Epstein files to remain online after DOJ agrees to 'expeditiously' scrub names of victims
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NEW YORK — The Jeffrey Epstein files will remain online after victims of the disgraced financier on Tuesday said the Justice Department had committed to “expeditiously” scrubbing their identities from a tranche of case files released to the public, creating what one woman called a “careless and dangerous” situation.
Lawyers for the women had alerted judges in Manhattan to “an unfolding emergency” after the DOJ on Friday published some 3 million documents to its website that exposed the names of nearly 100 victims. They had asked the DOJ to redact the women’s identities or temporarily take the files down.
In a Tuesday order, Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Berman, who presides over Epstein’s case, called off a hearing on the matter that was to take place Wednesday, after victims’ lawyers reported productive discussions with the government.
“We trust that the deficiencies will be corrected expeditiously and in a manner that meaningfully protects victims from further harm,” attorney Brittany Henderson wrote Tuesday to Berman and Judge Paul Engelmayer, who presides over Ghislaine Maxwell’s case.
“We appreciate the Court’s willingness to revisit these issues if full and timely compliance is not achieved.”
The DOJ’s Friday release came more than a month after an initial release of several thousand documents and the legal deadline to share the totality of its materials with the public under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, barring information that could identify victims or hinder active investigations. Trump officials had excused blowing the deadline by claiming they were focusing on redacting victims’ identities.
Nearly 100 women were identified “thousands” times in the files released Friday, Henderson told Berman and Engelmayer in a filing Sunday, “despite repeated representations that redaction was the sole reason for delayed release and DOJ’s acknowledgment that failure to redact would cause extraordinary harm to victims.”
“There is no conceivable degree of institutional incompetence sufficient to explain the scale, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred—particularly where the sole task ordered by the Court and repeatedly emphasized by DOJ was simple: redact known victim names before publication,” Henderson wrote.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton’s office has been handling the redactions. A spokesman declined to comment on Tuesday. The Daily News contacted the DOJ’s Washington, D.C., office but did not receive a response.
In a filing Monday, Clayton told the court thousands of documents inadvertently naming victims had been removed, blaming the revelations on “technical or human error.” He said the documents would be posted back online after a more thorough redaction process, “ideally within 24 to 36 hours.”
But some women who had complained were met by incompetence, according to the Sunday letter to the court from Henderson and attorney Brad Edwards. One victim, who was a minor when Epstein abused her, was named 20 times in a single document, the letter detailed. She flagged the violation to the DOJ, which claimed it would remove the references, but only took down three instances. The 17 other references remain online.
“I have never come forward! I am now being harassed by the media and others. This is devastating to my life,” one woman was quoted in Henderson’s letter to the court.
“Wasn’t the only job to redact victim names? Hasn’t every person with authority promised repeatedly that victims have nothing to worry about because our names will be redacted? Hasn’t the entire delay of producing documents been allegedly because you have been redacting names?”
The records disclosures come after Congress passed the Epstein files legislation in November in response to sustained public pressure to unmask influential people who may have known about or participated in the late financier’s abuse, though it appears far more identities of victims have been exposed.
The scandal has dogged President Trump, who maintained a yearslong friendship with Epstein. At a press conference on Tuesday, he lashed out at a reporter for asking about survivors of Epstein’s abuse who feel they still haven’t gotten justice.
“It’s time for the country to get on to something else,” Trump said.
One client of Henderson and Edwards said in the Sunday filing that the Trump administration’s reckless rollout had renewed her trauma.
“The release of this information is not only profoundly distressing and retraumatizing, but it also places me and my child at potential physical risk,” the woman was quoted in the lawyers’ letter.
“This situation has reopened trauma I have worked diligently to overcome, and it has done so in a manner that feels both careless and dangerous.”
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