WASHINGTON, D.C.: A top Justice Department official said there was little possibility of additional criminal charges arising from the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite the existence of "horrible photographs" and troubling email correspondence.

After reviewing the trove of documents, Justice Department officials believed it did not establish a basis for new criminal investigations, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said. This was even as a massive document dump over the weekend focused fresh attention on Epstein's links to influential individuals around the world.

"There's a lot of correspondence. There's a lot of emails. There's a lot of photographs. There's a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him," Blanche said on CNN's "State of the Union" on February 1. "But that doesn't allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody."

He said victims of Epstein's sex abuse "want to be made whole," but that "doesn't mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of come up with a case that isn't there."

The reaction to the release of the files was quick.

In the United Kingdom, Lord Peter Mandelson said he was resigning from the ruling Labour Party on February 1. He said he was leaving to avoid causing "more embarrassment," but denied claims that he received money from Epstein 20 years ago. A picture released online showed him in his underpants with a female whose face was blacked out.

In Slovakia, a senior government official also quit after photos and emails showed he had met Epstein even after Epstein was released from jail. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, better known as Prince Andrew, should tell U.S. investigators everything he knows about Epstein's activities.

The files posted online included documents about Epstein's friendship with Prince Andrew. They also contained emails between Epstein and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, and other well-known figures from politics, business, and charity, including billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

Public interest in the Epstein case has remained strong partly because of his past friendships with President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton. Both men said they did not know that Epstein was abusing underage girls.

One record was a spreadsheet made last August that listed calls to the FBI and a special hotline. These calls came from people claiming they had information about possible wrongdoing by Trump. The document included many unverified stories about various celebrities, along with notes on whether agents followed up.

Blanche said that many people besides Trump were named in the files. He added that the FBI received hundreds of calls about famous individuals, but most accusations were quickly found to be unreliable.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he believed the Justice Department was following the law by releasing the files. However, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who helped sponsor the law, said he did not think the department had fully complied with it. He said some survivors were upset because their names were accidentally released rather than being kept confidential.

Blanche said that whenever the department finds that a victim's name was not properly hidden, it fixes the mistake quickly, and such errors are only a very small part of the total number of documents.

Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in August 2019, one month after he was charged with federal sex-trafficking crimes.