By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — A huge new tranche of files on millionaire financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released Friday revealed details of his communications with the wealthy and powerful, some not long before he died by suicide in 2019.

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The Justice Department said it was disclosing more than 3 million pages of documents, as well as thousands of videos and photos, as required by a law passed by Congress. By Friday evening, more than 600,000 documents had been published online. Millions of files that prosecutors had identified as potentially subject to release under the law remain under wraps, however, drawing criticism from Democrats.

Here’s what we know so far about the files now being reviewed by a team of Associated Press reporters:

Epstein talked politics with Steve Bannon, ex-Obama official

The documents show Epstein exchanged hundreds of friendly texts with Steve Bannon, a top advisor to President Donald Trump, some months before Epstein’s death.

They discussed politics, travel and a documentary Bannon was said to be planning that would help salvage Epstein’s reputation.

In March 2019, Bannon asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome.

A couple of months later, Epstein messaged to Bannon: “Now you can understand why trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”

The context is unclear from the documents, which were released with many redactions and little clear organization.

Another 2018 exchange focused on Trump’s threats at the time to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he had named to the post just the year prior.

Around the same time, Epstein also communicated with Kathy Ruemmler, a lawyer and former Obama White House official. In a typo-filled email, he warned that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a Mafia-type figure even as he derided the president as a “maniac.”

Bannon did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comment. Ruemmler said through a spokesperson she was associated with Epstein professionally during her time as a lawyer in private practice and now “regrets ever knowing him.”

He also chatted with Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick about island visits

Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk emailed Epstein in 2012 and 2013 about visiting his infamous island compound, the scene of many allegations of sexual abuse.

Epstein inquired in an email about how many people Musk would like flown by helicopter, and Musk responded it would likely be just him as his partner at the time. “What day/night will be the wildest party on our island?” he wrote, according to the Justice Department records.

It’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Spokespersons for Musk’s companies, Tesla and X, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday.

Musk has maintained that he repeatedly turned down the disgraced financier’s overtures. “Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED,” he posted on X in 2025

Epstein also invited Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to the island in Dec. 2012. Lutnick’s wife enthusiastically accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. The two also had drinks on another occasion in 2011, according to a schedule. Six years later, they emailed about the construction of a building across the street from both of their homes.

Lutnick has distanced himself from Epstein, calling him “gross” and saying in 2025 that he cut ties decades ago. He didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment on Friday afternoon.

The records also have new details on Epstein’s incarceration and suicide

Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019, and found dead in his cell just over a month later.

The latest batch of documents includes emails between investigators about Epstein’s death, including an investigator’s observation that his final communication doesn’t look like a suicide note. Multiple investigations have determined that Epstein’s death was a suicide.

The records also detail a trick that jail staffers used to fool the media gathered outside while Epstein’s body was removed: they used boxes and sheets to create what appeared to be a body and loaded it into a white van labeled as belonging to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

The reporters followed the van when it left the jail, not knowing that Epstein’s actual body was loaded into a black vehicle, which departed “unnoticed,” according to the interview notes.

Associated Press reporters across the country contributed to this story, including Michael R. Sisak and Philip Marcelo in New York, Cal Woodward in Washington, Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, and Meg Kinnard in South Carolina.

By MATTHEW LEE

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has approved a massive new arms sales package to Israel totaling $6.67 billion, including 30 Apache attack helicopters and related equipment and weapons, as well as 3,250 light tactical vehicles.

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The State Department announced the four separate sales to Israel late Friday amid rising tensions in the Middle East over the possibility of U.S. military strikes in Iran.

The sales also were announced as President Donald Trump pushes ahead with his ceasefire plan for Gaza that is intended to end the Israel-Hamas conflict and reconstruct and redevelop the Palestinian territory after two years of war left it devastated, with tens of thousands dead.

The Apache helicopters, which will be equipped with rocket launchers and advanced targeting gear, are the biggest part of the total package, coming to $3.8 billion, according to the State Department, which notified Congress of its approval of the sales on Friday.

The next largest portion is the light tactical vehicles, which will be used to move personnel and logistics “to extend lines of communication” for the Israel Defense Forces and will cost $1.98 billion, it said.

