WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has expanded its review of documents related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to 5.2 million as it also increases the number of attorneys trying to comply with a law mandating release of the files, according to a person briefed on a letter sent to U.S. attorneys.
The figure is the latest estimate in the expanding review of case files on Epstein and his longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell that has run more than a week past a deadline set in law by Congress.
The Justice Department has more than 400 attorneys working on the review, but does not expect to release more documents until Jan. 20 or 21, according to the person briefed on the letter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The White House did not dispute the figures laid out in the email, and pointed to a statement from Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who said the administration’s review was an “all-hands-on-deck approach.”
Blanche said Wednesday that lawyers from the Justice Department in Washington, the FBI, the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of New York are working “around the clock” to review the files. The additional documents and lawyers related to the case were first reported by the New York Times.
“We’re asking as many lawyers as possible to commit their time to review the documents that remain,” Blanche said. “Required redactions to protect victims take time but they will not stop these materials from being released.”
Still, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi is facing pressure from Congress after the Justice Department’s rollout of information has lagged behind the Dec. 19 deadline to release the information.
“Should Attorney General Pam Bondi be impeached?” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who helped lead the effort to pass the law mandating the document release, asked on social media this week.
Democrats also are reviewing their legal options as they continue to seize on an issue that has caused cracks in the Republican Party and at times flummoxed President Trump’s administration.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on social media that the latest figures from the Department of Justice “shows Bondi, Blanche, and others at the DOJ have been lying to the American people about the Epstein files since day one” and pointed out that the documents released so far represent a fraction of the total.
WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of federal immigration judges in California have been fired, retired or quit since the start of the Trump administration.
The reduction follows a trend in immigration courts nationwide and constitutes, critics say, an attack on the rule of law that will lead to yet more delays in an overburdened court system.
The reduction in immigration judges has come as the administration scaled up efforts to deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Trump administration officials have described the immigration court process, in which proceedings can take years amid a backlog of millions of cases, as an impediment to their goals.
Nationwide, there were 735 immigration judges last fiscal year, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the arm of the Justice Department that houses immigration courts. At least 97 have been fired since President Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges.
California has lost at least 35 immigration judges since January, according to Mobile Pathways, a Berkeley-based organization that analyzes immigration court data. That’s down from 132. The steepest drop occurred at the San Francisco Immigration Court, which has lost more than half its bench.
“A noncitizen might win their case, might lose their case, but the key question is, did they receive a hearing?” said Emmett Soper, who worked at the Justice Department before becoming an immigration judge in Virginia in 2017. “Up until this administration, I had always been confident that I was working in a system that, despite its flaws, was fundamentally fair.”
Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy
— Amber George, former San Francisco Immigration Court judge
The administration intends to fill some judge positions, and in new immigration judge job listings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere seeks candidates who want to be a “deportation judge” and “restore integrity and honor to our Nation’s Immigration Court system.”
The immigration judges union called the job listings “insulting.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that he was elected to “remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that.”
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” he added.
The National Assn. of Immigration Judges said it expects a wave of additional retirements at the end of this month.
“My biggest concern is for the people whose lives are left in limbo. What can they count on when the ground is literally shifting every moment that they’re here?” said Amber George, who was fired last month from the San Francisco Immigration Court. “Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy.”
Because immigration courts operate under the Justice Department, their priorities typically shift from one presidential administration to the next, but the extreme changes taking place have renewed longtime calls for immigration courts to become independent of the executive branch.
The Trump administration recently added 36 judges; 25 of them are military lawyers serving in temporary positions.
This summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice. That took place after the department changed the requirements for temporary immigration judges, removing the need for immigration law experience.
The Department of Justice did not respond to specific questions, but said judges must be impartial and that the agency is obligated to take action against those who demonstrate systemic bias.
Former judges say that, because terminations have happened with no advance notice, remaining court staff have often scrambled to get up to speed on reassigned cases.
Ousted judges described a pattern: In the afternoon, sometimes while presiding over a hearing, they receive a short email stating that they are being terminated pursuant to Article II of the Constitution. Their names are swiftly removed from the Justice Department website.
