Epstein files to be dropped on legal day, but remain incomplete
The Justice Department released the Epstein file in response to the Epstein File Transparency Act, but many documents are still missing.
The Justice Department’s deputy commander is defending his decision to remove more than a dozen photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s file that were published online last week.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged in a Dec. 21 interview that his department had pulled at least 15 photos from a government website that stores large amounts of documents related to late convicted sex offenders.
Blanche said in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that the photos were removed at the request of victim advocates and that the department would “reinstate them” after investigating whether further edits were needed.
Over the weekend, multiple media outlets reported that 15 to 16 photos originally included in the published file had been removed. One of the images was of a desk with an open drawer containing several printed photographs, including at least one of President Donald Trump. The deleted files also reportedly contained various works of art, including nudes.
“You can see there’s a woman in that photo,” Blanche told NBC. “And then after we published that photo, we found out that we had concerns about the fact that we had posted that photo and about the women. So we took it down. It has nothing to do with President Trump.”
Reports that the images disappeared from the website hosting the files heightened speculation about the Trump administration’s handling of the already controversial material, as authorities did not immediately explain why the images were removed. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee posted one of the photos in question on X and asked Attorney General Pam Bondi, “What else is being hidden? We need transparency from the American people.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment on Dec. 21.
Blanche said the decision to remove the photo followed the editorial requirements of the Epstein Transparency Act. Last month, Congress passed a nearly unanimous bill to force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, bypassing opposition from President Trump and Republican Congressional leaders. The deadline for the law was Dec. 19, the same day thousands of files were published on the department’s website.
However, not all of the Epstein documents were made public. Blanche previously said lawyers were sifting through the material to ensure the victims were not named or identified, and it could take weeks to compile the remaining hundreds of thousands of pages.
Files include photos, contact lists, flight records, business records and notes, court documents, and more. But key investigative documents known to be in the government’s possession, including information that led to the federal indictments of Epstein in 2019 and his longtime colleague Ghislaine Maxwell in 2020, were completely missing.
The Epstein File Transparency Act allows the Justice Department to withhold names of victims, depictions of child sexual abuse, and documents that could adversely affect criminal prosecution. But the article also says records cannot be withheld, delayed or edited “for reasons of embarrassment, reputational damage, or political sensitivity, including for government officials, public figures, and foreign dignitaries.”
The incomplete release of the files, along with inefficient search functions, inconsistent edits, and the deletion of more than a dozen files, has led to further criticism of the administration’s response to the release of the files and the Epstein controversy as a whole.
Blanche denied that the Justice Department was hiding anything through file editing. Trump and Epstein were close friends for more than a decade in the 1990s and early 2000s, but later fell out.
“We have not compiled any information about President Donald Trump or anyone else connected to Mr. Epstein, and that story… is not based in fact,” Branch said in an interview with NBC News.
Kathryn Palmer is USA TODAY’s political reporter. She can be reached at the following address: kapalmer@usatoday.com And to X@Kathryn Purml. Sign up for her daily politics newsletter here
