Epstein: the Missing Files
Last year, then-Attorney General Bondi and the FBI both said that the Epstein files contained tens of thousands of files of child sexual abuse material.
However, documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act claim there were essentially no such files.
An internal SDNY email (the district that prosecuted Epstein and Maxwell) from 2025 says they could only find about a dozen files. An FBI memo from then says they’ve managed to find between 15-20 CSAM images.
What happened to the missing files?
Aaron Spivack and the FBI Server Breach
Aaron Spivack is an undercover FBI agent and forensic expert. He was the agent who arrested Epstein in 2019 at Teterboro Airport, and he was on the team that searched Epstein’s island.
The FBI asked him in 2022 to set up networking to allow remote access on the server that held CSAM related to active investigations. By his own admission, he had no networking expertise and didn’t know how to do it properly. He also says the FBI didn’t give them enough money to buy the hard drives they needed. Predictably, in February 2023, the server got “hacked,” leading to 500 Terabytes of data from the CSAM server getting stolen. The hacker was looking at Epstein files, according to Spivack.
Spivack says he managed to recover 400 Terabytes, but he was given no help and just told to Google how to recover the data.
He accuses the FBI of entrapping him, and says he shouldn’t be responsible for the FBI’s systemic failures.
Let’s look at some other cases.
Lichtenstein and the Doorman
In 2021, New York federal agents were investigating Ilya Lichtenstein for stealing billions of dollars in Bitcoin from crypto exchange Bitfinex.
But they didn’t have a warrant. So instead (per Vanity Fair) they told the doorman that they were investigating someone who was distributing child porn, and they were picking up “signals” from that building. The doorman let them in.
Later, Lichtenstein pled guilty to laundering the money from the hack. The government recovered the vast majority of the funds. He was never charged with any child related crimes.
Was the FBI trying to frame him for another crime to pressure him into pleading guilty and returning the money?
Sigalovskaya and Federal Immunity
In 2013, New York federal agents arrested Karina Sigalovskaya and charged her with creating pornographic images of her own children. The agents claimed she had confessed to taking the pictures. She hadn’t. She spent three weeks in jail, lost custody and contact with her children for three months, and was required to register as a sex offender. When she sued the agents for fabricating evidence, the Second Circuit dismissed her case — reasoning that creating liability for federal agents who fabricate evidence might implicate national security, because HSI sometimes handles international matters. As the court put it:
It is possible, if not probable, that national security concerns could be implicated by extending a Bivens remedy to Sigalovskaya’s claims against an HSI special agent.
Federal agents who fabricate CSAM evidence in this country are, as a practical matter, immune from civil suit.
Ulbricht and the Corrupt Agents
Ross Ulbricht was the first criminal prosecution over crypto, also in SDNY. Two different federal agents — Carl Force and Shaun Bridges — were later convicted of extortion and stealing crypto from Ulbricht, who has since been pardoned by Donald Trump.
Eisenberg and the Mango Markets Case
Another suspicious crypto case involves Avraham Eisenberg. In 2022, he was charged in SDNY with stealing over $100 million from a crypto exchange, and he was convicted at trial in 2024. But then a judge tossed out the charges, saying that what he did wasn’t wire fraud because it wasn’t prohibited by the exchange.
However, he didn’t go free, because right before the trial on the crypto charges, he pled guilty to possession of CSAM.
Interestingly, the documents say that the CSAM was found on Eisenberg’s laptop and phones, which were all models from 2021-2022. For example, the laptop model was RZ09-0406, a 2021 model. But the charges say the files were downloaded in 2017. The warrant to search for CSAM was issued with a return date of February 20, 2023 — only a week after the 500 Terabytes were hacked out of the FBI CSAM server.
The same judge also found that Eisenberg’s laptop and phones had been unconstitutionally held. The government waited 24 days before obtaining a warrant to search them. What happened during those 24 days? Did the FBI’s “systemic failures” lead to 2017 files from another case being conveniently attributed to Eisenberg when he wouldn’t cooperate and plead guilty like Lichtenstein did?
Schulte and the CIA Leak
In 2017, Joshua Schulte was investigated in SDNY for leaking CIA documents to WikiLeaks. He was charged with having CSAM files first, and only later indicted on the leaking charges. He went to trial on both cases and was convicted and sentenced to 40 years. He was also charged in Virginia with sexually assaulting an adult roommate, but the charges were dropped.
In an interesting coincidence, Spivack did the analysis of Schulte’s discovery computer in August 2023. Shockingly, he claimed to have found CSAM on a court-authorized discovery computer that Schulte used while in jail. He also testified in Schulte’s CSAM trial.
The thousands of CSAM files on his home computer dated back to 2009. But the government alleged that he built the computer in 2016. He was never charged for the CSAM that Spivack found on the discovery computer. Schulte was under Special Administrative Measures. It’s really hard to see how he could have possibly smuggled CSAM on a computer he could only use under heavy monitoring.
At sentencing, the judge said that the espionage case was largely circumstantial, because Schulte was so careful to cover his tracks, but that the evidence in the CSAM case was overwhelming. In other words, the prosecution had a weak primary case and a strong backup. The first jury to consider the espionage case hung and he was only convicted the second time around — an acquittal was always a live possibility.
Earlier in 2017, Obama had commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence, who had also leaked to WikiLeaks.
