The Justice Department began the release of its files on Jeffrey Epstein in Friday, quickly overloading its website as news networks scrambled to peruse through tens of thousands of pages of documents.
The release is mandated by Congress, but there were indications that the DOJ would not meet Friday’s deadline.
“This site will be updated if additional documents are updated for release,” the Epstein page read. Users have to wait in a queue, lasting about a minute, before being able to access the site.
“It looks so far like a lot of dated material,” the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown, who has been one of the preeminent journalists covering the Epstein case, told MS Now’s Nicolle Wallace. Brown cautioned that the process of combing through them was just starting, but she also pointed to extensive redactions.
On Fox News, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier on Friday that he expected that they would release more documents over the next couple of weeks, pointing out that DOJ officials were reviewing each document to protect the victims.
But Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said in a statement that the Trump administration was “now violating the law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein’s decades long, billion-dollar, international sex-trafficking ring.”
Trump and Epstein were friends, but the president has said that they had a falling out, while denying wrongdoing.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said that Trump is “in the file” but “not in the file doing anything awful.”
Trump opposed the full release of the files, but eventually backed the disclosure when it was clear that enough Republicans would sign on to a discharge petition to bring a bill to the House floor to require it. After nearly unanimous approval of the Epstein bill in Congress, Trump signed the legislation.