WASHINGTON — (AP) — Attorney General Pam Bondi is expected to publicly release flight logs and other government documents related to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, though the files are unlikely to include new bombshells about the sex trafficking case that has captured the fascination of conspiracy theorists.

The documents being released by the Justice Department are unlikely to satisfy online sleuths eager for fresh details about Epstein’s crimes and connections to famous people that have long been the subject of intense media scrutiny.

The Justice Department said the first batch, expected to be posted online later Thursday, is largely made up of files that have already been circulating in the public domain since Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan federal jail a month after his arrest in 2019.

Before the documents were publicly released, binders that read “The Epstein Files: Part I” were given at the White House to conservative political commentators with large followings on X, formerly known as Twitter. The binders read “declassified,” though it was not immediately clear if the files had ever been classified, and described Trump’s White House as “the most transparent administration.”

Bondi suggested in a Thursday letter to FBI Director Kash Patel that more records were recently discovered. She ordered the FBI to hand over "the full and complete Epstein files" to her by Friday morning, and directed Patel "conduct an immediate investigation" into why her order to the FBI to turn over all documents was not followed.

Epstein was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls in the early 2000s. He was indicted on federal charges in New York in 2019, more than a decade after he secretly struck a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida to dispose of similar charges of sex trafficking.

The case has drawn widespread attention because of Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell's links to royals, presidents and billionaires. Maxwell herself is the daughter of the late British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, who once owned the New York Daily News.

Over the years, thousands of pages of records have been released through lawsuits, Epstein's criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests. In January 2024, a court unsealed a trove of documents that had been collected as evidence in a lawsuit filed by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.

Much of the material, including transcripts of victim interviews and old police reports, had already been publicly known. They included mentions of President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and magician David Copperfield, as well as testimony from one victim who said she met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Florida home but that nothing untoward happened with him.

The previously released files included a 2016 deposition in which an accuser recounted spending several hours with Epstein at Trump’s Atlantic City casino but didn’t say if she actually met Trump and did not accuse him of any wrongdoing. Trump has also said that he once thought Epstein was a “terrific guy,” but that they later had a falling out.

In 2023, The Associated Press obtained thousands of pages of records shedding light on the final days of Epstein's life at a now-shuttered federal jail in Manhattan. They included emails between jail officials, psychological evaluations, internal agency reports, memos and other records.

The Justice Department’s Inspector General later issued a report finding that a “combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures” by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and jail workers enabled Epstein to take his own life in August 2019. The watchdog report found no evidence of foul play.

_____ Sisak reported from New York.

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.