The first sign of trouble came when Justice Department leadership, sworn and ordinarily inclined to follow the law, casually blew off their statutory due date. The Epstein Files Transparency Act — passed 427-1 in the House, unanimously affirmed in Senate, and then signed by the President — required that DOJ “shall” (not “may”) produce “all” (not “some”) documents within 30 days of the law’s November 19 enactment. Yet when the December 19 deadline hit, Justice Department leadership channelled the Fast Times at Ridgemont High stoner Jeff Spicoli to explain their unlawful delinquency: Just couldn’t make it on time.
Things spiraled from there. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reassured Congress that DOJ was really, really trying its hardest and would finish its work “over the next two weeks.” Yet as the Justice Department sporadically dropped additional document “tranches” throughout the Christmas holiday, Blanche announced that prosecutors had “uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.” (“Uncovered” is a charitable word choice, given that the documents mostly sat in DOJ’s own internal files.) We presently have no idea where the overall production stands. Has DOJ released, say, 95% of the Epstein files? 50%? 22%? The Justice Department itself seems not quite sure.
Compounding the problem, the rollout of the so-called “Epstein Library” was riddled with bush-league errors. The word-search function – specifically required by the Act – didn’t work for hours after the initial production went live, surely resulting in countless searches for “Trump” (or “Clinton”) that produced no results. (Now each yields over 300.) Thousands of documents, some relating to Trump, mysteriously disappeared from the database and then resurfaced hours later without explanation. And the Justice Department offered up a mishmash of internally inconsistent redactions. Some names were surgically removed from longer narratives – but, other times, DOJ apparently used a paint roller to black out entire hundred-plus page documents. Worst of all, DOJ unforgivably failed to fully redact victim identifying information, as required by the Act – this after Blanche crowed that “[p]rotecting victims is of the highest priority for President Trump, the Attorney General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Justice.” Alas.
But the Justice Department’s bungled rollout shouldn’t distract from an even more serious problem: its open disregard of the law’s substantive commands.
DOJ leadership and politicians alike are fond of praising themselves for seeking “transparency” on the Epstein files. If they’re truly concerned with shedding meaningful light here, they’d focus on two overarching questions. First, why did federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida give Epstein an outrageous state-level sweetheart plea deal in Florida in 2007, when they had ample basis to prosecute him federally and lock him up for decades? And, second, who else beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell participated in this massive child sex trafficking conspiracy?
The Act, as written, is intentionally geared towards these questions. Yet DOJ leaders have simply reinterpreted the law to their own preference and convenience, and have left victims and the public largely in the dark on these key issues.
For example, Blanche has declared that the Justice Department will not release documents subject to the “deliberative process privilege” – lawyer-talk for internal prosecutorial communications about whether to investigate, charge, or plead out a given case. The problem is that the Epstein Act specifically requires disclosure of precisely those documents: “Internal DOJ communications, including emails, memos, [and] meeting notes, concerning decisions to charge, not charge, investigate, or decline to investigate Epstein or his associates.” There’s a fair argument that it’s a lousy idea for prosecutors to publicly reveal their internal deliberations – but the Act specifically requires it. So long as Justice Department leadership refuses to follow the law as written, we’ll never learn what really happened inside the Southern District of Florida in 2007. How much evidence did prosecutors have? Why did then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta let Epstein plead out to piddly state-level charges? Why did prosecutors ignore and at times mislead Epstein’s victims? Did anyone inside DOJ object?
Similarly, the Justice Department has decided to redact the names of ten individuals labeled as “co-conspirators” by FBI agents working the case. And it appears that prosecutors have decided to black out the names of various others who, according to investigative documents, allegedly had or sought sexual contact with minors. Yet the Act specifically requires to the contrary that “No record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.” No sentient human being actually believes that only two people – Epstein and Maxwell – were entirely responsible for an international child sex trafficking ring that victimized hundreds of underage girls. Yet nobody else has been charged. And we’ll never learn the identities of other culpable facilitators and participants, so long as the Justice Department refuses to follow the law’s plain language.
Relatedly, Justice Department leadership seemingly has no clue whether they’re actually criminally investigating anybody. In July 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel released a formal memo concluding that, after an exhaustive review of all material known to the Justice Department, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation of uncharged third parties.” Four months later, President Donald Trump called for an investigation of Bill Clinton and other Democrats; Bondi promptly announced that she had assigned the matter to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, who “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.” But just weeks later, upon the initial release of the Epstein files, Blanche declared that “nor did it [the Justice Department] uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” So what’s the SDNY doing then? Investigating nobody? Bondi, Blanche, and Patel need to get together and figure out if they’re actually criminally investigating anybody, or not.
The best available information on the key remaining questions resides in internal DOJ documents, and the Act calls for production of precisely those materials. Yet, for all their self-congratulatory bluster about “transparency,” Bondi and Blanche have decided to ignore the law and to reinterpret it to their own convenience. Unless that changes, Epstein’s victims and the general public alike will never get meaningful accountability.
