Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Justice Department had released only “some” of the files it was legally required to release by the deadline. But officials said compliance was “historic.”
Justice Department releases Jeffrey Epstein files, with more to come
The deadline for releasing most documents related to Jeffrey Epstein was Dec. 19, with hundreds of thousands of documents released.
The Epstein files have been made public, but the lawmakers who pushed for their release are unhappy.
Big-name Democratic politicians are most outraged by the Justice Department’s decision to “roll in” the release of hundreds of thousands of documents related to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“It’s part of the total body of evidence,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. To substantiate his point, he highlighted how 119 pages of one document were completely redacted.
“Simply publishing a trove of blacked-out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law,” Schumer said in a statement. “We need answers as to why.”
Schumer was not alone in his criticism. Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said on CNN that the Justice Department is “defying Congress.”
The bipartisan authors of the Epstein File Transparency Act, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massey (R-Ky.), also accused the Trump administration of not complying with the law, which passed Congress nearly unanimously in November.
“This is an incomplete release with too many edits,” Khanna said in a social media post.
“Unfortunately, today’s document release … flagrantly violates both the spirit and letter of the law,” Massey added.
The law required the Justice Department to fully disclose by Dec. 19 all information in its possession related to the investigation of a related financier who committed suicide in jail in 2019. Under the law, the Justice Department is also required to make its files publicly searchable, but a basic search of what the Justice Department calls the “Epstein Library” found that even basic searches for “Trump” and “Clinton” came up blank.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche explained in an interview on the day of the deadline and in a letter to lawmakers obtained by USA TODAY that the full rollout of the file will occur in several parts over the next few weeks.
Blanche defended the edits, saying a team of more than 20 lawyers conducted a second-level review to ensure they were appropriate.
He also said the process took so long because there was “a huge amount of material to consider.”
“The department’s need to conduct rolling production is consistent with well-settled case law that laws should be interpreted so as not to require the impossible,” Blanche wrote.
Zachary Schermele is a Congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can email us at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and on Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social..