Jeremiah Johnson is one of five judges terminated recently from the San Francisco Immigration Court.
Johnson said he worries the Trump administration is circumventing immigration courts by making conditions so unbearable that immigrants decide to drop their cases.
The number of detained immigrants has climbed to record levels since January, with more than 65,000 in custody. Immigrants and lawyers say the conditions are inhumane, alleging medical neglect, punitive solitary confinement and obstructed access to legal counsel. Requests by immigrants for voluntary departure, which avoids formal deportation, have surged in recent months.
Many of those arrests have happened at courthouses, causing immigrants to avoid their legal claims out of fear of being detained and forcing judges to order them removed in absentia.
“Those are ways to get people to leave the United States without seeing a judge, without due process that Congress has provided,” Johnson said. “It’s a dismantling of the court system.”
A sign posted outside the San Francisco Immigration Court in October protests enforcement actions by immigration agents. The court has lost more than half of its immigration judges.
(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
The judges in San Francisco’s Immigration Court have historically had higher asylum approval rates than the national average. Johnson said grant rates depend on a variety of circumstances, including whether a person is detained or has legal representation, their country of origin and whether they are adults or children.
In November, the military judges serving in immigration courts heard 286 cases and issued rulings in 110, according to Mobile Pathways. The military judges issued deportation orders in 78% of the cases — more often than other immigration judges that month, who ordered deportations in 63% of cases.
“They’re probably following directions — and the military is very good at following directions — and it’s clear what their directions are that are given by this administration,” said Mobile Pathways co-founder Bartlomiej Skorupa. He cautioned that 110 cases are a small sample size and that trends will become clearer in the coming months.
Former immigration judges and their advocates say that appointing people with no immigration experience and little training makes for a steep learning curve and the possibility of due process violations.
“There are multiple concerns here: that they’re temporary, which could expose them to greater pressure to decide cases in a certain way; and also they lack experience in immigration law, which is an extremely complex area of practice,” said Ingrid Eagly, an immigration law professor at UCLA.
Immigration courts have a backlog of more than 3 million cases. Anam Petit, who served as an immigration judge in Virginia until September, said the administration’s emphasis on speedy case completions has to be balanced against the constitutional right to a fair hearing.
“There are not enough judges to hear those cases, and this administration [is] taking it upon themselves to fire a lot of experienced and trained judges who can hear those cases and can mitigate that backlog,” she said.
Complementary bills introduced in the U.S. Senate and House this month by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) would prevent the appointment of military lawyers as temporary immigration judges and impose a two-year limit of service.
“The Trump administration’s willingness to fire experienced immigration judges and hire inexperienced or temporary ‘deportation judges,’ especially in places like California, has fundamentally impacted the landscape of our justice system,” Schiff said in a statement announcing the bill.
The bills have little chance in the Republican-controlled Congress but illustrate how significantly Democrats — especially in California — oppose the administration’s changes to immigration courts.
Former Immigration Judge Tania Nemer, a dual citizen of Lebanon and the U.S., sued the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi this month, alleging that she was illegally terminated in February because of her gender, ethnic background and political affiliation. In 2023, Nemer ran for judicial office in Ohio as a Democrat.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, seen here at the White House in October, has dismissed complaints by a former immigration judge who alleged she was fired without cause.
“Most recently, yesterday, I was sued by an immigration judge who we fired,” she said Dec. 2. “One of the reasons she said she was a woman. Last I checked, I was a woman as well.”
Other former judges have challenged their terminations through the federal Merit Systems Protection Board.
Johnson, of San Francisco, is one of those. He filed his appeal this month, claiming that he was not given cause for termination.
“My goal is to be reinstated,” he said. “My colleagues on the bench, our court was vibrant. It was a good place to work, despite all the pressures.”
WASHINGTON — A dozen U.S. senators are calling on the Justice Department’s watchdog to examine the department’s failure to release all records pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by last Friday’s congressionally mandated deadline, saying victims “deserve full disclosure” and the “peace of mind” of an independent audit.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined 11 Democrats in signing a letter Wednesday urging Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume to audit the Justice Department’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted last month that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Given the [Trump] Administration’s historic hostility to releasing the files, politicization of the Epstein case more broadly, and failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a neutral assessment of its compliance with the statutory disclosure requirements is essential,” the senators wrote. Full transparency, they said, “is essential in identifying members of our society who enabled and participated in Epstein’s crimes.”