Israel will spend an additional $740 million on power packs for armored personnel carriers it has had in service since 2008, the department said. The remaining $150 million will be spent on a small but unreported number of light utility helicopters to complement similar equipment it already has, it said.

In separate but nearly identical statements, the department said none of the new sales would affect the military balance in the region and that all of them would “enhance Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats by improving its ability to defend Israel’s borders, vital infrastructure, and population centers.”

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” the statements said.

By SAVANNAH PETERS

EDGEWOOD, N.M. (AP) — The reverse side of the U.S. Mint’s 2026 Sacagawea $1 coin will feature Polly Cooper, a woman from the Oneida tribe known for helping George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

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The release of the coin this week coincides with celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It recognizes Cooper’s role in a 1778 relief expedition from Oneida territory in what is now central New York to the rebel troops’ winter encampment in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where they were facing a food and supply crisis.

“Polly Cooper symbolizes courage that is not just found on the battlefield but in compassion and willingness to help others, which is just a part of Oneida culture and hospitality,” said Ray Halbritter, a representative of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York.

Cooper and a delegation of 47 Oneida warriors carried bushels of white corn on the long, cold trek to feed the starving soldiers. According to Oneida oral tradition, Cooper intervened to prevent Washington’s hungry soldiers from eating the white corn raw, which would have made them sick. She taught them how to prepare hulled corn soup.

The coin features Cooper offering a basket of corn to Washington, a design that Halbritter said his community worked on closely with the U.S. Mint. The other side depicts Sacagawea, a young Native American woman who was a crucial guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition.

It’s the latest release under the Native American $1 Coin Program, established by a 2007 act of Congress to commemorate individual Native Americans and tribes.

Past coins have featured Osage prima ballerina Maria Tallchief; Jim Thorpe of the Sac and Fox Nation who was an Olympic champion and multi-sport professional athlete; and landmark historical events like the signing of the 1778 treaty with the Delaware, the first of over 400 treaties negotiated between the United States and Native nations, although not all were ratified.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said the program highlights those who helped establish a country grounded in freedom and self-determination.

Meanwhile, some coin designs previously authorized in anticipation of the 250th anniversary have been scrapped by President Donald Trump’s administration, including coins that would have featured suffragettes who pushed to give women the right to vote and civil rights icon Ruby Bridges.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury, which oversees the U.S. Mint, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Oneida Indian Nation of New York calls itself “America’s first ally.” It broke with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in allying with the Continental Army “at great sacrifice,” Halbritter said. The alliance made the Oneida a target for retaliation by the British and other Haudenosaunee nations. By the end of the Revolution, as much as a third of the tribe’s population had perished.

“In the long run, the Oneida don’t fare any better than tribes that sided with the British,” said Dartmouth College professor Colin Calloway, an expert on Indigenous history during the revolutionary era.

Calloway said a desire to separate Native people from their land was one force that “catapulted” Americans into revolution, and that millions of acres (hectares) of Oneida territory were seized by the state of New York and private land speculators in the decades following the war. This eventually led to the displacement of many Oneida to reservations in Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada.

Like popular historical narratives around Sacagawea and the first encounters between Wampanoag people and the pilgrims, Calloway said Cooper’s story could be co-opted to signify a “benign, reciprocal relationship” that never truly existed between American settlers and Indigenous people.

Still, the coin commemorates what Oneidas consider their pivotal role in the nation’s struggle for independence.

“The whole country reaps the benefit of Polly Cooper’s conduct because we won the conflict and the United States was born,” Halbritter said.

By JOCELYN NOVECK

Now is certainly not the time for pettifogging. But can we confabulate about the comic brilliance of Catherine O’Hara?

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These radically arcane words, like so many others, dripped off the gifted comedian’s tongue so silkily as Moira, her singularly eccentric matriarch in “Schitt’s Creek,” that you laughed well before you wondered what the heck they meant. (For the record: “pettifogging” means to emphasize petty details, and “confabulate” simply means to talk.)

But conversely, O’Hara, who died Friday at 71, could make a ho-hum phrase utterly hilarious. As when she desperately declared, trying a bit of line-cutting in the crowded “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” afterlife waiting room: “I have global entry!”

And for something even more concise, how about her simple, one-word line reading of “KEVIN!!!” — the child she kept leaving behind in the “Home Alone” movies?

