| What this page covers | Covering marks applied to photographs, and to documents that reach the release only as photographs, together with the administrative record of how photographs of evidence were made, logged, requested and produced |
| Grounds in the Act that reach image content | Two of the five permitted withholdings in section 2(c)(1) of the Epstein Files Transparency Act: records that “depict or contain child sexual abuse materials (CSAM)”, and records that “depict or contain images of death, physical abuse, or injury of any person”1 |
| What the Department reported | That it redacted segregable portions of records under grounds (A) through (D), the two image grounds among them, and that reviewers were directed to notate officials and politically exposed persons in any document “including videos and images”2 |
| Covering marks on released photographs | On both FBI photograph placards cited here, a black rectangle covers the PHOTOGRAPHER line while the date, case number and location are left legible34 |
| Covering marks on photographed forms | On both FBI photographic logs cited here, the PREPARER/PHOTOGRAPHER field is blacked out and the date, case number, location and description table are legible56 |
| Case number printed on those four documents | 31E-NY-30275713456 |
Photographs enter the released Epstein files in more than one form. Some pages of the release are photographs in their own right, taken by the FBI during the 2019 searches.3 Some are photographs of paper, so that a handwritten form reaches a reader only as an image of itself.5 And some documents are administrative records about photographs: logs of what was photographed, requests for images of a seized item, and case-file rows recording that a photograph log was filed.678 The statute under which the Department of Justice released its files names image content twice among the grounds on which material may be withheld or redacted, and the Department’s report to Congress states that it used those grounds.12
This page reports the covering marks visible on the specific pages it cites, and the administrative record around them. It does not describe the content of any image of a person, and it carries no detail identifying anyone appearing in one.
What the Act permits to be withheld from an image
The Epstein Files Transparency Act enumerates five grounds on which the Attorney General may withhold or redact the segregable portions of a record. Two of the five are about what a record depicts rather than what it says. Section 2(c)(1)(B) reaches records that “depict or contain child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) as defined under 18 U.S.C. 2256 and prohibited under 18 U.S.C. 2252-2252A”. Section 2(c)(1)(D) reaches records that “depict or contain images of death, physical abuse, or injury of any person”. A third ground, section 2(c)(1)(A), covers victims’ personally identifiable information and their personal and medical files, and is written without reference to the medium the record is in.1
Section 2(b)(1) forbids withholding, delay or redaction “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity”, and section 2(c)(2) requires that all redactions be accompanied by a written justification published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress.1 The general operation of those provisions, and the separate redaction regimes of the courts and the FBI, are set out at Document redaction integrity.
What the Department reported
The Department’s report under the Act, published in the Federal Register on August 27, 2026, states that it “engaged in an extensive process to identify and redact” segregable portions of records falling within grounds (A) through (D), quoting each in turn, and that no material was redacted or withheld on the prohibited grounds or as properly classified.2 The two image grounds are among the four it names.21
The report also records that the review itself covered images. In explaining the list of government officials and politically exposed persons required by section 3, it states that reviewers “were directed to notate ‘all government officials and politically exposed persons named or referenced’ in any document, including videos and images, reviewed during this process.”2
The report’s appendix runs six pages, all of them read for this page; none gives a count of images redacted, a count of images withheld in whole, or a justification tied to any particular image.2
A covering mark applied to a photograph
The clearest example in the documents cited here is not a redaction of a photograph’s subject but of a photograph’s caption. FBI photographic runs open with a placard filled in by hand and photographed at the scene so that the frames which follow are identified. Two such placards are cited here from the 2019 searches of the New York residence. The first records the date 7/6/19, the case number 31E-NY-3027571 and, on two lines, the location “9 East 71st St” and “New York, NY”.3 The second records 07/11/2019, the same case number and the location “9 East 71st Street, New York, NY 10021”.4
On both, the printed word PHOTOGRAPHER stands and the line beside it is covered by a solid black rectangle, while the date, case number and location lines are left legible.34 The mark sits inside the photograph, over the part of the depicted paper that carries the name, and the rest of the frame is untouched.34 Redaction of an identifier while the frame around it is left in place is described, for the text productions, at Document redaction integrity.
