The Department of Justice said Wednesday it may have more than a million more documents related to the late Jeffrey Epstein that it needs to review and that the process could take weeks to complete.
The DOJ said two of its components, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, had just handed over the missing tranche of files, days after the Epstein Files Transparency Act deadline had passed.
‘We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible,’ the DOJ wrote in a statement on social media.
The ‘mass volume of material’ could ‘take a few more weeks’ to review, the DOJ said.
‘The Department will continue to fully comply with federal law and President Trump’s direction to release the files,’ the department wrote.
The DOJ has been sharing on a public website since Friday tens of thousands of pages of files related to Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking cases as part of its obligation under the transparency bill.
President Donald Trump signed the bill into law Nov. 19, giving the DOJ 30 days to review and release all unclassified material related to the cases.
The file rollout has stirred controversy as critics have blasted the DOJ for what they say are excessive redactions and the law’s lapsed deadline Friday. Initially, the DOJ said it would miss the deadline by a couple of weeks, but Wednesday’s announcement signals that might extend further into the new year than the administration had anticipated.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on ‘Meet the Press’ Sunday there was ‘well-settled law’ that supported the DOJ missing the bill’s deadline because of a need to meet other legal requirements, like redacting victim-identifying information.
The transparency bill required the DOJ to withhold information about victims and material that could jeopardize open investigations or litigation. Officials could also leave out information ‘in the interest of national defense or foreign policy,’ the bill said.
The bill also explicitly directed the DOJ to keep visible any details that could be damaging to high-profile and politically connected people.