The US Department of Justice has released less than 1% of the so-called Epstein files, a court filing has revealed, as Democrats step up criticism of the Trump administration’s “lawlessness” for keeping records under seal. The department conceded that only 12,285 documents, totalling 125,575 pages, relating to the disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein have been published to date, despite a federal law requiring the vast majority to be released by 19 December.
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, wrote a five-page update to Paul Engelmayer, the federal New York judge overseeing the case, on Monday, asserting that efforts to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims were a priority, and had slowed the process. “There are more than two million documents potentially responsive to the Act that are in various phases of review,” she wrote in the letter co-signed by Todd Blanche, her deputy, and Jay Clayton, US attorney for the southern district of New York.
Democrats, however, remain determined to press the justice department over the Epstein documents. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, accused the department of failing to submit a required unredacted list to Congress “of all government officials and politically exposed persons” named or referenced in the files. “It’s been 17 DAYS since the Trump DOJ first broke the law and failed to release all the Epstein files,” he said on X.
The releases so far, Schumer said, were heavily redacted, and contained “none of the key documents, and no new information on the 10 alleged Epstein co-conspirators”. Blanche insisted last week that the department was committed to “transparency and protecting victims”, and that hundreds of people had sacrificed time over the holidays to work on the case.
Documents published in the first tranches of releases since 19 December have offered some insight into Epstein’s operation, facilitated by his friend Ghislaine Maxwell, but no major new revelations. Marina Lacerda, a victim of Epstein, said she wanted the British former royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to be “brought to justice” in the US. One of the papers detailed alleged efforts by Mountbatten-Windsor to get Maxwell to fix him up with “inappropriate friends”. Mountbatten-Windsor has denied any illegal behaviour.
