The Justice Department posted thousands of pages related to Jeffrey Epstein's and Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-trafficking cases on a public website Friday and said additional documents were forthcoming.
The trove of documents was released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law passed last month that imposed a 30-day deadline on the DOJ to publish all unclassified material related to the cases.
The files came from the DOJ, the FBI, the Southern District of New York and other entities, and they were expected to include public and nonpublic information about Epstein, a registered sex offender who faced charges of trafficking underage women before dying in prison in 2019 in what authorities said was a suicide.
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The bill also required the DOJ to release flight logs, the DOJ's internal communications about the cases, information on Epstein's death and any material about people, government entities or companies with ties to Epstein's "trafficking or financial networks."
The documents included redactions and reasons for blocking out the information. The transparency bill gave the DOJ wide latitude to withhold information that could identify victims, child pornography and material that could jeopardize open investigations or litigation. The government could also leave out information "in the interest of national defense or foreign policy," the bill said.
Because President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on Nov. 19, the statutory deadline for release is Dec. 19.
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The DOJ is already facing scrutiny for missing the cutoff date after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday's documents were incomplete during an interview with Fox News.
Blanche said he expected the government to upload "several hundred thousand more" pages in the coming couple of weeks. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned that Democrats are "working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts" to address the anticipated late files.
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