Deputy Attorney General Says DOJ Won’t Release Full Epstein Files to Congress by Deadline

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Department of Justice (DOJ) will not release the full files related to Jeffrey Epstein by the Dec. 19 deadline, as mandated under new legislation, and will instead release them in batches.

The DOJ on Friday afternoon started releasing an initial tranche of the files related to Epstein, which can be accessed on the department’s website under a section called the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

Speaking to Fox News, Blanche said that the DOJ would release “several hundred thousand” files on Friday and expects “several hundred thousand more” to be released over the coming weeks.

A bill signed into law by President Donald Trump last month required the DOJ to release files connected to Epstein, accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and any other co-conspirators by Dec. 19.

The reason for the delay, he said, is that the DOJ needs to redact names and identifying information about witnesses or victims.

“Today is the 30 days when I expect that we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today. And those documents will come in in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with, with all of the investigations into, into Mr. Epstein,” Blanche said.

The DOJ is now “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,” he said.

“I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks. So today, several hundred thousand. And then over the next couple of weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more.”

The DOJ has been “working tirelessly” since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed, Blanche said, to ensure “that we get every single document that we have within the Department of Justice, review it and get it to the American public.”

Over the past several weeks, the DOJ submitted court papers asking three federal judges to unseal some of the Epstein files in response to the law, which several judges agreed to.

Previously, the judges had blocked the release of grand jury records and other information related to the cases due to rules around grand jury disclosures.

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state prostitution charges involving someone under the age of 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison under a deal with prosecutors.

He was again arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019. He was found dead in an August 2019 jail cell in New York City, with the city’s medical examiner’s office ruling his death a suicide by hanging.

Prosecutors later charged Epstein’s longtime confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein. Maxwell was convicted in late 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. She was interviewed over the summer by Blanche.

Maxwell asked a federal court on Dec. 17 to set aside her sex trafficking convictions and 20-year prison sentence, citing “newly discovered evidence.”

After nearly two decades of court action and prying by reporters, a voluminous number of records related to Epstein are already public, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony, and transcripts of depositions of his accusers, his staffers, and others.

The Justice Department in July stated it had not found any information that could support prosecuting anyone else.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.