Murkowski and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) led the letter-writing group. Others included Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Adam Schiff of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois, both Cory Booker and Andy Kim of New Jersey, Gary Peters of Michigan, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a co-sponsor of the transparency act, posted Wednesday on X: “DOJ did break the law by making illegal redactions and by missing the deadline.”
Despite the deadline, the Justice Department has said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. More batches of records were posted over the weekend and on Tuesday. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.
“The reason why we are still reviewing documents and still continuing our process is simply that to protect victims,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “So the same individuals that are out there complaining about the lack of documents that were produced on Friday are the same individuals who apparently don’t want us to protect victims.”
Records that have been released, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records and other documents, were either already public or heavily blacked out, and many lacked necessary context. Records that hadn’t been seen before include transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Other records made public in recent days include a note from a federal prosecutor from January 2020 that said Trump had flown on the financier’s private plane more often than had been previously known and emails between Maxwell and someone who signs off with the initial “A.” They contain other references that suggest the writer was Britain’s former Prince Andrew. In one, “A” writes: “How’s LA? Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?”
The senators’ call Wednesday for an inspector general audit comes days after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced a resolution that, if passed, would direct the Senate to file or join lawsuits aimed at forcing the Justice Department to comply with the disclosure and deadline requirements. In a statement, he called the staggered, heavily redacted release “a blatant cover-up.”
WASHINGTON — Tips provided to federal investigators about Donald Trump’s alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s schemes with young women and girls are “sensationalist” and “untrue,” the Justice Department said on Tuesday, after a new tranche of files released from the probe featured multiple references to the president.
The documents include a limousine driver reportedly overhearing Trump discussing a man named Jeffrey “abusing” a girl, and an alleged victim accusing Trump and Epstein of rape. It is unclear whether the FBI followed up on the tips. The alleged rape victim died from a gunshot wound to the head after reporting the incident.
Nowhere in the newly released files do federal law enforcement agents or prosecutors indicate that Trump was suspected of wrongdoing, or that Trump — whose friendship with Epstein lasted through the mid-2000s — was investigated himself.
But one unidentified federal prosecutor noted in a 2020 email that Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” including over a time period when Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s top confidante who would ultimately be convicted on five federal counts of sex trafficking and abuse, was being investigated for criminal activity.
The Justice Department released an unusual statement unequivocally defending the president.
“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the Justice Department statement read. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
“Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” the department added.
The Justice Department files were released with heavy redactions after bipartisan lawmakers in Congress passed a new law compelling it to do so, despite Trump lobbying Republicans aggressively over the summer and fall to oppose the bill. The president ultimately signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law after the legislation passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
One newly released file containing a letter purportedly from Epstein — a notorious child sex offender who died in jail while awaiting federal trial on sex-trafficking charges — drew widespread attention online, but was held up by the Justice Department as an example of faulty or misleading information contained in the files.
The letter appeared to be sent by Epstein to Larry Nassar, another convicted sex offender, shortly before Epstein’s death. The letter’s author suggested that Nassar would learn after receiving the note that Epstein had “taken the ‘short route’ home,” possibly referring to his suicide. It was postmarked from Virginia on Aug. 13, 2019, despite Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail three days prior.
“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls,” the letter reads. “When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”
The Justice Department said that the FBI had confirmed that the letter is “FAKE” after it made the rounds on Tuesday.
“This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual,” the department posted on social media. “Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”
The department has faced bipartisan scrutiny since failing to release all of the Epstein files in its possession by Dec. 19, the legal deadline for it to do so, and for redacting material on the vast majority of the documents.
Justice Department officials said they were following the law by protecting victims with the redactions. The Epstein Files Transparency Act also directs the department not to redact images or references to prominent or political figures, and to provide an explanation for each and every redaction in writing.
