The US Justice Department said Wednesday that it may need a “few more weeks” to release all of its records on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after suddenly discovering more than a million potentially relevant documents, further delaying compliance with last Friday’s congressionally mandated deadline.
The Christmas Eve announcement came hours after a dozen US senators called on the Justice Department’s watchdog to examine its failure to meet the deadline.
The group, 11 Democrats and a Republican, told Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume in a letter that victims “deserve full disclosure” and the “peace of mind” of an independent audit.
The Justice Department said in a social media post that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI “have uncovered over a million more documents” that could be related to the Epstein case – a stunning eleventh-hour development after department officials suggested months ago that they had undertaken a comprehensive review that accounted for the vast universe of Epstein-related materials.
In March, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that a “truckload of evidence” had been delivered to her after she ordered the Justice Department to “deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office” – a directive she said she made after learning from an unidentified source that the FBI in New York was “in possession of thousands of pages of documents”.
Redacted Epstein-related documents are seen after the US Justice Department began releasing the files on Friday. Photo: AFP/TNS
In July, the FBI and Justice Department indicated in an unsigned memo that they had undertaken an “exhaustive review” and had determined that no additional evidence should be released – an extraordinary about-face from the Trump administration, which for months had pledged maximum transparency.