Epstein abuse survivor Annie Farmer holds up a photo of her younger self with her sister Maria Farmer during a news conference with lawmakers on the Epstein Files Transparency Act outside the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025. Heather Diehl/Getty Images
A Justice Department release of records related to Jeffrey Epstein in December 2025 provided long-sought documentary support for survivor Maria Farmer's account that she had alerted the FBI about Epstein nearly three decades earlier.
Among the records was an FBI document stamped September 3, 1996, describing a criminal complaint concerning Epstein and allegations involving sexualized photographs of minors. Although the complainant's name was redacted, Farmer's attorney, Jennifer Freeman, confirmed to CNN that the complaint was Farmer's.
The document is significant because Farmer had said publicly for years that she contacted federal authorities in 1996. Its release established that the FBI recorded a complaint naming Epstein years before the better-known investigations that eventually led to criminal proceedings against him.
What the 1996 FBI Record Says
According to the released FBI record, the complainant identified herself as a professional artist who had photographed two of her younger sisters, then ages 12 and 16, for her artwork. The document records her allegation that Epstein took the photographs and negatives and was believed to have sold them to potential buyers.
The record also says Epstein had asked the complainant to photograph young girls at swimming pools and that she reported a threat that her house would be burned if she disclosed what had happened. These were allegations recorded by the FBI in 1996; the document's existence does not by itself establish how the bureau evaluated or investigated each allegation afterward.
Farmer has separately alleged that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sexually assaulted her in 1996. Maxwell was later convicted in an unrelated federal prosecution on sex-trafficking and other charges connected to Epstein and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.
Why the Document Mattered to Farmer
Farmer had maintained for years that she tried to alert law enforcement long before Epstein became the subject of the investigations that brought his abuse of girls and young women to widespread public attention. The newly disclosed record corroborated a central part of that account: the FBI had a documented complaint concerning Epstein in 1996.
What the document did not fully answer was what happened inside the FBI after the complaint was recorded. Farmer and her attorneys have alleged that the bureau failed to conduct an adequate investigation or protect her and other potential victims. The released intake record alone does not establish every step, if any, that federal authorities took after receiving it.
That distinction is important. The record confirms receipt of the complaint, while claims about why authorities did not intervene earlier remain part of Farmer's allegations and subsequent litigation.
Farmer's Lawsuit Against the United States
Months before the document became public, Farmer filed a federal lawsuit against the United States in May 2025. Her complaint alleged that failures by the FBI, Justice Department and U.S. Attorney's Offices allowed Epstein and his associates to continue harming victims after she had tried to warn authorities.
The lawsuit was brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act and accused the government of negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress. Farmer alleged that the government's handling of her reports contributed to years of threats, fear and psychological harm.
Her court filing also cited earlier evidence supporting her account, including a 1997 journal entry and FBI interview records from 2006. Those materials formed part of her argument that federal authorities had been aware of her earlier attempt to report Epstein.
The case remained a legal dispute over the government's alleged responsibility, not a judicial finding that the United States was liable for the harms Farmer described.
Later Legal Development
The litigation continued well beyond the December 2025 document release. On September 25, 2026, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton issued a memorandum opinion in Farmer v. United States addressing the government's effort to move the case from the District of Columbia to the Southern District of Florida, where related litigation involving other Epstein survivors was pending.
That later proceeding concerned where Farmer's claims should be litigated and did not turn the allegations in her complaint into established findings of government wrongdoing. The distinction between Farmer's allegations, the historical FBI records, and judicial findings remains essential when assessing the case.
The Release Was Only Part of a Much Larger Disclosure
The December 2025 disclosure came after enactment of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. At the time, the Justice Department's initial production was incomplete, and survivors, journalists and lawmakers continued seeking additional records that could explain how authorities handled information about Epstein over the years.
The disclosure process later expanded substantially. In January 2026, the Justice Department announced that it had published more than 3 million additional pages, bringing its total production under the law to nearly 3.5 million pages, along with thousands of videos and more than 180,000 images. The department maintains the released material in its Epstein Library.
The Justice Department has cautioned that the collection contains material gathered from numerous investigations and public submissions. The presence of a person's name, photograph, allegation or tip in the files therefore does not by itself establish wrongdoing.
What the 1996 Complaint Establishes — and What Remains Unresolved
The strongest conclusion supported by the released record is straightforward: federal authorities documented a complaint concerning Jeffrey Epstein in September 1996, and Farmer's attorney identified Maria Farmer as the complainant.
That substantially clarified a historical question that had followed Farmer's account for years. It also moved the documented federal record of allegations concerning Epstein back roughly a decade before the investigations that eventually brought him into the criminal justice system.
The larger institutional question is more complicated: precisely what happened to the complaint after it entered FBI records, what investigative decisions were made, and whether earlier action could have prevented later abuse. Farmer and her attorneys have made serious allegations about those failures, but those questions require examination of the broader record rather than assumptions based solely on the 1996 intake document.
For Maria and Annie Farmer, however, the document supplied something they had sought for decades: official evidence that Maria's attempt to alert federal law enforcement in 1996 had, in fact, been recorded.
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