Washington DC [US], December 20 : The US Department of Justice has announced it won't meet the Friday deadline to release all Jeffrey Epstein-related documents, citing the need to protect victims' identities and sensitive information, Politico reported.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche stated that while hundreds of thousands of documents have been released, more will follow in the coming weeks.
In an interview with Fox News, Blanche said the department would "release several hundred thousand documents today."
But he acknowledged Friday's release would not encompass all of the DOJ's documents for the investigation into the late financier.
However, the DOJ said in a post on X about a Politico report, "Ridiculous framing. The DOJ is releasing a massive tranche of new documents that the Biden and Obama administrations refused to release. The story here: the Trump administration is providing levels of transparency that prior administrations never even contemplated. The initial deadline is being met as we work diligently to protect victims."
https://x.com/DOJSpox47/status/2002088420588540212?s=20
"I expect that we're going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks, so today several hundred thousand and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more," Blanche said. "There's a lot of eyes looking at these and we want to make sure that when we do produce the materials we are producing, that we are protecting every single victim."
The delay indicates the White House is in apparent conflict with a law US President Donald Trump signed in November that mandated the wholesale release of all non-exempt Epstein information within 30 days, according to Politico.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined a request to expand on Blanche's comments, saying they speak for themselves, as per Politico.
"President Trump signed that law 30 days ago," Blanche told Fox News. "And we have been working tirelessly since that day to make sure that we get every single document that we have within the Department of Justice, review it and get it to the American public."
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Thomas Massie (R-Ky) who led the successful discharge petition effort to trigger eventual passage of the law pointed to a video on X on Thursday where he indicated he'd know whether the administration had met his disclosure standards. Following conversations with lawyers for Epstein's victims, he believes the FBI has at least 20 names of men who are accused of committing sex crimes.
"If we get a large production on December 19, and it does not contain a single name of any male who is accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape or any of these things, then we know they haven't produced all the documents," he said. "It's that simple."
Ro Khanna (D-California), who partnered with Massie to push the discharge petition, said in a statement that "if DOJ is producing real documents of interest that are not overly redacted, and if they are clear about a timeline for full production, then that is a positive step."
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