It is no longer a question of who is in the newly released Epstein files. The real question is which celebrity, politician or billionaire doesn’t get a mention in the three million pages.

Donald Trump, who has categorically denied any wrongdoing, looms large in the salacious saga. Bill Clinton’s name surfaces frequently with one photograph showing him in a hot tub. Even former president George H.W. Bush gets a purported reference over an alleged homosexual encounter.

Melinda French Gates, now divorced from Bill Gates, says she went with her husband to meet Epstein out of curiosity and regretted it instantly. She described him as “evil” and “repulsive”, and said she wished she had never walked through his door.

Epstein, for his part, claimed that Bill Gates contracted a sexually transmitted disease after sex with “a beautiful Russian woman”. According to Epstein, Gates pleaded for antibiotics to “surreptitiously” give to Melinda. Gates has consistently said he met Epstein only a handful of times to explore fundraising for philanthropic causes. Through a spokesperson, he flatly denied the latest public allegations, calling them “absolutely absurd and completely false”.

Even though the material is heavily redacted, there is a vast volume of explicit content and a mass of allegations and claims.

Across the Atlantic, Peter Mandelson, a former British cabinet minister and later the UK’s ambassador to Washington who resigned over his friendship with Epstein, is pulled again into the murk. According to the files, Mandelson’s husband requested a $10,000 payment from Epstein to cover the cost of an osteopathy course.

Then, there is the now de-royalled Prince Andrew. A series of photographs from an FBI-compiled list of sexual assault allegations appear to show him crouching over a small-framed young woman whose age cannot be determined. Epstein was invited to Buckingham Palace. “Delighted for you to come here to BP,” Andrew wrote in an email shortly after the financier completed a jail sentence in 2010 for abusing a 14-year-old girl in Florida.

Following the massive file dump, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer turned up the heat on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known after being stripped by King Charles of his royal titles over the scandal. He warned that Andrew is failing Epstein’s victims by continuing to dodge questions about his relationship with the paedophile. The prime minister urged Andrew to finally testify before a US congressional committee that has been seeking his evidence since November, saying bluntly: “Epstein’s victims have to be the first priority."

Most of the allegations about the activities of former presidents, royalty, tech titans and government figures come from Epstein’s voluminous, typo-strewn email correspondence.

Elon Musk also makes an appearance. Messages attributed to Musk suggest he asked Epstein to let him know “what day/night will be the wildest party” on his island, the epicentre of countless abuse allegations. Musk has since said he refused to go, and there is no indication in the files that he ever visited the island.

Many commentators argue that Epstein’s close associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, now serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking under-age girls, was the real mastermind. They claim Epstein lacked the intelligence to run such a sprawling and sophisticated influence-peddling operation on his own.

While the files released so far amount to only about half of the total “Epstein Files”, the sheer volume of material is staggering. One video shows Epstein chasing several women around his kitchen. The women are blacked out, making it impossible to tell whether they are clothed.

At the darkest edge of the files is a civil lawsuit filed in April 2016 in a US federal court in California. The complaint accused Trump and Jeffrey Epstein of repeatedly sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl in 1994.

The lawsuit, brought by a woman using the pseudonym Katie Johnson, alleged she was recruited to attend parties at Epstein’s New York residence after being promised money and a modelling career. Instead, she claimed, she was treated as a “sex slave” over several months.

According to the filing, the girl was allegedly subjected to repeated sexual assaults by both men and was warned that she and her family would be harmed if she ever spoke out. The abuse was alleged to have taken place during the summer of 1994.

The complaint named a key witness, a former Epstein employee identified as Tiffany Doe, described as a long-serving party organiser who was allegedly present during several of the incidents. The filing stated that Doe had agreed to provide sworn testimony and would corroborate the plaintiff’s account, including claims that underage girls were used as “sex slaves” at Epstein’s properties.

The plaintiff filed the lawsuit in person seeking $100 million in damages for sexual abuse, conspiracy and civil rights violations in US federal court in April 2016. She later withdrew her suit, with her attorney saying it was because she feared for her safety. Just days before she was set to reveal her identity at a press conference in November 2016, her lawyer announced she would not appear, saying she was “too afraid”. Ÿĺrump has vigorously denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

Democrats in Congress, who pushed hard for disclosure, say the release is only half the archive and accuse authorities of slow-walking transparency.

The final section of the files renews questions about Epstein’s death. Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in July 2019 and was found hanged in his jail cell a month later. While there were a string of failures inside the jail, including guards falling asleep and broken surveillance cameras, multiple investigations have ruled the death a suicide. Yet emails between investigators show lingering unease. One noted that Epstein’s final message, whose contents have never been divulged, “doesn’t look like a suicide note”.

Meanwhile, the emails suggest that Epstein was convinced that British publishing proprietor Robert Maxwell, the father of his longtime fixer Ghislaine, had been murdered, writing cryptically that he was “passed away”.