The US Justice Department has missed a deadline to release all Jeffrey Epstein files, with over two million documents still under review and less than 1% of the total made public so far.
WASHINGTON: The US Department of Justice said it is still reviewing more than two million documents potentially related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Officials pushed more than two weeks past a December 19 deadline to release all files connected to him, as mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
In a letter to a federal judge, DOJ officials said the documents remained “in various phases of review.”
About 12,285 documents comprising more than 125,000 pages had already been publicly released in response to the law.
This represents less than 1% of the tranche currently in review.
The DOJ said it identified on December 24 more than one million files not included in its initial review.
Some documents appeared to be duplicates but would still need “processing and deduplication,” the letter noted.
“Substantial work remains to be done,” said the letter, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and others.
More than 400 DOJ attorneys will spend “the next few weeks” reviewing the documents.
At least 100 FBI employees trained in handling “sensitive victim information” will assist the effort.
The officials said they must “manually” review the documents for “victim identifying information.”
US President Donald Trump is facing strong pushback from Democrats for failing to release all files in a timely manner.
The Trump administration has defended its handling, noting the need to protect sensitive information about victims.
