The Department of Justice on Friday is releasing more than 3 million additional pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
The large release comes after weeks of criticism that the DOJ was not complying with the requirement under federal law passed in November that all files related to the notorious sex offender Epstein be publicly released by Dec. 19.
Blanche said Friday the DOJ was not releasing the rest of what are more than 6 million total pages identified as potentially responsive to the Epstein Transparency Act.
A group of victims of Epstein in a statement blasted the DOJ for what it called the "incomplete" release of the files.
"This latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files is being sold as transparency, but what it actually does is expose survivors," said the group in a statement obtained by MS Now.
"Once again, survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed, while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected. That is outrageous. As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein's enablers continue to benefit from secrecy. This is a betrayal of the very people this process is supposed to serve," the statement said.
"The Justice Department cannot claim it is finished releasing files until every legally required document is released and every abuser and enabler is fully exposed," the victims said. "We need to hear directly from Attorney General Pam Bondi when she appears before the House Judiciary Committee on February 11. Survivors deserve answers, and the public deserves the truth.
"This is not over," the women said. "We will not stop until the truth is fully revealed and every perpetrator is finally held accountable. As we have always said, this is not about politics. We hope Democrats and Republicans will stand with survivors in continuing to demand the full release of the Epstein files."
Speaking at a press conference at DOJ headquarters in Washington, Blanche said that more than 500 DOJ lawyers and other personnel had spent the past 75 days reviewing potential material related to Epstein and determining what needed to be released under the law.
"We're releasing more than 3 million pages today, and not the 6 million pages that we collected," Blanche said. "That means that the department produced approximately 3½ million pages in compliance with the act."
He said that no more documents would be released. The large release on Friday comes weeks after DOJ released a much-smaller tranche of Epstein-related documents on Dec. 19.
"Today's release marks the end of a very comprehensive documentation, document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act," Blanche said.
Some of the material released relates to Epstein's convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for crimes related to procuring underage girls for him to abuse. Epstein killed himself in a federal jail in New York in August 2019, weeks after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges.
The DOJ said that any material not being released fell within one of four categories: duplicate documents between investigations by federal prosecutors in New York and Florida; documents covered by attorney-client privilege and other privileges; depictions of violence and files that contain personally identifiable information about victims; and items that were not part of the case files related to Epstein and Maxwell.
"We complied with the statute," Blanche said Friday. "We complied with the act. We did not protect President Trump ... or anybody."
President Donald Trump had been friends with Epstein for years before the two men had a falling out in the mid-2000s.
"There's not some tranche of super-secret documents about Jeffrey Epstein that we're withholding," Blanche said.
