The Department of Justice on Friday afternoon dropped its first batch of the hundreds of thousands of files related to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, failing to meet its deadline to release all remaining files.
The department was legally mandated to release the files by Friday, but announced in the morning that it would not do so, citing the need for redactions. Instead, the files will come out “over the next couple weeks,” Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said.
The DOJ’s website was overloaded minutes after the files dropped and those wanting to see them were put in a queue. The site also indicated that officials were unable to guarantee they fully redacted anything that should not be public.
“In view of the Congressional deadline, all reasonable efforts have been made to review and redact personal information pertaining to victims, other private individuals, and protect sensitive materials from disclosure,” the notice read. “That said, because of the volume of information involved, this website may nevertheless contain information that inadvertently includes non-public personally identifiable information or other sensitive content, to include matters of a sexual nature.”
In a letter to Congress obtained by NOTUS, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the DOJ “worked diligently to meet the act’s deadline” but asserted that it simply couldn’t meet the deadline by reviewing all the material in time — opting instead to release it “on a rolling basis.” He claimed the law did “not require the impossible.”
The partial release has sparked anger since Friday morning, with senior Democrats in Congress blasting the administration and suggesting there will be consequences.
The highly anticipated release comes after a monthslong pressure campaign from lawmakers and the public, including President Donald Trump’s base. Epstein’s ties to the rich and powerful — including Trump himself — have sparked speculation that the files contain information not yet known to the public about sex crimes and abuse. The White House has said Trump did nothing wrong.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican who led a discharge petition in the House to have the files released, said in a video Thursday that he will be looking for at least 20 names of men who allegedly committed sex crimes, based on conversations with the lawyers of survivors of Epstein’s abuse.
“Interestingly, Congress is adjourning a day early, so that we won’t be in session on Friday when these documents are required to be released,” Massie said in the video.
The release is the result of the bipartisan discharge petition and an abrupt flip from Republicans on releasing the files. The discharge petition, spearheaded by Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, forced a vote in the House after it garnered the necessary 218 signatures. But getting enough support for the petition was a monthslong process that alienated Trump loyalists.
Three Republican women — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert — signed on to release the files and stayed on the petition despite the Trump administration trying to pressure some of them to drop their support. Greene said Trump, who has called the push to release the files a “scam” and a “hoax,” called her a “traitor” over the issue. Greene has since announced her intention to resign from office, and at least partially blames Trump for pushing her out. Mace, who received political threats from the president, is leaving her seat to run for governor of South Carolina.
The final required signature came from Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who waited seven weeks for Speaker Mike Johnson to swear her in as a member after the House went out of session and the government shut down. Democrats protested, claiming the delay was an attempt to block the files from being released.
After months of trying to dodge the issue, Republicans jumped on the bandwagon of support as it became clear the bill to force release of the files was going to pass. The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent, and Trump signed it into law Nov. 19.
Meanwhile, Epstein’s former partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking in a minimum-security prison, and is apparently planning to ask Trump for a commutation.
The law exempts the Justice Department from releasing victims’ personal or medical information, child-sexual-abuse materials or information related to ongoing investigation. Since the department has not specified what is in the files, it will be difficult for lawmakers to know whether anything is being wrongly held back.
Democratic lawmakers preparing to parse through the files say they do not know what to expect beforehand or whether they will be receiving everything the DOJ is able to release.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have been conducting a separate investigation into Epstein’s crimes, recently releasing some photographs from a tranche of 95,000 from the Epstein estate that include snaps of Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Steve Bannon and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who earlier this year was stripped of his royal titles by his brother, Britain’s King Charles, due to his association with Epstein.
Oversight Democrats previously released some of Epstein’s personal emails, which allege that Trump “spent hours at” Epstein’s house and “knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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