U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has been under scrutiny for months over the way she and other federal officials have handled documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. A new letter notes that the Justice Department made mistakes in its recent Epstein file dumps.
This letter was sent to two judges from Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who lead the DOJ, and shared by The New York Post. They said that “there are instances where redactions appear to have been inadvertently missed despite what is clearly a robust effort by the reviewer.”
Due to missed redactions and requests for further review of certain documents, thousands of the files were temporarily removed by the DOJ, according to the letter. It said that included “approximately 9,500 documents subject to the Protective Orders,” in the United States vs. Maxwell case against Ghislaine Maxwell.
Epstein – a financier who had connections to a roster of rich and powerful people, including President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and more – was a convicted sex offender. He died in prison in 2019 while facing charges for sex trafficking of minors. His death has been the subject of much speculation due to the disturbing nature of his crimes, his connections and its unusual circumstances.
Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2020 after being found guilty of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors and had pled the fifth following the latest Epstein files release. She is the daughter of the late media magnate Robert Maxwell.
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act last year and it was signed into law by Trump in November. In accordance with the law the DOJ has released approximately 3.5 million pages of documents related to Epstein. Prior to the legislation, Bondi and other Trump officials said last year (before the legislation passed) that no more files would be released to the public, a move that garnered criticism from both the right and the left. Videos and photos related to Epstein have also been released.
“As described in further detail below, and in connection with its publication obligations under the Act, the Department has made, and continues to make, substantial progress in identifying, reviewing, and redacting potential victim-identifying information both independently and in coordination with victims and their counsel,” said Bondi and Blanche’s Feb. 5 letter.
They also said that victims and victim counsel identified new names and identifiers for redaction “that were not identified prior to publication,” in the days leading up to Feb. 5. Bondi and Blanche explained that approximately 7,000 documents have been flagged for further review, based on concerns from victims or victim counsel that documents were identifying of a victim based on identifiers not previously provided to the Department or based on apparent instances of first names only, nicknames, misspellings or alternate spellings of names, or initials appearing in documents.”
Furthermore, “hundreds of documents have been flagged for further review relating to individuals and entities that had not previously been identified to the Department through this process as identifying of a victim,” they added.
“This context is not meant to minimize any instances in which the Department did not fully redact a document to protect victim information or to suggest that the Department’s process was perfect,” said Bondi and Blanche. “Indeed, in assessing requested redactions in recent days, including specifically with respect to the Protective Order documents, the Department has identified human errors, technical errors, and instances in which the effectiveness of certain quality control measures appears to have been hampered, including by limitations on text-searchability of certain types of documents in the platform used for review.”
After the latest document dump in late January, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the DOJ’s obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act were completed. Members of Congress were able to request to view parts redacted from the public release.
Rep. Tomas Massie (R-Ky.) said in a Tuesday X post that he and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) “found a list of names and photos in the Epstein files that DOJ had improperly redacted,” and that the department “promptly unredacted the men’s names as well as several women in the list that we didn’t flag. The two redacted names are victims.”
In a Monday X post, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said that the DOJ is “giving Members of Congress just four computers in a satellite office to read the unredacted Epstein File of more than 3 million documents.” He added: “This is what a cover up looks like.”
Regarding redactions, Raskin said this to reporters: “What Congress called for was a complete release of the files and just a redaction of the names of the victims. Now, unfortunately, the names of the victims were not redacted relating to more than 100 women in the case. So that is baffling and staggering that that would happen.”
At the same time, he said “there are thousands of thousands of pages replete with redactions,” but with no names of victims.
“So, it’s just a very puzzling thing, and the Department of Justice needs to explain it,” Raskin told the press. “The whole country should be able to read what this federal law compelled them to produce.”
Then, in a Tuesday X post, Raskin said that “several survivors of Epstein’s global child trafficking ring are now dangerously exposed because the DOJ is either spectacularly sloppy or trying to intimidate people. Or both.”
He said that the House Judiciary Committee will be demanding answers from Bondi Wednesday.