Trump Administration Begins Releasing Long-Awaited Epstein Files, Heavily Redacted and Incomplete
Hundreds of thousands of files related to Epstein were released Friday, with more to come in the next few weeks.
The Justice Department (DOJ) began releasing its trove of documents related to the many investigations of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, the deadline imposed by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The law, signed by President Donald Trump last month, obligated the Justice Department to “make publicly available…all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein, his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, and other individuals named or referenced in federal investigations into the disgraced financier, within 30 days.
The release included several photographs of former president Bill Clinton, including one of him in a swimming pool with Ghislaine Maxwell and an unidentified person. Another showed Clinton in a hot tub. Other photographs show the late pop star Michael Jackson standing with Epstein.
The tranche released on Friday was notable for its lack of material mentioning President Donald Trump, who was friends with Epstein and socialized frequently in the 1990s and early 2000s.
But the Trump Administration warned earlier Friday that it would not immediately release all the files in its possession, as required by law, blaming the delay on the scale of redactions it said were necessary to protect victims.
Read More: Trump Administration Says It Will Not Meet Deadline To Release All Epstein Files
“What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story to the extent it needs to be protected is completely protected,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News on Friday, hours ahead of the release.
Several hundred thousand records are expected to be released over the course of the next few weeks, Blanche added.
Even the files it did release were heavily redacted. Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who joined with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in a bipartisan push to release the files, warned that Congress could hold impeachment hearings for Attorney General Pam Bondi and Blanche if they do not comply with the law requiring the full release of the documents.
He noted that the DOJ redacted the entirety of a 119-page Grand Jury document.
"Our law requires them to explain redactions. There's not a single explanation for why that document was redacted," he said in a video posted to X.
Massie said the DOJ's release "grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law" that President Trump signed last month.
Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees said Friday they were “examining all legal options” against the DOJ for failing to abide by the new law.