Attorney General Pam Bondi defended the Trump administration’s efforts to release the Epstein files, telling a pair of federal judges this week that hundreds of staff are pouring over the files each day and connecting for daily calls, though she admitted some “glitches” have marred the release, which was supposed to be complete last month.
“The Department has made substantial progress and remains focused on releasing materials under the [Epstein Files Transparency Act] promptly while protecting victim privacy,” Bondi wrote on Thursday in a letter along with top DOJ officials.
More than 500 reviewers are going over millions of pages of material to prepare the Epstein files for release and protect confidentiality, she added.
Part of the effort, Bondi continued, requires processing and “deduplicating” decades of documents using a central platform.
“Due to the scope of this effort, platform operations require around-the-clock attention and technical assistance to resolve inevitable glitches due to the sheer volume of materials,” Bondi said.
Indeed, there have been some irregularities with the release, alongside the department’s larger failure to meet its December 19 deadline.
Observers were alarmed to see a photo from Epstein’s office, showing a drawer with pictures of President Donald Trump, released then taken off a public portal.
Critics alleged the department was covering evidence of Trump’s long association with Epstein, but the DOJ dismissed those allegations and said it removed the image, which was later reinstated, over unrelated safety concerns.
Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, and has long distanced himself from the disgraced financier.
Despite the attorney general’s upbeat assessment of the Epstein files process, the department still faces considerable pressure to release more documents, given that it has published just over 12,000 of the more than 2 million documents it must release under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed in November.
Congressmen Ro Khan and Thomas Massie asked a federal court Monday to appoint a special master to oversee the document release.
“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the act,” they wrote.
Separately, Epstein survivors have asked the DOJ’s internal watchdog to review the release of the files.
“In the files released so far, there has been a troubling pattern of selective redactions,” the survivors wrote in a letter Wednesday to the DOJ inspector general’s office. “In multiple instances, names of individuals alleged to have participated in or facilitated abuse appear to have been redacted, while identifying details of survivors were left visible. In some cases, survivors’ names, contextual identifiers, or other information sufficient to identify them publicly were not adequately protected.”
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