The Justice Department Friday began publishing hundreds of thousands of pages from the long-concealed “Epstein files,” following months of pressure from both political parties in Congress and many of Epstein’s sex-trafficking victims.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said “several hundred thousand documents,” were to be released by a Friday midnight deadline mandated under a bipartisan bill signed by President Trump last month.
Additional files will be made public in the next few weeks, he said.
The files appeared on the Justice Department website before 4 p.m. and are categorized by type. The material includes video footage of the New York City jail where Epstein committed suicide, flight logs, Epstein’s contact book and an entire redacted list of 254 masseuses.
Democrats on Friday threatened “prosecution” of anyone who attempts to conceal information in the sex offender’s files and said the Justice Department would be violating the law if it failed to produce all of the material by midnight.
Thousands of documents have already been released over the past year by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after it subpoenaed the Justice Department for the information. The documents made public so far included photos, emails and other material exposing Epstein’s accumulation of young women and his connections to powerful, wealthy and influential men.
The most recent previous dump led to the resignation of Harvard professor and former Clinton Treasury Secretary and Obama economic advisor Larry Summers. Emails showed Mr. Summers remained a close friend to Epstein despite his conviction on charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor and despite lawsuits from women who accused him of sexually abusing them.
Epstein was an accused sex trafficker facing federal prosecution for victimizing underaged girls when he committed suicide in his New York City jail cell in 2019.
Mr. Trump, a former Epstein pal, promised during his 2020 campaign to release all of the Epstein files, but his Justice Department held back some of the documents. The secrecy angered Democrats and the GOP MAGA base who accused the Trump administration of covering up the powerful men who victimized the girls.
On Friday, Mr. Blanche told Fox News Friday the Justice Department is working to protect identities of the victims, which likely means redactions in the released material.
Mr. Blanche also told Fox not every document in the files will be made public Friday despite the deadline.
More files, he said, will be released in the coming weeks.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers who authored the legislation forcing the release of the files said all of the documents must be made public by the mandated deadline.
“Any person who attempts to conceal or scrub the files will be subject to prosecution under the law,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, Washington Democrat.
Epstein and Mr. Trump were neighbors in Palm Beach and were friends in the ’80s, ’90s and early 2000s.
The two had a falling out over a real estate deal in 2004 and Mr. Trump said he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club in 2007 after Epstein hired one of his club employees, Virginia Guiffre, who later became a prominent Epstein sex trafficking victim.
Epstein’s circle of friends included former President Bill Clinton; Andrew Mountbatten Windsor (the former Prince Andrew), who settled a lawsuit with Guiffre and lost his royal title over his Epstein friendship, and tech billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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