Just five days after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest in the summer of 2019, federal authorities “directed” the New York Police Department to “stand down” its investigations related to Epstein, new documents released by the Department of Justice show. The directive applied to NYPD’s Special Victims Unit — the group specially trained and equipped to handle sex crimes and child abuse cases. At the time, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DANY) had an ongoing investigation involving Epstein’s victims, the documents reveal, but the FBI assumed that would come to a halt as well following the Bureau’s directive.
These revelations are just part of the chronology below, which spans 1996-2025. The timeline amounts to the most comprehensive record to date of the publicly available information on New York law enforcement authorities’ action and inaction with regard to Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and other potential co-conspirators. It is a long record of institutional failures though with some successes (including DANY’s more recent pursuits with at least one of the alleged co-conspirators). The timeline is provided for public education, especially given that New York was an epicenter of Epstein’s vast criminal conspiracy.
Notably, last week, the Office of New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez also revealed that his state’s “investigation was closed in 2019 at the request of the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.” The revelation came alongside Attorney General Raúl Torrez ordering the criminal investigation to now be “reopened.”
Readers’ may be interested in Ryan Goodman, Siven Watt and Joshua Kolb, Timeline of Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell Law Enforcement Failures (1996-2025) published on August 18, 2025.
Hellbound and Down 