A California high school journalist, Ben Mueller, searched the newly released Epstein files for connections to his home county of Marin, California, and published his findings as an Instagram slideshow for his school newspaper, the Redwood Bark. The story drew widespread praise online for its diligence, with many commenters favourably comparing it to coverage by professional and national news outlets, but it also triggered a legal threat from a named individual and pressure from the school district to alter or remove the reporting, raising questions about student press freedom.

Mueller, a senior, spent about five hours searching roughly 3 million pages of files released by the Department of Justice's Epstein Library, uncovering thousands of references to Marin County, most trivial but some notable, including a 2013 email exchange involving a local modeling agency. His slideshow, posted on 12 February 2026, was liked more than 4,000 times, but a modeling agent named in the piece, Gisele Attias Bonnouvrier, emailed the school principal on 23 February calling the post defamatory and threatening to sue unless it was removed within 48 hours, prompting the district superintendent to demand the Bark redact her name or delete the slide.