More than 2 million files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are still to be released, according to a court filling Monday night from the Justice Department which said a team of 400 lawyers was reviewing the documents to ensure “victim privacy.”
The filing also said the department would review its procedures for evaluating the files after victims complained that some information posted should have been redacted.
The DOJ filing confirms reporting from NBC News last week that millions of files were being reviewed before their planned release. So far, only 12,000 documents containing 125,000 pages have been released in three tranches.
The filing signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, outlines how the DOJ intends to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Epstein, a disgraced financier who was once friends with President Donald Trump, was 66 when he died by apparent suicide in a New York jail in August 2019. He was being held on federal sex trafficking charges.
Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was found guilty in New York in 2021 of multiple sex trafficking charges for her role in the sexual abuse of underage girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Trump signed the act into law late last year after months of pressure from victims, campaigners and lawmakers. Trump has repeatedly denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein’s wrongdoing.
The DOJ’s filing was written by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton and addressed to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer. It said the department was carrying out a “victim privacy-related review and redaction of certain of the materials.”
The filling said in the next few weeks, “in the range of over 400 lawyers across the Department will dedicate all or a substantial portion of their workday to the Department’s efforts to comply with the Act.” The FBI is providing more 100 specialists with experience in handling “sensitive victim materials.”
The filing said the DOJ was refining its procedure in reviewing the files and streamlining how it deals with requests for redactions from victims.
The department said it had received dozens of queries from victims since the passing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act and would now be “running additional electronic quality control searches.”
“Prior releases have included tens of thousands of manual redactions of victim-identifying information. Even with these efforts and related quality control checks, unfortunately, information that victims believe should have been redacted has been posted,” the filing said.
The department said it would now work to deduplicate the massive number of files across different parts of the department, to ensure there is a standard level of redaction, introduce new categories of document and assign DOJ lawyers to ones with “sensitive victim-identifying information.”
