India, Dec. 21 -- US President Donald Trump is mentioned only sparingly in the batch of Jeffrey Epstein files released by the Justice Department on Friday, according to a preliminary scan by The New York Times of thousands of documents and hundreds of photographs.

The limited references have drawn attention given Trump's past social ties with Epstein, a relationship previously documented by the newspaper, and earlier speculation triggered by Trump's initial reluctance to make federal Epstein-related records public. Trump's allies have earlier acknowledged that his name does appear in the files.

Most of the documents reviewed were heavily redacted. The visible material included scattered references to Trump, largely in records that had a...