In any case, as Moira would say, don’t be a dewdropper (a lazybones.) Here are some indelible O’Hara roles to catch up on:

Moira in “Schitt’s Creek” (2015-2020)

The commercial that Moira Rose films for local vintner Herb Ertlinger’s fruit wine starts out reasonably well. Until she tries to pronounce the product’s name.

“Herb Ervlinger. Erv Herblinger. Bing Liveheinger,” she intones, inebriated, in a virtuosic scene that recalls Lucille Ball in her Vitameatavegamin ad.

Moira, a career-capping (and Emmy-winning) role in the comedy created by Eugene and son Dan Levy, brought O’Hara legions of new fans — and elevated a new vocabulary. She discovered much of it in obscure word books, she said.

This image released by Pop TV shows, from left, Annie Murphy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara and Dan Levy from the series “Schitt’s Creek.” (Pop TV via AP)

O’Hara told The Associated Press she’d created the character by thinking of women married to wealthy men — women who wanted to be seen as special, in their own right. Her unique look included a series of eccentric wigs. “I knew a woman who would have dinner parties at her house and she would keep disappearing and coming back with different wigs. And she would appear like, ‘Tada’” — Whatever Moira was feeling on a particular day would dictate what kind of wig she would wear.”

“Schitt’s Creek” is available to rent on various platforms.

Delia in “Beetlejuice” (1988) and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (2024)

Thirty-six years after the first “Beetlejuice,” Tim Burton retuned with a 2024 sequel. Why, you ask? Well, here’s one really good reason: O’Hara.

Her Delia Deetz, the narcissistic artist stepmom of Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz, was a supporting character who stole the whole show.

Catherine O’Hara as Delia in the movie “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” (Warner Bros./TNS)

To sample her comic timing, just take the quick scene where Delia, mounting a gallery show where she herself is the canvas, notifies Lydia: “You father has left me.”

“He’s divorcing you? Lydia asks. “What a horrible thought!” replies a shocked Delia. (Beat). “No, he’s dead.”

The “Beetlejuice” movies are available to rent on various platforms.

Kate McAllister in “Home Alone” (1990) and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” (1992)

OK, motherhood is chaotic. It’s hard to keep track of everything. Things can mistakenly be left at home. A child, even.

Once.

But, twice? That’s iconic.

Catherine O’Hara, left, and Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone.” Culkin mourned his “Home Alone” co-star O’Hara after her death Friday at age 71. (IFA Film/ZUMA Press Wire/TNS)

On the plane in that first “Home Alone” movie, Kate tells her husband she has a terrible feeling she forgot something. “Did I turn off the coffee?” “Did you lock up?” And then, the awful realization: “KEVIN!”

Kate had changed her hair into a stylish bob — but apparently hadn’t updated her mothering skills — two years later when, in the sequel, Kevin again was discovered missing, at the Miami airport. This time, O’Hara’s “KEVIN!” was squealed at a high pitch — accompanied by her falling backwards, unconscious.

Those moments allowed O’Hara, in a mostly straight role, to add bits of signature zaniness. But the reunion scenes with Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) were heartwarming, and it was hard to not tear up when she apologized and said: “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

“Mama, I thought we had time,” Culkin said on Instagram Friday, alongside an image from “Home Alone.”

The “Home Alone” movies are available on Disney+ and can be rented on various platforms.

Cookie in “Best In Show” (2000)

We have 80 episodes of “Schitt’s Creek” to see the brilliant synergy between O’Hara and Eugene Levy, but If you want to see their early magic, look no further than Cookie and Gerry Fleck, the married dogowners in Christopher Guest’s classic mockumentary “Best In Show.”

370100 06: Eugene Levy, left, and Catherine O”Hara star in Castle Rock Entertainment’s film, “Best In Show.” (Photo by Wren Maloney/Online USA)

For example, when Cookie and Gerry sing an ode to their beloved Norwich Terrier.

O’Hara, for one, sings in a musical key that sounds too high to actually exist on this planet.

“God loves a terrier, yes he does” they sing. “God didn’t miss a stitch, Be a dog or be a bitch. When he made the Norwich merrier with its cute little derriere; Yes, God loves a terrier.”

“Best in Show” is available to rent on various platforms.