Pressure on the Justice Department grew louder Monday after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would be introducing a resolution directing the Senate to “initiate legal action against the DOJ” for only releasing some of its records related to Jeffrey Epstein and a spokesperson for Bill Clinton called on the administration to release all of its material involving the former president.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News on Friday that he expected the department would release “several hundred thousand documents today.” But only 9,675 pages of documents have been released since then, according to an NBC News count.
“The law Congress passed is crystal clear: release the Epstein files in full so Americans can see the truth,” Schumer wrote in a post on X on Monday. “Instead, the Trump Department of Justice dumped redactions and withheld the evidence — that breaks the law.”
Schumer will force consideration of the measure in January when the Senate reconvenes. The Senate returns from recess on Monday, Jan. 5.
The White House referred a request for comment to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond.
Files involving Jeffrey Epstein released on Friday included numerous pictures of Clinton, who traveled on the financier’s jet in 2002 and 2003 on trips for the Clinton Foundation. A spokesman for Clinton, Angel Ureña, said in a post Monday on social media that the way the files are being released “makes one thing clear: someone or something is being protected. We do not know whom, what or why.”
“We need no such protection,” Ureña added in a post on X. “Accordingly, we call on President Trump to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to immediately release any remaining materials referring to, mentioning or containing a photograph of Bill Clinton.”
“Refusal to do so will confirm the widespread suspicion the Department of Justice’s actions to date are not about transparency, but about insinuation — using selective releases to imply wrongdoing about individuals who have already been repeatedly cleared by the very same Department of Justice, over many years,” he said.
Trump had previously called on Bondi to investigate Clinton’s involvement with the late sex offender. Clinton has denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair in a story that was published last week that “the president was wrong” to suggest that the Epstein files incriminated Clinton.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday if Clinton is under investigation, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “I will never talk about an ongoing criminal investigation, so I’m not going to answer that question.”
Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. — who cowrote the bill that compelled the DOJ to release its records on Epstein — said over the weekend they plan on taking action in the House as well. The DOJ on Friday released only a portion of its investigative files on Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way, to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi,” Massie said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
The law, which Trump signed into law on Nov. 19, gave the attorney general 30 days to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” involving Epstein, “including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters.”
The law allows for limited exceptions, including redactions to protect the victims’ identities or to avoid jeopardizing an active federal investigation.
In a statement on Monday, a group of Epstein victims urged the lawmakers to intervene.
The “public received a fraction of the files, and what we received was riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation. At the same time, numerous victim identities were left unredacted, causing real and immediate harm,” the statement said.
They said the DOJ “violated the law,” and urged “immediate congressional oversight, including hearings, formal demands for compliance, and legal action, to ensure the Department of Justice fulfills its legal obligations.”
Blanche on Friday acknowledged in an interview with Fox News that the Justice Department had not met the Dec. 19 deadline to make all the information public, but said that was because the department was still working to redact information to protect victims’ identities, as is also required under the new law.
“Redacting information very much trumps some deadline in the statute,” he reiterated to NBC on Sunday.
The Justice Department has said that Epstein, who died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, preyed on over 1,200 women and girls.
The department has defended its rollout of the files, some of which have been heavily redacted, as well as its decision to remove over a dozen photographs it initially released — one of which included pictures of Trump. Trump and Epstein were friends for years, but the president has said they had a falling out. There’s no evidence the president was involved in any wrongdoing related to Epstein.
That sparked criticism that the DOJ was trying to cover for the president, something Blanche denied in his interview with “Meet the Press.”
That decision “has nothing to do with President Trump” and was made because “victims’ rights groups” were concerned about other images that were captured in the photo, Blanche said. The photo was put back up on the DOJ’s Epstein files database later on Sunday.
“The Southern District of New York flagged an image of President Trump for potential further action to protect victims. Out of an abundance of caution, the Department of Justice temporarily removed the image for further review,” the DOJ said in a post on X. “After the review, it was determined there is no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted in the photograph, and it has been reposted without any alteration or redaction.”
In the “Meet the Press” interview Sunday, Blanche initially sidestepped a question from moderator Kristen Welker about why Maxwell, who’s serving 20 years on sex trafficking charges, was moved to a lower security prison after he personally interviewed her earlier this year.
The highly unusual sitdown amid pressure on the DOJ from some of the president’s supporters for declaring in July that the Epstein matter was closed and it would not be releasing any more information about the case.
Blanche at first said it was “a Bureau of Prisons security issue that I will not talk about,” before saying, “let me talk about the security issue.”
“At the time that I met Ms. Maxwell, there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity towards her and the institution she was in, she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life. So the BOP is not only responsible for putting people in jail and making sure they stay in jail, but also for their safety and so she was moved,” he said.
On the files as a whole, Blanche told Fox he expects the entirety of them to be online in two weeks. That would mean significantly quickening the pace on the disclosures — he told NBC there are a “million or so documents” in total.
In a “fact sheet” released by the DOJ on Sunday, the department said it “has more than 200 lawyers working around the clock reviewing each individual file for release. This is an arduous process, as each document and photograph must be individually reviewed by DOJ and the Southern District of New York for potential redactions to protect victims or potential victims.”
“The Department is required by law to redact identifying information about the victims, minors, or potential victims, as well as privileged material. NO redactions have been or will be made to protect famous individuals or politically exposed persons,” it said.