The photographic logs
The photograph runs were also logged on paper. The FBI’s Photographic Log, form FD-674, has a general information block for the date, case number, location and preparer or photographer, and below it a two-column table of photograph numbers against a handwritten description of what each frame or run of frames shows. Two of these logs from the search of Little Saint James on 8/12/2019 are cited here as photographs of the form itself, one of them still on its clipboard.56
On both, the PREPARER/PHOTOGRAPHER line is covered by a solid black rectangle; the date, the case number 31E-NY-3027571, the location, and the whole description table are legible, and are what this page relies on.56 On one, the rows legible in the photograph run from frame 1 to frame 153 in what the form records as Zones C and D, describing runs by structure and room, among them a pool house, a gazebo, a temple, a construction yard and a gym.6 The other covers frames 245 to 308 in a maintenance area and office in Zone B, describing an entry office area, desks, closets, computer serial numbers and a maintenance shed area. Its first entry is a cover sheet and its last is the log itself, so that the sequence closes by photographing the document that describes it.5
What these logs establish is what was photographed and how many frames were exposed. They are not the photographs, and the frames they enumerate are not in the pages cited here.56
Photographs of a seized item
An FBI New York email thread of July 14 and 15, 2025 shows the Bureau trying to obtain photographs of a single item of evidence six years after it was seized, and is the fullest account in the documents cited here of how images of evidence were made and moved.7
The thread concerns item 1B76, recorded on the evening of July 14, 2025 as one Austrian passport with Epstein’s photograph and a different name, alongside five expired United States passports the office knew of.7 An Assistant Special Agent in Charge asked at 7:31 p.m. whether the office had a photograph of the item, at 9:06 p.m. whether it had the bio page, and at 9:40 p.m. for photographs of the bio page and all stamps. At 8:11 p.m. a correspondent had sent a photograph and described it in the same sentence as “(not helpful.)”, adding that “The original Search Warrant-Evidence photos were saved in a disc, and I cannot access them in Sentinel.” At 9:26 p.m. another wrote that the office did not have photographs of the passport’s additional pages, “at least not in Sentinel”, and that the original search warrant evidence photograph disc would have to be checked.7
The next morning the request was escalated at 8:57 a.m.: “We need to run the name ASAP and get the photos of the passport, front, back, bio ,and all pages this morning.”7 At 10:12:54 a.m. an agent five minutes from the evidence building was scanning the passport, and at 10:49 a.m. a further message records that Washington Field Office executive management “did not want to send us the scanned photos of the passport and are having an ERT person go to the Evidence Office to take pictures of the passport and they will send us those.”7
Every sender and recipient name and address in the header blocks of the pages cited is blacked out.7
A photograph log recorded in a case file
The serial report for case 90A-NY-3151227, described on its own summary page in the export as a death investigation case opened by FBI New York after Epstein was discovered unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on 08/10/2019, lists its serials by number, date and title. One row of the title column reads “(U) Photo Log for Photos 41-67 of METROPOLITAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER”.8
The row establishes that a photograph log was filed to that case file and nothing more. Neither the log nor the twenty-seven frames it covers appears in the pages cited here. Every personal name in the neighbouring rows on that page is replaced by a redaction marker, and none is supplied here.8
A search photograph released without a covering mark
One photograph, identified between the two placards described above, shows an interior corridor and a closed door bearing a red wall sign reading “24 HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE”, with bags of potting mix stacked along the wall. No person appears in it, it carries no caption of its own, and as served it carries no covering mark anywhere in the frame.9
That establishes only what it says. Nothing cited on this page records what any producer did to an image before release, so the absence of a visible mark on a served frame is not a statement about the frame that was taken.9
Limits of this page
What a covering mark conceals cannot be read. This wiki does not guess at, decode or publish what lies beneath one, does not supply a name into a document that withholds it, and does not decode a document’s own pseudonymous designations.
In the images cited here, every covering mark sits over a caption or over a form field; none of them covers what a photograph depicts, and this page found none that does among the images it cites. That is a statement about the images cited here, not about the release.
This page reports what a document establishes about a photograph. It does not describe the content of any image of a person, and it carries no detail identifying anyone appearing in one.
A covering mark is a legal or administrative determination and not an accusation against anyone whose name or image it removes.
Related
Document redaction integrity; Redacted filings; Epstein Files Transparency Act; FBI evidence inventory; FBI intake records; Epstein video evidence; Photographic evidence sets; Epstein interior photographs; Maxwell trial exhibits; FOIA exemptions; Withheld government records; 9 East 71st Street; Little Saint James; Death of Jeffrey Epstein.
Footnotes
-
Epstein Files Transparency Act, Public Law 119-38, 139 Stat. 655 (Nov. 19, 2025), sections 2(b)(1), 2(c)(1)(A), (B) and (D), and 2(c)(2). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ38/html/PLAW-119publ38.htm ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5
-
U.S. Department of Justice, “Report Under Public Law 119-38,” 91 Fed. Reg. 55356 (Aug. 27, 2026), appendix, report pp.2-3 (Fed. Reg. pp.55358-55359), read from the page images. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/27/2026-17533/report-under-public-law-119-38 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6
-
FBI photograph placard, photographed at the head of the search photograph run, recording 7/6/19, case 31E-NY-3027571 and 9 East 71st St, New York, NY. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00000001 Nothing else in the frame is described here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6
-
FBI photograph placard, form FD-674a (7-24-2017), photographed later in the same run, recording 07/11/2019, case 31E-NY-3027571 and 9 East 71st Street, New York, NY 10021. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00000837 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5
-
FBI Photographic Log, form FD-674 (Rev. 5-10-2013), dated 8/12/2019, case 31E-NY-3027571, Little St. James Island, USVI, maintenance area and office in Zone B; frames 245 to 308. Photographed on its clipboard. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00003158 Nothing else in the frame is described here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7
-
FBI Photographic Log, same form and date, case 31E-NY-3027571, Little St. James Island, USVI, Zones C and D; frames 1 to 153. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00003095 Nothing else in the frame is described here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7
-
FBI New York email thread, subject “Epstein having different passports seized in apt”, messages of July 14, 2025 from 5:11 p.m. and of July 15, 2025 to 11:01 a.m., timed as printed in the thread. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01656330 pp.3-5. The quotation “front, back, bio ,and all pages” reproduces the spacing printed on p.4. Nothing else in that document is cited here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7
-
FBI case-file export, case summary page for 90A-NY-3151227 at p.150, the serial report headed with the same case number at p.151, and its title column at p.159. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01684602 The summary page spells the given name “JEFFERY”. This export is a compound production carrying several case files under different case numbers; the page cited is identified by the case number its own report is headed with, and no part of the production beyond that page is described here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
-
Uncaptioned photograph showing a wall sign reading “24 HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE”. Nothing on the frame states who took it; it is associated with the FBI’s 2019 search only by its Bates position between the two placards cited here. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00000345 ↩ ↩2