Ingles (US) – 3 million more Epstein pages with 2,000 images publish, ending review

The Justice Department released another 3 million pages of Jeffrey Epstein files on Jan. 30, including 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced.

The releases will include redactions, Blanche said at a press conference at the department in Washington, DC. He said this will result in more than 3.5 million pages being produced in total, out of more than 6 million pages collected by the government, or about 60% of what the government has in its possession.

“There’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents,” Deputy AG Blanche said. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

Blanche also said the DOJ “did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect or not protect anybody.”

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, one of the lead sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the files to be released with limited withholdings, questioned the Justice Department’s decision to withhold about 2.5 million pages of documents following its review of the Epstein files.

“I will be reviewing closely to see if they release what I’ve been pushing for,” Khanna said, adding that he wants to see “the FBI 302 victim interview statements, a draft indictment and prosecution memorandum prepared during the 2007 Florida investigation, and hundreds of thousands of emails and files from Epstein’s computers.”

Khanna added that “failing to release these files only shields the powerful individuals who were involved and hurts the public’s trust in our institutions.”

Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender who died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting a federal sex-trafficking trial. The disgraced financier rubbed shoulders with some of the world’s richest and most powerful people, including former President Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump. Both men have denied any wrongdoing.

Conspiracy theories have swirled for years about whether other rich and powerful people may have participated with Epstein in sex crimes. Many alleged victims say more people should be held accountable.

DOJ says it withheld documents for many different reasons

Blanche said Epstein files were withheld and redacted for various reasons.

Some were kept back because they included personally-identifying information about victims, medical files about victims, and other files for which releasing them “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” Blanche said.

Files were also withheld if they depicted child sexual abuse or “would jeopardize an active federal investigation,” according to Blanche. The DOJ also didn’t produce files depicting death, physical abuse or injury.

Blanche also said the Justice Department withheld files based on “various privileges,” referring to legal theories related to reasons documents should not be released, such as because they involve legally-protected communications between a lawyer and a client or are forms of “work product” created in an investigative or legal context.

DOJ says it shielded all women except Ghislaine Maxwell, but not men

Blanche said the Justice Department redacted images or video of every woman depicted in the Epstein files except for those that showed Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, who was convicted in 2021 of sex-trafficking a minor to Epstein.

The department didn’t redact images of any men, Blanche said, “unless it was impossible to redact the woman without also redacting the man.”

DOJ release comes late, faces congressional scrutiny

Under the Epstein transparency law, the Justice Department was supposed to release all its files on Jeffrey Epstein by Dec. 19, with only limited redactions. However, the department only released a small subset of those files by that deadline.

At his Jan. 30 press conference, Blanche said complying with the law’s deadline wasn’t realistic, given the need to review, withhold, and redact documents.

“You’re talking about two Eiffel Towers – okay? – of pages,” Blanche said, referring to the six million pages he said the Justice Department possesses.

Blanche noted the law required the Justice Department to go through the documents and protect victim information.