The Justice Department has completed its review of records related to Jeffrey Epstein and will release the documents throughout the day Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced.
“Today, we are producing more than 3 million pages, including more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images in total, that means that the department produced approximately three and a half million pages in compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a press conference at 11 a.m. ET.
The release will end the months of tension between the Justice Department, federal judges, and some lawmakers over if, and how, to release more than one million documents from the investigation into to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
But it’s not clear whether the release of documents will conclude the year-long public outcry from critics who say the department, and Pam Bondi herself, did not follow through on their promise for transparency into what investigators had uncovered in their probe into Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking.
The Justice Department has been plagued by the Epstein case since last February when Bondi said that the long-rumored “client list” was sitting on her desk for review. The DOJ later said that Bondi misspoke and was referring generally to documents from his case.
A few months later, however, the Justice Department and FBI released a memo that affirmed Epstein died by suicide, said there was no evidence of a client list, and reneged on Bondi’s promises to release investigative files. The memo sparked bipartisan outrage and eventually resulted a new transparency law passed by Congress.