The latest release, just days before the Christmas holiday, includes roughly 30,000 documents, the department said. Hundreds of thousands more are expected to be released in the coming weeks.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a statement in response to the Tuesday release accusing the Justice Department of a “cover-up,” writing on social media, “the new DOJ documents raise serious questions about the relationship between Epstein and Donald Trump.”
Documents from Epstein’s private estate released by the oversight committee earlier this fall had already cast a spotlight on that relationship, revealing Epstein had written in emails to associates that Trump “knew about the girls.”
The latest documents release also includes an email from an individual identified as “A,” claiming to stay at Balmoral Castle, a royal residence in Scotland, asking Maxwell if she had found him “some new inappropriate friends.” Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, has come under intense scrutiny over his ties to Epstein in recent years.
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, Trump said the continuing Epstein scandal amounts to a “distraction” from Republican successes, and expressed disapproval over the release of images in the files that reveal associates of Epstein.
“I believe they gave over 100,000 pages of documents, and there’s tremendous backlash,” Trump told reporters. “It’s an interesting question, because a lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein. But they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues.”
NEW YORK — The Senate’s top Democrat urged his colleagues Monday to take legal action over the Justice Department’s incremental and heavily redacted release of records pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a resolution that, if passed, would direct the Senate to file or join lawsuits aimed at forcing the Justice Department to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted last month that required disclosure of records by last Friday.
“Instead of transparency, the Trump administration released a tiny fraction of the files and blacked out massive portions of what little they provided,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “This is a blatant cover-up.”
In lieu of Republican support, Schumer’s resolution is largely symbolic. The Senate is off until Jan. 5, more than two weeks after the deadline. Even then, the resolution will likely face an uphill battle for passage. But it allows Democrats to continue a pressure campaign for disclosure that Republicans had hoped to put behind them.
The Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis by the end of the year. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring victims’ names and other identifying information. So far, the department hasn’t given any notice when new records arrive.
That approach angered some accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the transparency act. Records that were released, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records and other documents, were either already public or heavily blacked out, and many lacked necessary context.
There were few revelations in the tens of thousands of pages of records that have been released so far. Some of the most eagerly awaited records, such as FBI victim interviews and internal memos shedding light on charging decisions, weren’t there.
Nor were there any mentions of some powerful figures who’ve been in Epstein’s orbit, like Britain’s former Prince Andrew.
Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Justice Department’s decision to release just a fraction of the files by the deadline as necessary to protect survivors of sexual abuse by the disgraced financier.
Blanche pledged that the Trump administration would meet its obligation required by law. But he stressed that the department was obligated to act with caution as it goes about making public thousands of documents that can include sensitive information.
Blanche, the Justice Department’s second-in-command, also defended its decision to remove several files related to the case from its public webpage, including a photograph showing Donald Trump, less than a day after they were posted.
The missing files, which were available Friday but no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one of a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Blanche said the documents were removed because they also showed victims of Epstein. Blanche said the Trump photo and the other documents will be reposted once redactions are made to protect survivors.
“We are not redacting information around President Trump, around any other individual involved with Mr. Epstein, and that narrative, which is not based on fact at all, is completely false,” Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Blanche said Trump, a Republican, has labeled the Epstein matter “a hoax” because “there’s this narrative out there that the Department of Justice is hiding and protecting information about him, which is completely false.”
“The Epstein files existed for years and years and years and you did not hear a peep out of a single Democrat for the past four years and yet … lo and behold, all of a sudden, out of the blue, Senator Schumer suddenly cares about the Epstein files,” Blanche said. “That’s the hoax.”
Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.
The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”
Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”
The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.
Scant new insight in the disclosures
Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.
Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.
The gaps go further.
The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability.
Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.
The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.
There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.
Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.
That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a years-long battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and alleged crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.
“I feel like again, the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.
Redactions, lack of context
Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.
The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages of records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.
Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.
Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” probably from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.
Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.
The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.
Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.
One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.
Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.
“For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”
The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.
Acosta, who was Labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.
He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.
“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would probably view the survivors differently.
“There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.
Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing Epstein accuser Maria Farmer and other survivors, said Saturday that her client feels vindicated after the document release. Farmer sought for years documents backing up her claim that Epstein and Maxwell were in possession of child sexual abuse images.
