Dept

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia reveals that high-level Justice Department officials pushed for his indictment, calling it a “top priority,” only after he was mistakenly deported and then ordered returned to the U.S.

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty in federal court in Tennessee to charges of human smuggling. He is seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution is vindictive — a way for President Trump’s administration to punish him for the embarrassment of his mistaken deportation.

To support that argument, he has asked the government to turn over documents that reveal how the decision was made to prosecute him in 2025 for an incident that occurred in 2022. On Dec. 3, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw filed an order under seal that compelled the government to provide some documents to Abrego Garcia and his attorneys. That order was unsealed on Tuesday and sheds new light on the case.

Earlier, Crenshaw found that there was “some evidence” that the prosecution of Abrego Garcia could be vindictive. He specifically cited a statement by Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on a Fox News program that seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he had won his wrongful deportation case.

Rob McGuire, who was the acting U.S. Atty. for the Middle District of Tennessee until late December, argued that those statements were irrelevant because he alone made the decision to prosecute, and he has no animus against Abrego Garcia.

In the newly unsealed order, Crenshaw writes, “Some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision.”

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee released a statement saying, “The emails cited in Judge Crenshaw’s order, specifically Mr. McGuire’s email on May 15, 2025, confirm that the ultimate decision on whether to prosecute was made by career prosecutors based on the facts, evidence, and established DOJ practice. Communications with the Deputy Attorney General’s Office about a high-profile case are both required and routine.”

The email referenced was from McGuire to his staff stating that Blanche “would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later,” according to Crenshaw’s order.

The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee in which Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding. There were nine passengers in the car, and state troopers discussed the possibility of human smuggling among themselves. However, he was ultimately allowed to leave with only a warning. The case was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations, but there is no record of any effort to charge him until April 2025, according to court records.

The order does not give a lot of detail on what is in the documents that were turned over to Abrego Garcia, but it shows that Aakash Singh, who works under Blanche in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, contacted McGuire about Abrego Garcia’s case on April 27, the same day that McGuire received a file on the case from Homeland Security Investigations. That was several days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor on April 10.

On April 30, Singh said in an email to McGuire that the prosecution was a “top priority” for the Deputy Attorney General’s Office, according to the order. Singh and McGuire continued to communicate about the prosecution. On May 18, Singh wrote to McGuire and others to hold the draft indictment until they got “clearance” to file it. “The implication is that ‘clearance’ would come from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General,” Crenshaw writes.

A hearing on the motion to dismiss the case on the basis of vindictive prosecution is scheduled for Jan. 28.

Loller writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.

The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”

Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.

Scant new insight in the disclosures

Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

The gaps go further.

The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability.

Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a years-long battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and alleged crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

“I feel like again, the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

Redactions, lack of context

Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages of records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” probably from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.

The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.

Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

“For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

Acosta, who was Labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would probably view the survivors differently.

“There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing Epstein accuser Maria Farmer and other survivors, said Saturday that her client feels vindicated after the document release. Farmer sought for years documents backing up her claim that Epstein and Maxwell were in possession of child sexual abuse images.

“It’s a triumph and a tragedy,” she said. “It looks like the government did absolutely nothing. Horrible things have happened and if they investigated in even the smallest way, they could have stopped him.”

Sisak and Caruso write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Kristin M. Hall, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.