Epstein Files countdown: What should the files reveal? For one, details about this previously undisclosed money laundering investigation conducted by the US Atty in Fla in 2007 & 2008. My @business & I uncovered details of this probe in Oct.

Read bloomberg.com/features/2025-…
We pubbed our 1st investigative story in our series in Sept, based on 18K previously undisclosed emails @business obtained earlier this year. That story, about the relationship b/w UK Amb to the US Peter Mandelson & Epstein, resulted in Mandelson's firing
bloomberg.com/features/2025-…

🚨 NEW FOIA Files newsletter is out! DOJ & FBI have made revelatory disclosures in my #FOIA lawsuit about the docs it withheld related to their review/redaction of the Epstein files

Intriguingly, the FBI said it searched "client lists" to locate records
bloomberg.com/news/newslette… While we all wait and see if the DOJ will meet its Dec. 19 deadline and turn over the Epstein files to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, I’m still trying to cut through the secrecy around the FBI’s review of the files. In particular, I’ve been curious to know what was behind the mad scramble at the FBI to prepare the files for public release, and then why the bureau and DOJ abruptly concluded that disclosure of them would not be “appropriate or warranted” after all.

NEW investigative report: Hedge funds. Brokerages. Billionaires. Jeffrey Epstein’s financial ties on and off Wall Street were broader than previously known, a cache of emails @business obtained earlier this year reveals
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bloomberg.com/features/2025-… The emails provide new details about Epstein as an investor and adviser, including how he leveraged influence when his bets lost money. They also show that Epstein’s ties on Wall Street were broader than previously known, involving not just standard banking relationships but some of the most sought-after hedge funds, such as Renaissance Technologies, whose reputation for success is almost mythical.

🚨 NEW/EXCLUSIVE: The FBI turned over dozens of emails to me in response to my #FOIA request that provides a behind-the-scenes look at the discussions involving the review and redaction of the Epstein files

bloomberg.com/news/newslette… The records I got also reveal the number of hours the FBI devoted to the project, which required some agents to work nights and weekends. The FBI paid personnel from various divisions, including counterintelligence and international operations, $851,344 in overtime for working on the Epstein files between March 17 and March 22, according to the documents. FBI personnel clocked in a total of 4,737 hours of overtime between January and July. Of that, more than 70% occurred during the month of March while personnel reviewed the Epstein files, the documents show.

NEW/EXCLUSIVE: A French branch of HSBC closed a bank account maintained by Jeffrey Epstein in 2007 after compliance officers flagged transactions for suspicious activity, including payments tied to a modeling agent later accused of rape & sex trafficking

The previously unreported closure, which HSBC officials announced to Epstein in a letter dated Dec. 21, 2007, is the only known instance of a major bank closing one of his accounts before he pleaded guilty to sex offenses in Fla. in 2008.
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🎁 bloomberg.com/features/2025-…
This is part of a series of stories based on emails sent to and from Jeffrey Epstein's private Yahoo account obtained by @business. Emails and attachments from that account weren't included in more than 20,000 pages of documents that a congressional committee released publicly on Nov. 12.

When investigators were closing in on Jeffrey Epstein, he thought about saying sorry. Merrie Spaeth, a sought-after crisis strategist who once served as the director of media relations for Ronald Reagan’s White House, helped him pick his words.

🎁 bloomberg.com/features/2025-… As some of the country’s best-connected lawyers were defending Epstein and elite academics were catering to his intellectual interests, media professionals worked to protect his public image. His publicists and consultants, according to the emails, included veteran executives Howard Rubenstein, Dan Klores and Mike Sitrick. Peggy Siegal, who held sway over some of Hollywood’s biggest movie premieres, emailed after the 2006 indictment to flag a Vanity Fair story.

NEW: In Oct 2016, when a new book about Jeffrey Epstein came out, he bought 17 copies. A few months after that, he picked up 6 books about narcissism. In 2019, in Epstein’s last weeks of freedom, he made his final purchases for his Kindle: a guide to raising children, though he wasn’t known to have any, The Annotated Lolita and Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy
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bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-… Epstein has been one of the most scrutinized figures in contemporary America, and his crimes among the more notorious. Just this week, a congressional committee released a trove of documents from Epstein’s estate, which shows him saying President Donald Trump “knew about the girls”—a claim Trump has repeatedly denied—and hobnobbing with powerful figures from politics, academia and the media. Even so, much about Epstein’s life remains an enigma.

🚨 EXPLOSIVE NEW investigation: We uncovered previously undisclosed details about an 18-month money laundering investigation into Jeffrey Epstein that took place alongside the 2007 federal sex crimes probe, according to emails & docs @business obtained from Epstein's personal Yahoo account & source familiar

🎁 bloomberg.com/features/2025-… The lead prosecutor requested that a grand jury issue subpoenas for “every financial transaction conducted by Epstein and his six businesses” dating to 2003, the emails show. Prosecutors also subpoenaed major banks for records about Epstein’s accounts and financial activity, according to two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified to discuss a sensitive investigation.

🚨 EXPLOSIVE NEW report based on the 18K emails @business obtained from Jeffrey Epstein's personal Yahoo account: new details about the academics, attorneys and media specialists who helped him—in different ways and to varying degrees

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bloomberg.com/features/2025-… When investigators were closing in on Epstein, he thought about saying sorry. Merrie Spaeth, a sought-after crisis strategist who once served as the director of media relations for Ronald Reagan’s White House, helped him pick his words.

She sent Epstein three versions of a public apology in February 2008, according to emails obtained by @business.

The Epstein emails obtained by @business also includes an accountant's spreadsheet itemizing nearly 2,000 gifts, luxury items and payments totaling $1.8M, with notations indicating they were intended for Epstein’s friends, business associates and victims.

