Extreme redactions undercut Epstein files release

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Rather than settling matters, the government’s release of the Epstein files has had the opposite effect.

Heavy redactions of files released by the Justice Department fly in the face of a new law Congress passed to require the document dump, sparking new calls for transparency and questions about coverups.

“Nobody is buying this bogus Epstein release,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who co-wrote the law, which most congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump only supported after months of pressure for transparency.

Photos featuring former President Bill Clinton were among the first released, meeting the new law’s deadline. Documents mentioning Trump came days later, as the Christmas holiday neared.

Survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail while awaiting trial, are also far from satisfied.

“Quite frankly, a complete mess,” said Helene Weiss, whose law firm represents some Epstein survivors, during an appearance on CNN. “They failed to do their job,” Weiss said of the DOJ release.

The redactions have kept most victims from searching in the documents for anything related to their cases. On the other hand, at least one survivor who wanted to remain anonymous saw her name published.

30 days and hundreds of DOJ lawyers

Part of the issue is that the law, passed November 19, gave the DOJ only 30 days to comply with calls to vet and release hundreds of thousands of pages of information.

That was meant to be the deadline for release of the documents in a searchable format. But Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said documents will continue to be released over the coming two weeks. That’s a time when many Americans will be more focused on their holiday plans or New Year’s resolutions.

More than 200 government lawyers were assigned to the vetting, according to a letter Blanche, a former personal attorney to Trump, wrote to lawmakers on Friday. Some 1,200 names of victims or their relatives were redacted.

Tuesday releases referring to Trump were not redacted

Documents released early Tuesday morning were the first to include large numbers of references to Trump, which were not redacted. In a statement, the DOJ said references to Trump included new revelations about his plane travel with Epstein in the 1990s and some other wild and uncorroborated stories that the DOJ called “untrue and sensationalized claims,” or, in one specific case, “fake.”

Authorities have not accused Trump of any wrongdoing or charged him with any crimes in connection with Epstein.

While those details were released, it is the redactions that have supercharged complaints about the DOJ.

Some redactions were expected; all will have to be explained

The law laid out specific reasons to allow redactions. These include documents that contain:

• personally identifiable information of victims

• contain child sexual abuse materials

• would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution,

• contain images of death, physical abuse, or injury of any person

• information that must be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy

Everyone should learn more about the redactions in the coming weeks, when the DOJ is required to justify each one in a report to Congress.

Blanche has defended the release, arguing the redactions were meant to protect people.

“Imagine if we had released tons of information around victims? That would be the true crime,” he said on NBC on Sunday.

Redactions outside the law to protect ‘privilege’

But there are whole pages and reports that are redacted, suggesting the redactions went much further than they needed to. Blanche’s letter to Congress acknowledges the redactions were applied with other laws in mind, in addition to the Epstein disclosure law.

More troubling is Blanche’s claim in the letter, not citing any statue, that redactions were made to protect the long-standing privileges around the deliberative process, work products and attorney-client privilege.

Blanche said Congress has long acknowledged these privileges, but Massie pointed out that the law Congress passed specifically demands DOJ communications that would include the deliberative process.

“The DOJ assertions for withholding information from Congress and the public wouldn’t survive first contact with the courts,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University and founder of the website JustSecurity, in a post on X.

A hard job! But not impossible

One former prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Sarah Krissoff, said on CNN that it was always going to be a difficult task.

“It is a hard job to redact these documents appropriately,” she said, noting lawyers had to go through hundreds of thousands of documents “page by page.”

Krissoff said the DOJ has what it needs to do a better job.

“They have thousands of lawyers, top lawyers, who could be working on these documents following a protocol and making decisions,” she said.

Blanche denied that any documents were withheld or redacted for political sensitivity. He said a photo of a drawer, apparently on Epstein’s property, that included a picture of Trump surrounded by women was initially pulled down so that lawyers could verify the image did not contain victims, not because it featured Trump.

“We learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up, so we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump,” Blanche said on NBC. The comments may do little to convince those shocked at the level of redactions in the files so far and wondering what’s behind all the blackouts.

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