Justice Department Announces End of Epstein Files Release, Saying It Has Complied With Letter of the Law

The Justice Department is done releasing files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, Attorney General Pam Bondi has told Senate lawmakers following a testy hearing on Capitol Hill last week that shed more light than heat on the years-long investigation into the alleged decades-long sex trafficking ring. Following the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the attorney general and her deputy, Todd Blanche, filed a letter Saturday with the leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees naming more than 300 individuals, including President Trump and Ms. Bondi herself, listed in the more than 3 million files.“In accordance with the requirements of the Act, and as described in various Department submissions to the courts of the Southern District of New York assigned to the Epstein and Maxwell prosecutions and related orders, the Department releasedall ‘records, documents, communications and investigative materials in the possession of the Department’ that ‘relate to’ any of nine different categories,’” reads the letter obtained by Fox News Digital.In keeping with the legislation, the attorneys said they did not withhold or redact any records “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.” The records did include redactions of personally identifiable information of victims, child sex abuse images, physical abuse and death, and content currently under active federal investigation.The conclusion of the document release has upset several lawmakers, including Congressman Thomas Massie, who along with Democrat Ro Khanna, introduced the bill to require the document dump. Mr. Massie said Sunday that part of his anger at the DOJ stems from the withholding of documents that had previously been released but then taken down as well as the failure to bring charges against individuals who may have been part of Epstein’s criminal enterprise.“We want to be able to look at all these files. They can’t keep those documents down after they’ve already produced them,” he told ABC’s “This Week.” “This Epstein Files Transparency Act was about getting these survivors justice. We’ve got some degree of transparency but it’s called the Department of Justice, not the department of transparency,” he said. The survivors “need to see some of the men that they’ve implicated prosecuted.”Mr. Massie added that while Ms. Bondi claims to have followed the letter of the law, the release did not include “internal memos and notes and emails about their decisions on whether to prosecute or not prosecute, whether to investigate or not investigate.”The letter follows a testy hearing on Capitol Hill in which Ms. Bondi defended her department’s failure to meet the December deadline for the documents release. She said during her testimony that her deputies were moving as quickly as possible to release the files.With repeated warnings by the Department of Justice that a mention in the files is not an indication of guilt, the document release may have satisfied curiosity but has done little to advance the ongoing criminal investigation. The files contained thousands of mentions and hundreds of photos of high-profile celebrities, businessmen, and politicians, many which caused reverberations through European capitals. However, after years of expectations, the failure to charge anyone since Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 conviction for any potential crimes related to decades of alleged abuse has left a gaping hole in efforts to achieve justice for the victims. “I am so deeply angry at all the administrations that failed Epstein‘s survivors. This should be the beginning of a larger conversation about how the FBI handles allegations of sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking. We need accountability and a thorough autopsy of everything that went wrong,” Congresswoman Molly Jong-Fast wrote on Saturday.

Justice Department Announces End of Epstein Files Release, Saying It Has Complied With Letter of the Law

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