How You Can Use AI to Investigate Epstein

Ask questions. Follow leads. Trace relationships. The technology can do the heavy lifting.

Redacted Epstein photo released by the Justice Department

Just before the holidays, the Justice Department began releasing its files on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation — haphazardly, in bits and pieces — as required under a law passed by Congress. Some 125,575 pages have been made public so far — and DOJ announced that there were 5.2 million remaining pages being vetted by 400 lawyers.

Epstein, a wealthy financier and one-time friend of Donald Trump, abused thousands of underage girls, yet with the help of powerful friends his crimes were long ignored or minimized.

When I ran The Fact Checker, original source documents were the gold standard for the verification of facts. But how can anyone make sense of this stash of material — which will total more than 1,700 linear feet, higher than many skyscrapers? The answer is AI.

Since I left The Washington Post at the end of July, I have been working with an AI company for media called Sourcebase.ai. Led by Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind, the company uses proprietary AI technology to quickly search and analyze caches of documents. The talented Sourcebase tech team can quickly upload hundreds of thousands of documents and begin probing the material while everyone else is still flipping through PDFs or doing simple keyword searches with Google Pinpoint.

Unlike AI chatbots, Sourcebase relies only on vast troves of verified source materials— actual documents and records. So it leverages the technology of AI without running the risk of hallucinations.

The Sourcebase website is filled with document collections that anyone can explore, such as the Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy assassination files.

Want to know how King was feeling the day before he was killed? Within seconds, you will get the answer, with links to the relevant interviews and testimony obtained from 243,496 pages of documents.

Sourcebase also has an “Ask Trump” feature, continuously updated with every video appearance made by the president. Sourcebase will not only provide the answer — it will take you directly to the moment when Trump speaks about an issue. Basically, you can converse with him on any subject he’s discussed.

Sourcebase even loaded the entire U.S. Code, some 60,000 pages of legislation, allowing researchers to answer any question about federal law.

But nothing demonstrates the power of Sourcebase better than the Epstein files. Sourcebase has uploaded every document released so far — from the Justice Department, from the House Oversight Committee, and from various court records and lawsuits. The AI tool will range across the documents and emails, finding connections and highlighting avenues for more inquiry.

Who flew on Epstein’s jet or visited his island?

Who coordinated his legal and messaging strategy?

What was the role of JPMorgan — and what were the bank’s internal reasons for keeping Epstein as a client?

You can also explore the documents with a chatbot feature that allows for follow-up questions. Anyone can use Sourcebase — but if you find something interesting, please cite it as a source. Sourcebase also has a more advanced version for news organizations and researchers that allows even deeper research. (And if you feel your question was not answered clearly, let the team know. Sourcebase is constantly improving the system.)

Trump fought hard to prevent the release of the Epstein files — and his Justice Department is trying to overwhelm people with paper. But with Sourcebase, the secrets deep inside the documents will be revealed.