Just five days after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in the summer of 2019, federal authorities told the NYPD (New York Police Department) to stand down and stop investigating him.
The directive, revealed in newly released Epstein files and analyzed in a detailed timeline by Just Security, specifically targeted NYPD’s Special Victims Unit — the team specially trained and equipped to handle sex crimes and child abuse cases.
At the exact moment when law enforcement should have been expanding its investigation into one of the most prolific sex traffickers in modern history, the FBI was shutting down the local efforts that could have helped expose his network of co-conspirators.
The “Stand Down” Order
According to internal emails from July 2019, the FBI contacted NYPD leadership and informed them that the Special Victims Unit had been “directed to stand down” and that all Epstein-related matters needed to go through the FBI.
The emails, which appear to include communications involving then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, also reveal that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DANY) had its own active investigation at the time — one that had already reached out to a victim for an interview.
Rather than welcoming additional investigative resources, federal officials moved to consolidate control.
One email from July 10, 2019, described the DA’s parallel investigation as “another fire,” noting that DANY was proceeding with its own work and had contacted a victim who had spoken to NBC News.
By the next day, the FBI had already reached out to NYPD leadership, and the stand-down was in effect.
A later email exchange from January 2020 confirmed the result. An FBI official acknowledged that after Epstein’s arrest, phone calls were made among NYPD leadership, and the NYPD investigation was effectively closed and deferred to the FBI.
The official also assumed DANY would have shut down its own investigation after Epstein’s death in August 2019 — though they admitted they weren’t actually sure whether that happened.
The email added a telling note of concern: it might be “an issue” if DANY was still investigating Prince Andrew or Ghislaine Maxwell, and suggested the FBI should make inquiries to find out.
A Pattern of Failure Stretching Back Decades
The stand-down directive didn’t happen in a vacuum.
Just Security’s timeline, compiled by NYU law professor Ryan Goodman, traces New York law enforcement failures involving Epstein back to 1996.
That year, Maria Farmer went to NYPD’s Sixth Precinct and reported that Epstein and Maxwell had sexually abused her.
She told officers about ongoing crimes against minors and young women, including child pornography.
The NYPD’s response was to tell her they could only address local threats and that she needed to contact the FBI.
The FBI didn’t open an investigation into Epstein for another ten years.
Between 2008 and 2018, despite a steady stream of explosive allegations emerging in civil lawsuits filed in New York and Florida — as well as news reports detailing a wider criminal conspiracy involving Maxwell — New York law enforcement took essentially no meaningful action.
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping failure came in January 2011, when the Manhattan DA’s office under Cyrus Vance attempted to downgrade Epstein’s sex offender status to the lowest possible level.
This was despite the State Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders having already recommended the highest classification, Level 3.
The presiding judge, Ruth Pickholz, was so shocked by the request that she told prosecutors she had never seen anything like it.
The low-level classification would have limited the public’s access to Epstein’s information and kept him off the lifetime sex offender registry.
Vance’s office later claimed the DA himself wasn’t even aware the office had the matter until after the hearing — a claim that itself raises serious questions about oversight.
Victims Left in Limbo
The documents paint a troubling picture of what happened to victims who continued coming forward after Epstein’s death in August 2019.
Rather than an aggressive pursuit of co-conspirators, the record shows bureaucratic back-and-forth, jurisdictional disputes, and investigations that slowly fizzled.
In November 2020, a woman called the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center to report being assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell in New York City in 1992.
She had also filed a report with the NYPD. By early 2021, internal emails show another Epstein victim reaching out to federal prosecutors because she’d been in contact with an NYPD detective who had simply stopped responding.
She called again weeks later, still waiting for follow-up.
These are real people who survived horrific abuse and were trying to participate in the justice system — only to find that the institutions meant to protect them couldn’t be bothered to return their calls.
Powerful Names, Little Accountability
The released files also reveal that investigations into powerful figures connected to Epstein’s network produced little in the way of consequences.
DANY opened an investigation into sexual assault allegations against billionaire Leon Black, who was connected to Epstein through financial dealings and was accused of assault by at least one victim allegedly trafficked by Maxwell and Epstein.
Internal notes from 2023 described charges against Black as “unlikely,” even though investigators found the accuser credible.
By mid-2024, an FBI summary described the DANY investigation in the past tense.
Former Barclays CEO Jes Staley also appears repeatedly in the files. A confidential 86-page SDNY memorandum from December 2019 — titled “Investigation into Potential Co-Conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein” — contained additional allegations about Staley.
In March 2025, Staley admitted in a U.K. court proceeding that he had sexual intercourse with a woman who was part of Epstein’s staff, someone Epstein had introduced to him.
Court filings from the U.S. Virgin Islands revealed a pattern of suggestive email exchanges between Staley and Epstein involving references to young women, money transfers to a woman with an Eastern European surname timed to Staley’s visits, and coded language about providing female companions.
Despite all of this, no charges have been brought against Staley in the United States.
The Bigger Picture
Adding to the pattern, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez recently revealed that his state’s own Epstein investigation was closed in 2019 at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. The same office directed the NYPD to stand down.
Since then, AG Torrez ordered officials to reopen that investigation.
What emerges from these documents is not a picture of law enforcement agencies working tirelessly to bring a sex trafficking network to justice.
It’s a picture of federal authorities repeatedly consolidating control over the Epstein case, sidelining local investigators, and then failing to aggressively pursue the powerful people who enabled and participated in Epstein’s crimes.
For the survivors who have waited years — in some cases decades — for accountability, these revelations are both validating and devastating.
They were right to suspect the system had failed them. Now the documents prove it.
