The US Justice Department on Friday released many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier's sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with the rich and powerful.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a press conference that the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents as part of the latest Epstein disclosure.
The files, posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.
Blanche said all images of women were being redacted aside from those of Ghislaine Maxwell, the accomplice of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The DoJ website now has an age verification barrier due to the explicit nature of the content in the new batch.
They were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The department missed a December 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files. It then said that it had tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted, or blacked out, to protect the identities of victims of sexual abuse.
{{/usCountry}}The department missed a December 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files. It then said that it had tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted, or blacked out, to protect the identities of victims of sexual abuse.
{{/usCountry}}The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to 5.2 million, including duplicates, the department said.
The previously released Epstein files
The US Justice Department had released tens of thousands of pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.
Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Donald Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of former President Bill Clinton.
Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.
Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.