“It’s a triumph and a tragedy,” she said. “It looks like the government did absolutely nothing. Horrible things have happened and if they investigated in even the smallest way, they could have stopped him.”
Sisak and Caruso write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Kristin M. Hall, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department released a library of files on Friday related to Jeffrey Epstein, partially complying with a new federal law compelling their release, while acknowledging that hundreds of thousands of files remain sealed.
The portal, on the department’s website, includes videos, photos and documents from the years-long investigation of the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, who died in federal prison in 2019. But upon an initial survey of the files, several of the documents were heavily redacted, and much of the database was unsearchable, in spite of a provision of the new law requiring a more accessible system.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, unequivocally required the department to release its full trove of files by midnight Friday, marking 30 days since passage.
But a top official said earlier Friday that the department would miss the legal deadline Friday to release all files, protracting a scandal that has come to plague the Trump administration. Hundreds of thousands more were still under review and would take weeks more to release, said Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general.
“I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks, so today several hundred thousand and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” Blanche told Fox News on Friday.
The delay drew immediate condemnation from Democrats in key oversight roles.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, accused President Trump and his administration in a statement Friday of “violating federal law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long, billion-dollar, international sex trafficking ring,” and said they were “examining all legal options.”
The delay also drew criticism from some Republicans.
“My goodness, what is in the Epstein files?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who is leaving Congress next month, wrote on X. “Release all the files. It’s literally the law.”
“Time’s up. Release the files,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote on X.
Already, congressional efforts to force the release of documents from the FBI’s investigations into Epstein have produced a trove of the disgraced financier’s emails and other records from his estate.
Some made reference to Trump and added to a long-evolving portrait of the social relationship that Epstein and Trump shared for years, before what Trump has described as a falling out.
In one email in early 2019, during Trump’s first term in the White House, Epstein wrote to author and journalist Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls.”
In a 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted of conspiring with Epstein to help him sexually abuse young girls, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him … he has never once been mentioned.”
Maxwell responded: “I have been thinking about that…”
Trump has strongly denied any wrongdoing, and downplayed the importance of the files. He has also intermittently worked to block their release, even while suggesting publicly that he would not be opposed to it.
His administration’s resistance to releasing all of the FBI’s files, and fumbling with their reasons for withholding documents, was overcome only after Republican lawmakers broke off and joined Democrats in passing the transparency measure.
The resistance has also riled many in the president’s base, with their intrigue and anger over the files remaining stickier and harder to shake for Trump than any other political vulnerability.
It remained unclear Friday afternoon what additional revelations would come from the anticipated dump. Among the files that were released, extensive redactions were expected to shield victims, as well as references to individuals and entities that could be the subject of ongoing investigations or matters of national security.
That could include mentions of Trump, experts said, who was a private citizen over the course of his infamous friendship with Epstein through the mid-2000s.
Epstein was convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution in Florida, but served only 13 months in custody in what was considered a sweetheart plea deal that saved him a potential life sentence. He was charged in 2019 with sex trafficking, and died in federal custody at a Manhattan jail awaiting trial. Epstein was alleged to have abused over 200 women and girls.
Many of his victims argued in support of the release of documents, but administration officials have cited their privacy as a primary excuse for delaying the release — something Blanche reiterated Friday.
“There’s a lot of eyes looking at these and we want to make sure that when we do produce the materials we are producing, that we are protecting every single victim,” Blanche said, noting that Trump had signed the law just 30 days prior.
“And we have been working tirelessly since that day to make sure that we get every single document that we have within the Department of Justice, review it and get it to the American public,” he said.
Trump had lobbied aggressively against the Epstein Files Transparency Act, unsuccessfully pressuring House Republican lawmakers not to join a discharge petition that would force a vote on the matter over the wishes of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). He ultimately signed the bill into law after it passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), who introduced the House bill requiring the release of the files, warned that the Justice Department under future administrations could pursue legal action against current officials who work to obstruct the release of any of the files, contravening the letter of the new law.
“Let me be very clear, we need a full release,” Khanna said. “Anyone who tampers with these documents, or conceals documents, or engages in excessive redaction, will be prosecuted because of obstruction of justice.”
