Millions of investigative files relating to Jeffrey Epstein are being released by the US Justice Department.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages, 2,000 videos and some 180,000 images.
The files, posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.
The White House had ‘nothing to do’ with the review, including ‘what to redact or not redact’, Blanche said.
They were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
After missing a December 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted, or blacked out. This is to protect the identities of victims of sexual abuse.
The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to 5.2 million, including duplicates, the department said.
The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.
Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Donald Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of former President Bill Clinton.
Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. Both have said they had no knowledge that he was abusing underage girls.
Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents, who described interviews they had with numerous girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
In 2008 and 2009, he served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18.
At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his home in Palm Beach.
But the US attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims.
She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.
US prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls.
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