of anything going forward” for the DOJ, despite the Epstein act’s transparency requirements.
Phang filed her Epstein lawsuit (Phang v. Blanche) through the Public Integrity Project in April in the D.C. District Court to force the DOJ to unredact all but victims’ names and release the rest of the Epstein files.
The suit alleges the DOJ has illegally hidden millions of pages of documents, improperly applied heavy redactions to shield powerful figures (including Trump), and failed to publish a legally required redaction log.
In June, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted a preliminary injunction in Phang’s favor, ruling that the DOJ had effectively conceded it was violating the transparency law.
The judge ordered the DOJ to remove redactions on specific, highly explosive documents, including at least eight email exchanges concerning a “torture video” and sexual activity with minors, as well as FBI interview notes containing uncorroborated allegations of abuse involving Donald Trump, according to The Hill.
Last month, the DOJ filed a “protective notice of appeal” to challenge Judge Sullivan’s unredaction order. However, the DOJ admitted in its filing that it is legally “inconclusive” whether it even has the right to appeal the order at this stage.
DOJ lawyers then missed a critical court deadline to justify their heavy redactions, and the D.C. District Court has yet to schedule the next status hearing.
In the meantime, Phang’s attorneys from the Public Integrity Project are pushing to dismiss the DOJ appeal as tactical stalling, while the government attempts to move the battleground to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
If Judge Sullivan denies the government’s attempts to delay deadlines, the next phase in his courtroom will focus strictly on compliance and a timeline for disclosure, according to media reports.
During the last hearing, Judge Sullivan explicitly warned senior DOJ attorney Andrew Block that his contempt warning was “a promise,” not a threat. The DOJ is under the gun to begun cooperating or could face formalized sanctions.
The court will address whether the estimated 2.5 million pages of records are “non-responsive” or “duplicative” as the DOJ claims. Phang’s team is asking for a neutral Special Master to independently review the files to ensure the Trump administration isn’t actively burying evidence.
The DOJ delaying action may be an attempt to push any further disclosure until after the midterm elections, less than a month away.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”