MESSAGES RELEASED IN the latest batch of the Jeffrey Epstein files talk of Irish people’s “horrible asses” that the writer says were “from the potato famine”.

The heavily redacted documents don’t show who sent the texts, but the October 2018 conversation centred a trip to Dublin.

Seemingly describing Irish women in a series of messages, the writer says: “Pale blue eyes. Drunk. But horrible asses. I think genetic from the potato famine.”

The US Justice Department today released three million new pages of documents related to convicted sex offender Epstein, along with 180,000 images and 2,000 videos.

“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference.

He said all images of girls and women were being redacted aside from those of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of trafficking underage girls for Epstein and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

“We did not redact images of any men unless it was impossible to redact the woman without also redacting the man,” the deputy attorney general said.

The latest release is expected to contain previously unseen material from the investigation into Epstein, a wealthy US financier who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking of underage girls. His death was ruled a suicide.

Previous releases have shed light on Epstein’s ties to leading business executives, celebrities, academics and politicians, including Trump and former president Bill Clinton.

Perhaps the most significant documents published so far are two FBI emails from July 2019 which mention 10 “co-conspirators” of Epstein.

Only one person – Epstein’s former girlfriend Maxwell – has ever been charged in connection with his crimes and the names of the alleged co-conspirators are redacted from the emails.

According to Axios, major documents which have not been released yet include a draft 60-count federal indictment of Epstein that was inexplicably quashed, and an 82-page prosecution memo from 2007.

‘We did not protect President Trump’

Trump, a one-time close friend of Epstein, and Clinton both figure prominently in the records published so far, but neither has been accused of any wrongdoing.

A Republican-led House panel recently voted to launch contempt of Congress proceedings against Bill and Hillary Clinton over their refusal to testify before its probe into Epstein.

Trump, 79, fought for months to prevent release of the vast trove of documents about Epstein.

But a rebellion inside his Republican Party forced him to sign off on a law mandating release of all the documents.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) called for all of the documents held by the Justice Department to be published by 19 December.

Blanche said today’s release brings the Justice Department in compliance with the act and he blamed the delay on the need to carry out redactions that protected the identities of Epstein’s more than 1,000 victims.

The sweeping redactions across many of the documents – combined with tight control over the release by the Trump administration – have stoked allegations of a potential high-level cover-up.

Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, rejected allegations the Justice Department was seeking to protect the president.

“We complied with the act,” he said. “We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect or not protect anybody.”

He said the White House played no role in the review of the files.

“They had no oversight over this review,” he said. “They did not tell this department how to do our review, what to look for, what to redact, what to not redact.”

As soon as the president’s name began surfacing in the released files, the Justice Department issued a statement saying that some documents “contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump.”

But the documents already released confirm that Trump was once close to Epstein.

With reporting by AFP