Frustration is mounting contained in the Justice Department as it races to redact 1000’s of pages of recordsdata associated to Jeffrey Epstein earlier than they should be launched Friday, a number of sources conversant in the method advised NCS.
A considerable variety of redactions are wanted, one of many sources mentioned, and the paperwork every lawyer is processing since Thanksgiving week can quantity greater than 1,000 — a time-consuming process that doubtless will come down to the wire. The sensitivities of govt and authorized privateness, victims’ protections and different considerations all may play in to the alternatives the attorneys should make when it comes to potential redactions.
Lawyers engaged on the Epstein recordsdata at the DOJ’s National Security Division additionally imagine they aren’t getting clear or complete course on how to take advantage of info obtainable below the legislation, a number of sources mentioned.
Counterintelligence specialists have been requested to drop practically all of their different work to course of the Epstein paperwork, two folks mentioned, however some attorneys declined to take part.
An act of Congress has mandated the Trump administration release troves of Epstein-related documents — from grand jury information, to FBI recordsdata and inside Justice Department discussions — by Friday, after months of the Trump administration promising and never delivering transparency.
The scenario means that the persistent political headache linked to transparency for the Epstein recordsdata could not disappear with Friday’s deadline.
In no matter turns into public on Friday, sources mentioned there’ll nonetheless be in depth quantities of data redacted — the kind of lack of transparency that the American public could proceed to scrutinize.
Some authorized doc specialists are already making ready for the chance that the Department of Justice’s launch of the recordsdata could have extra redactions than what’s required, and that there could also be errors in what’s redacted and what’s made public. Mistakes particularly may relate to the disclosure of delicate private info, due to the amount of paperwork and how briskly the attorneys have had to work, the sources mentioned.
“Either they’re going to screw it up or they’re going to withhold things. It wouldn’t surprise me,” mentioned one lawyer exterior the Justice Department who’s awaiting the discharge to decide whether or not there must be complaints made about how the redaction work was executed. “Some of it may be incompetence as much as deliberate.”
The Epstein recordsdata are huge, and 1000’s of information held by totally different sections of federal legislation enforcement have to be picked by way of to decide whether or not they’re responsive to the transparency legislation’s necessities or want to be redacted due to numerous confidentiality guidelines and to defend Epstein’s victims.
There are solely 4 pages the attorneys have been given as inside steerage to observe to make the redactions, one of many sources mentioned. And practically the entire pointers the attorneys have obtained articulate exemptions to the transparency legislation.
There are additionally logistical complications within the work. Duplicates in what the attorneys are working by way of haven’t been taken out of the cache, one supply advised NCS. That creates extra of a chance there will not be constant redactions throughout the paperwork or that redactions could also be executed incorrectly in spots. Plus it provides a whole lot of pages extra for attorneys to course of than what they usually would have to deal with if the duplicates have been taken out.
The Justice Department has flubbed redactions in an enormous doc manufacturing already this yr. When the National Security Division labored on releasing 60,000 pages associated to the Kennedy assassination earlier this yr, in one other drop-everything process with a deadline, social safety numbers and different non-public info of greater than 400 former congressional staffers and others have been mistakenly made public, in accordance to the Washington Post.
The stakes are excessive for girls who suffered abuse below Epstein.
Some Epstein victims have mentioned they really feel as in the event that they’re at nighttime on how the recordsdata are being ready for the discharge, in accordance to NCS reporting earlier this week. The Epstein survivors who spoke lately advised NCS that they’d gotten no outreach from the DOJ forward of the recordsdata’ launch.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to remark for this text.
The Justice Department’s National Security Division inherited the redaction work from the FBI after the legislation was handed for transparency on the Epstein recordsdata.
It’s shocking to many nationwide safety legislation specialists that that’s who’s doing the work, given the division’s historic emphasis on categorized issues and the dearth of a nexus between Epstein and nationwide safety pursuits.
Several sources mentioned, nevertheless, that’s the place the manpower is at the Justice Department this yr.
The newest spherical of Epstein redaction work began in fervor over Thanksgiving, shortly after Congress handed the transparency act.
The FBI had beforehand executed an identical push on redactions earlier within the Trump administration. During that effort, in response to an over-promising of transparency by Attorney General Pam Bondi that the division didn’t ship, brokers worked around the clock, some in in a single day shifts that supplanted different menace investigations the FBI was engaged on.
The nationwide safety attorneys aren’t among the many Justice Department division that classically handles doc processing, and even intercourse crimes or conspiracies, as had been alleged of the late Epstein and his convicted paramour Ghislaine Maxwell. A unique a part of the Justice Department the place attorneys deal with Freedom of Information Act requests are extra usually tasked to deal with doc redaction tasks, particularly earlier than this Trump administration. The nationwide safety part additionally isn’t the workplace that investigated Epstein years in the past – one other group that might weigh in on the recordsdata and transparency.
Still, the nationwide safety division has beforehand dealt with substantial redaction tasks this yr for subjects that aren’t core to their authorized work – together with these associated to releases of the Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy assassination historic recordsdata.
While the National Security Division has been gutted throughout this Trump administration, it’s nonetheless many dozens of attorneys robust. Those attorneys are skilled in working with delicate information, with in depth, elaborate redaction wants.
NCS’s Casey Gannon and MJ Lee contributed to this report.