A federal judge ordered the Justice Department Thursday to reveal more information from hundreds of thousands of recently released files about the case of late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein or provide a detailed explanation for why it could not do so.
US District Judge Emmet Sullivan gave the DOJ until July 2 to turn over less-redacted versions of certain documents or show why that information could not be made public.
He also ordered the Trump administration to publish a log of all redactions.
In his order, Sullivan noted that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law by President Trump this past November, “required the production of the covered documents and the redaction log by December 19, 2025. The [acting] Attorney General [Todd Blanche] conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”
Blanche, Trump’s pick to replace Pam Bondi as America’s top law enforcement officer, had been sued in late April by independent journalist and former MSNBC (now MS NOW) host Katie Phang, who charged the administration had “failed to produce the required documents within the time required. It has improperly redacted documents and failed to adequately explain those redactions. And it has either retracted, or failed to produce entirely, documents that should have been produced.”
Among the documents covered by Sullivan’s order are:
- An April 24, 2009, email in which Epstein told a correspondent whose name was withheld: “I loved the torture video.”
- A March 11, 2014, email in which someone wrote Epstein: “Thank you for a fun night … Your littlest girl was a little naughty.”
- A May 23, 2017, email in which someone told Epstein a woman they both knew was “like Lolita from Nabokov, femme miniature” and asked him: “So now I should send you her type of candidate only?”
- A prospective federal indictment of Epstein and four co-defendants out of South Florida on sex trafficking conspiracy charges in the late 2000s that was ultimately dropped in exchange for the financier pleading guilty to two state prostitution charges.
- An Oct. 8, 2019, email identifying four potential co-conspirators along with Epstein’s convicted accomplice and on-again, off-again girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
- FBI notes about a series of interviews with a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her while she was underage after Epstein introduced them.
The acting attorney general has insisted that the DOJ has no new material to release about the Epstein case, arguing that any documents the department currently has are duplicates of files already made public or contain explicit material about victims of the disgraced financier.
The Justice Department has also noted that the files contain unverified allegations that are not normally made public by law enforcement, and added in a January statement that those included “unfounded and false” claims about the president.
Epstein, 66, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, and speculation has swirled ever since surrounding his connections to the rich and powerful — including Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and the former Prince Andrew, Duke of York.
