Sprinkled among the latest trove of records the U.S. Department of Justice released on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein are a smattering of attempted meetings with former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and mentions of Maine vacations.

Mitchell, a Democrat who served in the Senate from 1980 to 1995 has in previous years denied allegations that he met a woman who said she was among Epstein’s sex trafficking victims.

The Press Herald performed a series of keyword searches in the Justice Department’s Epstein database to understand the extent of prominent Mainers’ involvement with the notorious financier. The records we reviewed range from verified communications with known Epstein associates to entirely unsubstantiated tips from the public.

Searching Mitchell’s name brings up more than 300 results within the 3 million-plus pages the justice department released Friday .

Many of the records are conversations between assistants for Mitchell, 92, and Epstein, who died by suicide in jail in 2019. Epstein was 66 at the time and was awaiting the outcome of his federal sex trafficking case.

Aides’ attempts between 2010 and 2013 to schedule several meetings between the two one-time friends came after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida on sex offenses. In 2015, Mitchell personally replied to an Epstein assistant, declining Epstein’s invitation to meet.

The latest disclosure required by Congress returns a focus to one of the most salacious stories in American political history. President Donald Trump, who is mentioned hundreds of times in the files, resisted their release for months before ultimately signing the bill requiring their disclosure in November. The latest tranche does not represent all of the investigative material the government possesses.

The new details about Mitchell’s ties to Epstein have caused significant fallout for the former U.S. senator, who has never been directly linked to sex-related crimes. Mitchell has also continued to deny having any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.

On Sunday, the U.S.-Ireland Alliance said the messages showing that Mitchell stayed in contact with Epstein after his 2008 conviction caused the organization drop Mitchell’s name from its scholarship program. Mitchell had won widespread acclaim for helping to broker an end to decades of conflict in that nation. Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland also said it will take Mitchell’s name off a peace center and remove a bust of him from its campus.

Other references to Mitchell included:

• A 2009 deposition of Juan Alessi, who was the house manager for Epstein’s Palm Beach estate in Florida, in which Alessi mentioned Mitchell and Prince Andrew among the celebrities he would see at Epstein’s house.
• An FBI document dated Dec. 2, 2020, that focused on a female subject whose name is redacted. She described having sex multiple times with Mitchell at his request after Epstein arranged for her to travel during unspecified dates to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
• Numerous emails from Epstein assistant Lesley Groff, including a July 2010 message mentioning an effort to reach Mitchell’s assistant regarding Epstein’s “wish to speak” with the senator and how Mitchell “did not answer his cell.” Groff also asked Epstein in a February 2013 note if he wanted her to contact Mitchell regarding “a possible lunch” with Epstein and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

A spokesperson for Mitchell focused in a statement Sunday on again rebutting an allegation about Mitchell from the late Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide last year. The spokesperson also said that “at no time did Mitchell observe, suspect, or have any knowledge of Epstein engaging in illegal or inappropriate conduct with underage women.”

“He learned of Epstein’s criminal activity only through media reports related to Epstein’s Florida prosecution and declined or deflected the few invitations to events extended by Epstein’s office in the years that followed,” the spokesperson said. “Senator Mitchell profoundly regrets ever having known Jeffrey Epstein and condemns, without reservation, the horrific harm Epstein inflicted on so many women.”

Mitchell isn’t the only prominent Maine elected official to be name-checked in the files. Gov. Janet Mills is briefly mentioned with a range of other public officials in emails detailing a conspiratorial and unsubstantiated tip — not related to Epstein — submitted to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

The rambling email mentioning Mills came after prosecutors solicited broad information about child sex crimes from the public following Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2020 arrest. Much of the tip detailed allegations against the tipster’s ex-husband and the ex-husband’s lawyer.

The tipster’s name is redacted in the files, but she is easily identifiable through included details that link her to a separate case. A judge found her liable for defamation against her ex-husband in 2012 after she made false allegations about the father’s treatment of their daughter, federal court records show.

The tip was never verified and there is no evidence to suggest wrongdoing by Mills.

Maine generally appears nearly 800 times in the recently released Epstein files, but many of those references are made in news alerts and advertisements for travel and vacation packages. Many of the messages are riddled with typos and lack context, including an undated real estate listing for a 91-acre apple orchard in Readfield, which was on the market for $305,000.

But some of the references are more substantial.

Epstein’s pilot, for example, mentions Bangor in overseas flight itineraries. One trip from Paris to New York City in March of 2013 appears to have included Woody Allen and his family.

Others in Epstein’s orbit sent messages saying they could not meet with him because they were vacationing in Maine, including Jes Staley, the former CEO of Barclays and Bowdoin College trustee.

In 2008, Staley was in Maine to check on a new boat, telling Epstein “she wouldn’t be here without your encouragement.”

“18 months until she is anchored in front of St Jeff,” Staley said. “I miss you.”

Staley declined a 2013 invitation from Epstein to meet with Ehud Barak, Israel’s former defense minister, because Staley was vacationing in Maine.

Other Maine mentions came from Epstein associates who were not impressed with housing arrangements in the state.

In June 2011, a Story Cowles told a “Sarah K.” that her mom says the Maine house is “like a ‘Motor Inn’ whatever that means.”

“Doesn’t sound the best,” Sarah K. replies. “No idea what it means.”

Days later, Sarah K. told Epstein they had “checked into a motel across the Maine border. :)”