The disappointment was palpable. In February, a group of 15 rightwing influencers visited the White House and paraded binders labelled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1”, only to discover that they contained precious little that was new.

Ten months later, it was the world’s turn. Amid huge global anticipation on Friday, the US justice department released hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But it soon became apparent that, once again, Donald Trump had over-promised and under-delivered. Many of the documents in the data dump were heavily redacted, with text blacked out so it was impossible to read. Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, said: “What they have released is clearly incomplete and appears to be over-redacted to boot.”