The Justice Department’s inside watchdog is launching an investigation into the DOJ’s manufacturing of files and documents related to Jeffrey Epstein as controversy continues over the handling of the case of the convicted intercourse offender.
The Inspector General will give attention to “the DOJ’s identification, collection, and production of responsive material,” it mentioned in a press release Thursday, in addition to “processes for redacting and withholding material” and the way the Justice Department addressed points following the discharge of Epstein paperwork.
The huge files collected all through investigations associated to Epstein had been ordered to be launched by Congress in a regulation that handed late final yr. Some members of Congress have ridiculed the Justice Department for over-redactions and monitoring their searches as they went by unredacted variations of the fabric.
Congress handed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November after repeated failures from the Justice Department to ship on previous guarantees that they’d be releasing data on Epstein – even materials it didn’t have, just like the long-fabled listing of contacts and co-conspirators that now-former Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed was on her desk prepared to be launched early final yr. No such listing has been produced and the Justice Department has not charged anybody past Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
Bondi was fired by President Donald Trump early this yr partly as a result of of her continued bungling of the Epstein investigation.
The DOJ’s Inspector General beforehand discovered that, after an investigation, Epstein killed himself in a jail cell in 2019. Maxwell, his longtime enterprise companion, is serving a 20-year sentence for her function in conspiring with Epstein to procure minors for him to sexually abuse.
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