WASHINGTON: Thousands of new documents linked to the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made available Tuesday (Dec 23) by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), amid mounting criticism over the pace of the publication and heavy redactions.
At least 8,000 files were posted online, including hundreds of videos or audio recordings, notably surveillance footage from August 2019, the month Epstein was found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The DOJ posted around 11,000 links to new documents online, but some of them appeared to lead nowhere.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), passed nearly unanimously by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, mandated the complete release of the Epstein files by Friday of last week.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has blamed the delay on the need to redact the identities of Epstein’s more than 1,000 victims from the hundreds of thousands of documents and photos in the government’s possession.
EFTA co-sponsors Ro Khanna, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican, threatened over the weekend to bring contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Pam Bondi for failing to comply with the law.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a resolution on Monday calling for legal action against the Trump administration for failing to release the complete Epstein files.
“Instead of transparency, the Trump administration released a tiny fraction of the files and blacked out massive portions of what little they provided,” Schumer said in a statement.
“This is a blatant cover-up. Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche are shielding Donald Trump from accountability, and the Senate has a duty to act.”
Blanche denied on Sunday that the Justice Department was redacting the files to protect Trump, a one-time close friend of Epstein.
“We are not redacting information around President Trump,” Blanche, a former personal lawyer to the president, told NBC’s “Meet the Press”.
Blanche said one picture of Trump was briefly removed over concerns for victims. It was later reposted after the Justice Department determined there was “no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted”.