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https://twitter.com/JasonLeopold/status/1966100733054656615

One entry in the spreadsheet showed an $11,000 Rolex watch was itemized in August 2003 as a gift for Tom Barrack, the wealthy real estate investor and longtime friend of Trump who’s now the US ambassador to Turkey. 

Three years later, in May 2006, Barrack’s assistant sent an email to Epstein’s assistant requesting a time change to a scheduled meeting between Barrack and Epstein because of “something urgent” that had come up.

“Tom would be willing to meet him at his home or office, whatever works,” Barrack’s assistant wrote. Epstein suggested they meet at his home.

A representative for Barrack declined to comment about the meeting, but said Barrack “has never received any gift ever from Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell, let alone a watch.”

EXCLUSIVE/BOMBSHELL: @business has obtained **18K** previously unreported emails from Jeffery Epstein's personal Yahoo account. The emails are disturbing & revelatory & reveal new details about Ghilaine Maxwell's role

bloomberg.com/features/2025-… Maxwell has maintained she was kept in the dark about details of Epstein's initial sexual abuse case in the mid-2000s. Yet the emails demonstrate her deep knowledge of the legal jeopardy he faced and show how she helped him strategize over even the most consequential details.

NEW FOIA Files newsletter is out!

An index from an 8-year-old #FOIA lawsuit shows what's in the FBI's Epstein files: bank and phone records, photographs, communications with foreign govt agencies & other revealing material related to its 2006 probe

bloomberg.com/news/newslette… Something else that’s noteworthy from the index: the FBI’s investigation into Epstein remained active after he pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation in Florida in 2008 and was released from prison in 2009. Some of the documents that were processed and withheld are from 2011, and include dozens of photographs, agents’ interview notes of third parties, and documents provided to the FBI by confidential sources.

NEW FOIA Files SCOOP: The FBI redacted Trump’s name—and the names of other prominent public figures—from the Epstein files under two privacy exemptions before DOJ & FBI concluded “no further disclosure” of the files “would be appropriate or warranted.”
bloomberg.com/news/newslette… A FBI team, made up of personnel from thê bureau's #FOIA office and were tasked with conducting a final review f tne voluminous cache, had applied thê redactions. They used the 9 exemptions under the FOIA as a guide (as reported in2 March) in s deciding what information to withhold

SCOOP: In Feb, federal agencies "lost" many #FOIA requests but you probably had no idea. It turns out that the FOIAs disappeared due to an "insider threat attack" by 2 employees at a software company who were previously convicted of hacking into the State Dept

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🎁 bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Opexus, which is owned by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo and provides software services for processing US government records, was compromised in February by two employees who'd previously been convicted of hacking into the US State Department.

SCOOP: The Trump administration is “decommissioning” a Department of Justice office that been at the center of dismantling transnational organized crime networks, drug cartels and human trafficking rings

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Leaders of the unit, called the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, or OCDETF, were told they had until Sept. 30 to shut down operations.

NEW FOIA Files newsletter is out

USAID told me it can’t release documents via #FOIA due to “recent developments”

Meanwhile, a memo I obtained sent to DHS FOIA officers this week directs them to “maximize transparency” when processing FOIA requests
bloomberg.com/news/newslette… Just a month into Trump’s second presidency, the FOIA has made its way into the swirling, political chaos. The administration’s mass firings of federal employees has impacted FOIA operations at some agencies, jeopardizing the public’s ability to access records.

A FOIA Files SCOOP: Elon Musk’s DOGE Targets #FOIA Requests at Agency Under its Purview

DOGE also wants to be notified when there’s any attempt at oversight from Congress, inspectors general, even the Government Accountability Office. Earlier this week, I reported on DOGE’s takeover of the CFPB. One of the standout documents I reviewed was an “Assignment Agreement,” or a memorandum of understanding between DOGE and CFPB that bears the seal of the Executive Office of the President.

NEW: The last edition of FOIA Files this year! This week, we’re going out on a lighter note & highlighting the Deep Cuts—the redacted, obscure & overlooked docs buried in stacks of newsworthy releases that are so good they could have been hit singles!
bloomberg.com/news/newslette… Thank you to everyone who has subscribed and helped make my weekly newsletter a success. It’s been an amazing 1st year, despite the fact that govt agencies have tried to wear me down by throwing roadblocks in my way. But I’m well aware that obtaining documents via FOIA is a battle so I was prepared.

🧵 If you can spare a couple of hours, please read this groundbreaking, yearlong global investigation by my @business colleagues into the money, opportunity & exploitation into the booming fertility industry. I guarantee once you start reading you won't be able to stop

🎁 bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-… To tell its story, my colleagues follow a teenage girl in India, lured into selling her eggs; a model in Argentina whose genetic makeup is prized; a mother in Greece, told by police that her eggs were stolen; and two “egg girls” from Taiwan who have put themselves at risk to earn money in the US.

🔎 Here's the backstory about the ODNI intelligence memo on Putin campaign to assassinate his enemies I exclusively obtained after pursuing it for years.

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https://twitter.com/JasonLeopold/status/1859984927267402237

Lawmakers tucked language inside a 2016 intelligence spending bill that tasked ODNI with preparing a classified intelligence assessment for the committees. Specifically, it was to be about “the use of political assassinations as a form of statecraft by the Russian Federation since January 1, 2000.”

NEW FOIA Files newsletter is out!

Emails and text messages obtained by FOIA Files from the US Forest Service reveal how investigators responded to threats aimed at FEMA personnel who were aiding victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina After my former @BuzzFeedNews colleague @bri_sacks (a kickass reporter) broke the story in WaPo that
a North Carolina man—armed with an assault rifle—threatened FEMA personnel, forcing them to be relocated I deployed the Freedom of Information Act to see what else I could find out.