Ryan Lucas

Emails show Rumler received lavish gifts from Epstein and referred to him as, quote, Uncle Jeffrey, end quote.

Earlier this month, another prominent attorney, Brad Karp, stepped down as chairman of the law firm Paul Weiss over his ties to Epstein.

Brian Lucas, NPR News, Washington.

The defendant, Nikhil Gupta, pleaded guilty to three charges.

Murder for hire, conspiracy to commit murder for hire, and money laundering.

He entered his plea in federal court in Manhattan.

An Indian government official also has been indicted in the case but is not in custody.

The target of the plot was Guptatwat Singh Panoon, a New York-based attorney and Sikh separatist who advocates for a Sikh homeland independent from India.

In a statement provided to NPR, Panoon says Gupta's guilty plea is confirmation that the Indian government orchestrated the murder-for-hire scheme on U.S.

soil.

He also accused India of trying to silence dissenting political opinion and called its efforts an act of terrorism.

The Indian government has denied involvement.

Ryan Lucas, NPR News, Washington.

This has been a political weakness for the Trump administration.

And so Democrats certainly were eager to focus on it.

Several times, Democrats, in fact, noted that there was a group of women in the hearing room who were victims of Epstein at one point, several points, actually.

They were even asked to stand up.

But Democrats criticized the department for failing to produce all of the files by the deadline required by law.

They also criticized the numerous problems that have been found with the redactions that the Justice Department made to the files.

That includes redacting the names of Epstein's suspected co-conspirators and in some instances not redacting the names or photos of victims.