The Justice Department said late Thursday it has made “substantial progress” on its ongoing review of millions of documents that may be related to Jeffrey Epstein, thanks to the efforts of hundreds of reviewers, but did not provide any information about when the next release of files may come, despite the fact that the legal deadline to publish the records was Dec. 19.
The department has argued that the millions of pages of documents that need to be uploaded, reviewed, redacted, and published forced it to release the files online on a rolling basis. So far, the Justice Department has released 12,285 documents out of the more than two million that it must make available under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton said in a letter that the department “remains focused on releasing materials under the Act promptly while protecting victim privacy.”
They said the Justice Department has employed over 500 reviewers who are working to “review and redact millions of pages of materials,” and it also added approximately 80 attorneys from the department’s criminal division this week to supplement the effort.
The department said that in its ongoing review of documents, “due to the scope of this effort, platform operations require around-the-clock attention and technical assistance to resolve inevitable glitches due to the sheer volume of materials.”
The Epstein transparency law, enacted in mid-November, gave the Justice Department 30 days to release a wide swath of files on Epstein and his convicted associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. That includes decades-old records from the earliest federal investigations into Epstein, documents from Epstein and Maxwell’s 2019 and 2020 sex-trafficking cases and files from the Justice Department’s review of Epstein’s death by suicide while in pre-trial custody.
The law orders the Justice Department to redact victims’ personal information, child sexual abuse material, images that show bodily injuries and a handful of other categories.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who is overseeing the handling of documents relating to Maxwell, ordered the Justice Department to address concerns from Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ro Khanna of California that the department has failed to comply with the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and asked for a special master to facilitate compliance with the a.
Maxwell was an associate of Epstein’s and was convicted in 2021 for her role in helping Epstein recruit, groom and abuse underage girls. She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
The Justice Department must reply to that order by Friday.
Separately in recent weeks, Epstein survivors, some members of Congress and Washington-based watchdog groups are asking the Justice Department Inspector General’s office to investigate whether the department is mishandling its legal responsibility to release the Epstein files.
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