At the center of the drama is the so-called "client list" — a purported document containing names of people, likely many of them powerful, to whom the late Palm Beach financier is said to have provided underage girls for sex. Moreover, the speculation is that Epstein used the list to extort and blackmail people.

Attorney General Pam Bondi had previously promised the public release of scores of records associated with federal probes into Epstein.

The acknowledgment represents a public walk-back of a theory that the Trump administration had helped promote, with Bondi suggesting that such a document was “sitting on my desk” for review.