Two decades after Jeffrey Epstein was first reported to police, the Justice Department has started to release its investigative files on the late millionaire, who was accused of repeatedly sexually abusing underage girls.

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Enacted last month, the Epstein Files Transparency Act requires disclosure of government records on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell by Friday — though it’s possible more records will be released on a rolling basis.

Among questions surrounding the release: how much light the documents shed on Epstein’s crimes, his interactions with influential friends in business, politics and academia and whether anything in the documents will support — or debunk — one accuser’s claims that other powerful men participated in or knew about Epstein’s misconduct.

Here is a timeline of the Epstein investigations and the efforts to open up the government’s files:

The investigation begins

March 2005: Police begin investigating Epstein after the family of a 14-year-old girl reports she was molested at his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. Multiple underage girls, many of them high school students, would later tell police Epstein hired them to give sexual massages.

May 2006: Palm Beach police officials sign paperwork to charge Epstein with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor, but the county’s top prosecutor, State Attorney Barry Krischer, takes the unusual step of sending the case to a grand jury.

July 2006: Epstein is arrested after a grand jury indicts him on a count of soliciting prostitution. The relatively minor charge upsets Palm Beach police leaders, who publicly accuse Krischer of giving Epstein special treatment. The FBI begins an investigation.

2007: Federal prosecutors prepare an indictment, but for a year Epstein’s lawyers engage in talks with the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, about a deal that would avoid a federal prosecution. Epstein’s lawyers decry his accusers as unreliable.

Secret deal leads to a light jail term

June 2008: Epstein pleads guilty to state charges: one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. He is sentenced to 18 months in jail. Under a secret arrangement, the U.S. attorney’s office agrees not to prosecute Epstein for federal crimes. Epstein serves most of his sentence in a work release program that allows him to leave jail during the day.

May 2009: One of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, files a lawsuit claiming Epstein and Maxwell arranged for her to have sexual encounters with “royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen” and others. The lawsuit doesn’t name the men.

July 2009: Epstein is released from jail. For the next decade, Epstein’s accusers wage a legal fight to get his federal non-prosecution agreement voided.

News media and lawsuits keep public interest high

March 2, 2011: The Daily Mail publishes an interview with Giuffre in which she describes traveling with Epstein to London at age 17 and spending a night dancing with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Prince Andrew. The story and a photo of the prince with his arm around Giuffre creates a crisis for the royal family. FBI agents subsequently interview Giuffre.

Dec. 30, 2014: Giuffre’s lawyers file court papers claiming she had sexual encounters with Mountbatten-Windsor and other men, including “foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” All those men deny the allegations.

November 2018: The Miami Herald revisits the handling of Epstein’s case in a series of stories focusing partly on the role of Acosta — who by this point is President Donald Trump’s labor secretary. The coverage intensifies public interest in Epstein.

New York prosecutors revive case

July 6, 2019: Epstein is arrested on sex trafficking charges after federal prosecutors in New York conclude they aren’t bound by the terms of the earlier non-prosecution deal. Days later, Acosta resigns as labor secretary.

Aug. 10, 2019: Epstein kills himself in his jail cell in New York.

July 2, 2020: Federal prosecutors in New York charge Maxwell with sex crimes, saying she helped recruit and abuse Epstein’s victims.

Dec. 30, 2021: After a monthlong trial, a jury convicts Maxwell of sex trafficking and other crimes.

June 28, 2022: Maxwell is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

January, 2024: Public interest in the Epstein case surges again after a judge makes more court records public in a related lawsuit. Conspiracy theories flourish, pushed by people who believe Epstein ran an international sex traffic network that served rich and powerful men.

A new president and a fresh political crisis

Jan. 20, 2025: Trump, who was friends and neighbors with Epstein for years, becomes president again. During his 2024 campaign, he had suggested that he’d seek to open more government files on Epstein.

February 2025: Attorney General Pam Bondi suggests in a Fox News Channel interview that an Epstein “client list” is sitting on her desk. The Justice Department distributes binders marked “declassified” to far-right influencers, but much of the information had long been public.

April 25, 2025: Giuffre dies by suicide.

July 7, 2025: The Justice Department says Epstein didn’t maintain a “client list” and it won’t make any more files related to his sex trafficking investigation public.

July 15, 2025: Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduce the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

July 17, 2025: The Wall Street Journal describes a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump denies writing the letter and sues the newspaper.

July 24-25, 2025: In an effort to put a political crisis to rest, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviews Maxwell. She denies wrongdoing and says she never saw Trump involved in any sexually inappropriate activity. Afterward, she is moved from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.

A prince loses his royal title

This redacted photo released by the U.S. Department of Justice shows Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual offender registration form, documented on Aug. 12, 2019, during a search of Epstein’s home on Little St. James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. (U.S. Department of Justice via AP)

Oct. 21, 2025: Giuffre’s posthumous memoir is published. In it, she revisits her claims that Epstein and Maxwell sexually trafficked her to powerful men, including Mountbatten-Windsor.

Oct. 30, 2025: King Charles III strips Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining titles, meaning he can no longer be referred to as “prince,” and evicts him from his royal residence.

Nov. 12, 2025: A House committee releases a trove of email correspondence between Epstein and others, including Mountbatten-Windsor, Trump ally Steve Bannon, ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. In one 2019 email to a journalist, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls” but didn’t explain what he meant by that.

Nov. 14, 2025: At Trump’s urging, Bondi announces that the U.S. attorney in Manhattan will investigate Epstein’s ties to some of the Republican president’s political foes, including former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat; Summers; and Hoffman, a prominent Democratic donor. None of those men has been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s victims.

