Photo: Department of Justice
For months, the federal government has faltered in its attempt to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the bipartisan bill signed by President Donald Trump that mandated the full release of the Justice Department’s enormous trove of documents and media related to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump administration blew past the congressionally mandated deadline and is staggering its Epstein releases, dropping millions of pages in batches that have included some problematic redactions along with the expected disturbing revelations. But the Trump administration’s latest release — an imposing tranche containing more than 3 million pages and 180,000 images — revealed another level of government sloppiness.
A Wall Street Journal analysis found that the Justice Department failed to redact the full names of 43 victims in Friday’s file release. The Journal reported that some of the women’s names appeared more than 100 times throughout the batch of documents. Of the victims left exposed, the Journal reports that the names of more than two dozen minor victims were unredacted and some were accompanied by identifying information including home addresses.
In addition, the New York Times reports that the federal government published at least 40 photos that showed the nude bodies of young women, including their unredacted faces. Per the Times, the images show at least seven different individuals appearing in different locations, including bedrooms and what’s believed to be the beach on Epstein’s private island. Many of the images were removed from the Justice Department’s website after the Times flagged them.
The haphazard release prompted swift backlash from survivors of Epstein’s crimes. ABC News reports that lawyers representing the financier’s victims have asked U.S. District Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer to order the Justice Department to take its Epstein-files clearinghouse website down, alleging the agency has violated their clients’ privacy. “For the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, every hour matters. The harm is ongoing and irreversible,” lawyers Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards wrote in a letter obtained by the outlet Sunday.
A group of Epstein survivors issued a statement Friday condemning the release. “Once again, survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed, while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected. That is outrageous,” it read, per NBC News.
In a letter to Judges Berman and Engelmayer, the pair of New York judges who presided over the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases, U.S. attorney Jay Clayton said attorneys with the Southern District of New York worked throughout the weekend to remove materials that were flagged as violating victims’ privacy. Clayton said the Justice Department removed thousands of documents and media that contained identifying information ” due to various factors, including technical or human error.”
Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche defended the government’s handling of the files in an interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, saying that errors only account for “.001 percent of all the materials.”
“We took great pains, as I explained on Friday, to make sure that we protected victims. We are talking about a review of 3.5 million pieces of paper that were released on Friday,” Blanche said. “Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectify that.”
In the same interview, Blanche acknowledged that there are a small number of documents waiting to be cleared for release by a judge, but signaled that no additional major releases are imminent. “This review is over. We reviewed over six million pieces of paper, thousands of videos, tens of thousands of images which is what the statute required us to do,” he said.
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