Given Democrats’ desire to keep the issue alive politically, and the intense interest in the matter from voters on both ends of the political spectrum, the fact that the Justice Department failed to meet the Friday deadline in full was likely to stoke continued agitation for the documents’ release in coming days.
In their statement Friday, Garcia and Raskin hammered on Trump administration officials — including Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi — for allegedly interfering in the release of records.
“For months, Pam Bondi has denied survivors the transparency and accountability they have demanded and deserve and has defied the Oversight Committee’s subpoena,” they said. “The Department of Justice is now making clear it intends to defy Congress itself.”
Among other things, they called out the Justice Department’s decision to move Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, to a minimum security prison after she met with Blanche in July.
“The survivors of this nightmare deserve justice, the co-conspirators must be held accountable, and the American people deserve complete transparency from DOJ,” Garcia and Raskin said.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), in response to Blanche saying all the files wouldn’t be released Friday, said the transparency act “is clear: while protecting survivors, ALL of these records are required to be released today. Not just some.”
“The Trump administration can’t move the goalposts,” Schiff wrote on X. “They’re cemented in law.”
Dozens of California National Guard troops under President Trump’s command apparently slipped out of Los Angeles under cover of darkness early Sunday morning, ahead of an appellate court’s order to be gone by noon Monday.
Administration officials would not immediately confirm whether the troops had decamped. But video taken outside the Roybal Federal Building downtown just after midnight on Sunday and reviewed by The Times shows a large tactical truck and four white passenger vans leaving the facility, which has been patrolled by armed soldiers since June.
About 300 California troops remain under federal control, some 100 of whom were still active in Los Angeles as of last week, court records show.
“There were more than usual, and all of them left — there was not a single one that stayed,” said protester Rosa Martinez, who has demonstrated outside the federal building for months and was there Sunday.
Troops were spotted briefly later that day, but had not been seen again as of Monday afternoon, Martinez said.
The development that forced the troops to leave was part of a sprawling legal fight for control of federalized soldiers nationwide that remains ongoing.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the order late Friday but softened an even more stringent edict from a lower court judge last week that would have forced the president to relinquish command of the state’s forces. Trump federalized thousands of California National Guard troops in June troops to quell unrest over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
“For the first time in six months, there will be no military deployed on the streets of Los Angeles,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement. “While this decision is not final, it is a gratifying and hard-fought step in the right direction.”
The ruling Friday came from the same three-judge panel that handed the president one of his most sweeping second-term victories this summer, after it found that the California deployment could go forward under an obscure and virtually untested subsection of the law.
That precedent set a “great level of deference” as the standard of review for deployments that have since mushroomed across the country, circumscribing debate even in courts where it is not legally binding.
But the so-called Newsom standard — California Gov. Gavin Newsom was the lead plaintiff on the lawsuit — has drawn intense scrutiny and increasingly public rebuke in recent weeks, even as the Trump administration argues it affords the administration new and greater powers.
In October, the 7th Circuit — the appellate court that covers Illinois — found the president’s claims had “insufficient evidence,” upholding a block on a troop deployment in and around Chicago.
“Even applying great deference to the administration’s view of the facts … there is insufficient evidence that protest activity in Illinois has significantly impeded the ability of federal officers to execute federal immigration laws,” the panel wrote.
That ruling is now under review at the Supreme Court.
In November, the 9th Circuit vacated its earlier decision allowing Trump’s Oregon federalization to go forward amid claims the Justice Department misrepresented important facts in its filings. That case is under review by a larger panel of the appellate division, with a decision expected early next year.
Despite mounting pressure, Justice Department lawyers have doubled down on their claims of near-total power, arguing that federalized troops remain under the president’s command in perpetuity, and that courts have no role in reviewing their deployment.
When Judge Mark J. Bennett asked the Department of Justice whether federalized troops could “stay called up forever” under the government’s reading of the statute at a hearing in October, the answer was an unequivocal yes.
“There’s not a word in the statute that talks about how long they can remain in federal service,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said.
For now, the fate of 300 federalized California soldiers remains in limbo, though troops are currently barred by court orders from deployment in California and Oregon.
Times staff writers David Zahniser and Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
