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The 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<\/a>\u2019s \u201clawlessness\u201d for keeping records under seal.<\/p>\n The department conceded that only 12,285 documents, totalling 125,575 pages, relating to the disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> have been published<\/a> to date, despite a federal law requiring the vast majority to be released by 19 December.<\/p>\n Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, wrote a five-page update<\/a> to Paul Engelmayer, the federal New York judge overseeing the case, on Monday, asserting that efforts to protect the identities of Epstein\u2019s victims were a priority, and had slowed the process.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are more than two million documents potentially responsive to the Act that are in various phases of review,\u201d she wrote in the letter co-signed by Todd Blanche, her deputy, and Jay Clayton, US attorney for the southern district of New York.<\/p>\n \u201cThis work has required and will continue to require substantial department resources.\u201d She said about 400 justice department lawyers were supporting \u201cefforts to comply\u201d, along with 100 FBI document analysts trained in handling sensitive material.<\/p>\n Democrats, however, remain determined to press the justice department over the Epstein documents despite other stories such as the capture by US forces of Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>, dominating the news cycle.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are they trying to hide?\u201d Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said in a post to X<\/a> on Monday accusing the justice department of failing to submit a required unredacted list to Congress \u201cof all government officials and politically exposed persons\u201d named or referenced in the files.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been 17 DAYS since the Trump DOJ first broke the law and failed to release all the Epstein files. It\u2019s been 14 DAYS since Trump\u2019s DOJ released anything at all \u2013 with the DOJ doing everything in its power to delay and obfuscate.\u201d<\/p>\n The releases so far, he said, were heavily redacted, and contained \u201cnone of the key documents, and no new information on the 10 alleged Epstein co-conspirators\u201d.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cThe Trump DOJ\u2019s lawlessness must stop. I will do everything in my power to ensure all the files come out.\u201d<\/p>\n Blanche insisted last week<\/a> that the department was committed to \u201ctransparency and protecting victims\u201d, and that hundreds of people had sacrificed time over the holidays to work on the case.<\/p>\n \u201cIt truly is an all-hands-on-deck approach and we\u2019re asking as many lawyers as possible to commit their time to review the documents that remain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cRequired redactions to protect victims take time but they will not stop these materials from being released.\u201d<\/p>\n The department said before Christmas that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI had uncovered more than a million more documents<\/a> not included in its initial review, and that it might need \u201ca few more weeks\u201d to comply with the law.<\/p>\n Ro Khanna, a Democratic California congressman, and Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said last month they were considering filing an inherent contempt lawsuit<\/a> against Bondi in an effort to speed up the release.<\/p>\n Documents published in the first tranches of releases since 19 December have offered some insight into Epstein\u2019s operation<\/a>, facilitated by his friend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking, but no major new revelations.<\/p>\n Marina Lacerda, a victim of Epstein who met him when she was 14, spoke to the Guardian<\/a> last month after the first batch of papers was released. She said she wanted the British former royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, a close friend of Epstein and Maxwell, to be \u201cbrought to justice\u201d in the US.<\/p>\n One of the papers detailed alleged efforts by Mountbatten-Windsor, once known as Prince Andrew, to get Maxwell to fix him up with \u201cinappropriate friends\u201d while she sought \u201cfriendly and discreet and fun\u201d girls for him. Mountbatten-Windsor has denied any illegal behavior.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The 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\u2019s \u201clawlessness\u201d 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/US-justice-department-has-released-less-than-1-of-Epstein.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16110,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108\/revisions\/16110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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