It’s the issue that’s dogged Donald Trump’s second presidency.
Paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell in August 2019, shortly after he was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
Rumours have long circulated about his death, and there has also been speculation about who may have visited his private island.
Some of those rumours quickly spiralled into conspiracy theories.
And at the heart of it all are these Epstein files.
What are they?
In short, these are tens of thousands of pages of documents that the US Department of Justice holds on the investigation into the sex offender.
He was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges when he was found dead in his cell aged 66.
The indictment alleged he sought out minors – some as young as 14 – from at least 2002 to 2005.
He was accused of paying them hundreds of dollars in cash for sexual acts at either his New York City townhouse or his estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
He was under investigation in Florida over allegations he preyed on a number of young victims in the mid-2000s.
Ultimately, he cut a deal to plead guilty to state charges involving just one minor.
The justice department said this year he had 1,000 victims.
Haven’t we seen files already?
Tens of thousands of pages of “Epstein files” have become public over the past 20 years, many originating from victims’ lawsuits against Epstein and previous criminal investigations.
But the releases we’ve seen over the past month and a half or so have been the biggest yet, with thousands of files published.
This culminated in what the US Department of Justice said was more than three million documents being released on Friday.
It had fallen short, however, of what a bipartisan law in Congress demanded – the full release of the files at once.
Legal row over latest release
Critics say, therefore, that the latest “document dump” before this one broke the law.
Trump administration officials suggested then that thousands more documents will follow in the next two weeks.
Again, sceptics suggested this is for political purposes.
Our US correspondent James Matthews said releasing files which feature Trump more prominently over the Christmas period could have given the president a “softer” landing in the news – at a time when people tend to be paying less attention.
Trump was a friend of Epstein’s for years, but has said they fell out in about 2004, years before Epstein was first arrested.
The US president has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.