Nov. 18, 2025: Congress passes the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Trump signs it into law the next day.

Dec. 19, 2025: The Justice Department begins releasing records.

Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

St. Paul officials sent a cease-and-desist letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to prevent them from using municipal parking lots to stage immigration enforcement operations.

The letter demands that DHS “immediately halt further use of city parking lots for federal operations without the City expressly authorizing such use,” according to a statement issued by St. Paul officials Friday. Park and Rec Center parking lots were recently used in immigration enforcement operations, city officials say.

“DHS and other federal law enforcement agencies have previously and recently used city parking lots to stage vehicles and personnel without the city’s consent nor any authorizing agreement, permit, or statutory basis,” according to city officials. “This unauthorized occupation of municipal property is unconstitutional and constitutes an unlawful diversion of parkland and use of park parking lots under the city’s Charter and Legislative Code. These actions also interfere with the public’s right to access and use these facilities for their intended purposes.”

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said these properties are intended to be used by residents.

“Our parks and libraries are among the most valued and essential services in our city, and they exist solely to serve our residents and families,” Carter said in a statement. “When federal law enforcement repurposes them for federal operations without our authorization, it eliminates public access, erodes public trust, and undermines local control by unlawfully occupying city property.”

St. Paul officials said the city is prepared to use legal avenues available, such as “seeking immediate injunctive relief.”

“City-owned park property is legally reserved for park purposes, and its unauthorized use by federal enforcement agencies violates City law,” said City Attorney Lyndsey Olson, in a statement. “This unlawful activity must stop immediately. We will take appropriate action to protect Saint Paul’s public spaces.”

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A copy of the letter can be found at stpaul.gov.

Last month there was a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation at a business off of University Avenue which resulted in several individuals being detained. Another operation occurred at a residence on the city’s East Side in which a Honduran immigrant was taken into custody.

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man, scored another huge windfall Friday when the Delaware Supreme Court reversed a decision that deprived him of a $55 billion pay package that Tesla doled out in 2018 as an incentive for its CEO to steer the automaker to new heights.

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Besides padding Musk’s current fortune of $679 billion, the restoration of the 2018 pay package vindicates his long-held belief that the Delaware legal system had overstepped its bounds in January 2024 when Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick rescinded the compensation in a case brought by a disgruntled Tesla shareholder.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday.

McCormick’s ruling so incensed Musk that it spurred him to spurn Delaware and reincorporate Tesla in Texas. That decision also caused Tesla’s board to scramble for ways to keep its CEO happy, including a successful effort to persuade the company’s shareholders to reaffirm the pay package, which was valued at $44.9 billion at the time of the second vote 18 months ago.

With Musk still signaling discontent, Tesla upped the ante again this year by crafting another pay package that could pay him $1 trillion if he can lead the automaker down a road during the next decade that lifts the company’s market value from its current $1.6 trillion to $8.5 trillion. Shareholders approved that pay package last month, to Musk’s delight.

That may sound like a difficult task, but it also appeared like a long shot for Musk to hit all the targets to qualify for the payout that was dangled in the 2018 package. At that time, Tesla was still struggling to expand its production of electric vehicles and burning through cash.

At the time the 2018 pay package was drawn up, Tesla’s market value was hovering in the $50 billion to $75 billion range. But then the company’s manufacturing problems eased, enabling it to start meeting hot demand for its vehicles, which in turn pumped up its sales and stock price to a level that qualified Musk for the big payout that had been promised him.

But based on evidence that included Musk’s testimony during a 2022 trial, McCormick ruled the pay package had been crafted by a board that was too cozy and beholden to the hard-charging Musk.

In its 49-page ruling, the Delaware Supreme Court cited a variety of errors in McCormick’s 2024 decision and declared the 2018 pay package should be restored. It also awarded Tesla $1 in nominal damages.

By JANIE HAR

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A Northern California man caught a plump canary rockfish he says weighed in at 10.25 pounds, likely setting state and world records.

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Mendocino County fisherman Brendan Walsh, 26, said he caught the fish Tuesday off the coast of Albion, about 150 miles north of San Francisco.

Walsh was headed back with his father Will Walsh after catching a few yellowtail on a cold and rainy day when he decided to make one last stop at a deeper spot. That’s where the younger Walsh landed the canary rockfish.

“It was a fluke,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Canary rockfish can grow up to 2.5 feet in length and weigh 10 lbs., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Walsh says the ones he usually catches are small and scrawny, clocking in around 3 lbs.

Walsh said the fish he caught this week was 2.25 feet long.

This photo, provided by Deirdre Lamb, shows a 10.25 lbs. canary rockfish caught by Mendocino County fisherman Brendan Walsh, of the coast of Albion, about 150 miles north of San Francisco on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (Deidre Lamb via AP)

He submitted the catch to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which tracks angling and diving records. The current state record-holding fish weighed in at 9 lbs. and was caught last November, also in Mendocino County.

The department has a form and instructions for submitting a possible record catch, including the names and phone numbers of witnesses. Applicants are asked to contact the department for the nearest environmental scientist who can identify the catch.

Walsh said they weighed the fish at an authorized fish market nearby and a state fish and wildlife scientist who works in the area came over to sign off on the paperwork.

Walsh has also submitted his catch to the International Game Fish Association in Florida, where the world record holding 10-pound canary rockfish was caught in 1986. He says larger fish may have been caught but never submitted for record consideration.

The game fish association did not respond Friday to a request for comment.

After spending Tuesday making sure they had taken the right measurements to document the catch, Walsh’s mother, Deirdre Lamb, fried the rockfish with garlic and butter to eat on Wednesday.

The rockfish was delicious, he said.