Was the CIA concerned about a potential pardon for Schulte, or that they’d just lose the espionage charges, and made sure he’d be convicted on other charges? Then planted CSAM on the discovery computer as a backup, just in case they couldn’t convict on the existing evidence?
Raniere and NXIVM
In 2018, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York charged NXIVM founder Keith Raniere with sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit forced labor. The original case did not include any child-related charges.
Eleven months after the FBI’s March 2018 raid on Raniere’s library, an agent reviewing a hard drive seized from that raid reported finding 22 nude photos of an alleged 15-year-old girl, referred to in court documents as “Camila.” On March 13, 2019 — about eight weeks before trial — prosecutors filed a second superseding indictment adding possession of child pornography and two counts of sexual exploitation of a child. The same day, NXIVM co-founder Nancy Salzman pled guilty.
Within about five weeks of the new charges, all five of Raniere’s co-defendants pled out. Cooperating witness Lauren Salzman testified at trial that the child pornography evidence was part of why she took her plea deal. Raniere stood trial alone and was convicted on all seven counts on June 19, 2019. He was sentenced to 120 years.
After the conviction, Raniere’s defense team retained six forensic experts to analyze the digital evidence. Three were former FBI: Dr. J. Richard Kiper, a former FBI Special Agent and Computer Forensic Examiner with 20 years at the bureau; Stacy Eldridge, a former FBI Senior Forensic Examiner; and William Odom, a former FBI Special Agent with 25 years in digital forensics. They were joined by Harvard Law professors Ron Sullivan and Alan Dershowitz and former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas Bud Cummins.
Their findings: the hard drive’s “intermediary” computer — through which the photos supposedly transferred from the camera card to the backup drive — was never produced and never found. The camera card was accessed by the FBI on September 19, 2018, without a write-blocker, breaking chain of custody. The 22 contraband photos were not officially “discovered” until February 2019, five months later.
Kiper said in his affidavit:
In my 20 years serving as an FBI agent, I have never observed or claimed that an FBI employee tampered with evidence, digital or otherwise. But in this case, I strongly believe the multiple, intentional alterations to the digital information I have discovered constitute evidence manipulation.
From their statement:
None of us have ever in our careers claimed to have witnessed government tampering, much less the scale of tampering that we’ve seen in this case. But after examining the evidence presented by the government, we’ve all concluded that the digital evidence devices used to convict Mr. Raniere of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a minor were significantly manipulated. Additionally, we know to a scientific certainty that some of the evidence was altered while in the possession of the FBI. Although we don’t know the precise timing of the tampering, we do know someone extensively altered the media card used to justify the charges. And we know dozens of files, including the alleged contraband photos, were planted on the hard drive and were made to look like a backup.
Dershowitz told Fox News:
They had an alleged very, very, very weak case against the defendant, very weak. He easily could have won the case, and then, at the last minute, they “discovered” a photograph of a female, naked, who they claim was underage. Now, once you introduce into evidence anything involving an underage female, the case is over.
After Raniere’s conviction, Camila submitted a sworn declaration affirming that the 22 photos were of her, that they were taken in 2005 when she was 15, and that her sexual relationship with Raniere began that year. Judge Garaufis denied Raniere’s Rule 33 motion in April 2024, finding the FBI’s responsive declaration “more plausible.” On October 27, 2025, the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction by summary order. Raniere has never gotten an evidentiary hearing on these tampering claims.
Mushegian, Pierce, and Puerto Rico
Eisenberg was arrested in Puerto Rico in December 2022, near where another crypto figure had turned up dead just a month earlier. Maker DAO co-founder Nikolai Mushegian’s body was found hours after he tweeted the following:
CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and caribbean islands. They are going to frame me with a laptop planted by my ex gf who was a spy. They will torture me to death.
To date, no arrests have been made in relation to Mushegian’s death. The local police have ruled it an accidental drowning.
Brock Pierce is a co-founder of Tether, a billionaire, and an associate of Epstein who helped him invest in Coinbase. He lives in Puerto Rico. In 2002, he was arrested by Interpol in Spain and held for a month, after over 8,000 CSAM files were found at the villa he was staying in. He was ultimately not charged and let go, while his partner was extradited and convicted. (He told BuzzFeed that he doesn’t believe the police report saying CSAM was found and that he never saw any in the house. He reportedly tried to buy his partner a Liberian diplomatic title to get him immunity.) He was accused in a civil case of raping and drugging several boys; everything was dropped or settled.
Closing
The full picture may never come out. The FBI, the DOJ, and certainly the CIA are unlikely to volunteer it, and the institutional incentives run against accountability. But the cases above are documented in court filings, sworn statements, and the bureau’s own internal communications. They’re worth investigating. The questions they raise deserve answers.
Sources
OPENING / EPSTEIN FILES TRANSPARENCY ACT
SPIVACK / FBI BREACH
Spivack sworn statement to FBI Inspection Division (September 2024)
Last Page First: Spivack’s role in Epstein arrest and the Super Bowl Sunday breach
LICHTENSTEIN / DOORMAN
SIGALOVSKAYA
ULBRICHT / FORCE / BRIDGES
EISENBERG
SCHULTE
RANIERE / NXIVM
Law & Crime: October 2022 press conference, full panel of experts and attorneys
Official press release from the experts’ panel (October 6, 2022)
Frank Report on hard drive seizure and chain-of-custody issues
Fox News: Dershowitz interview (”very, very, very weak case”)
Second Circuit summary order (October 27, 2025) affirming conviction