Epstein files: 2 million records in various stages of review, says Justice Department

The Justice Department said in a new court presentation monday night that there are more than 2 million “potentially compliant” Epstein Records Transparency Act documents that are currently in various phases of review.

Federal prosecutors said that “in the coming weeks” about 400 department attorneys in Washington, D.C., New York and Florida “will dedicate all or a substantial portion of their workday to the Department’s efforts to comply with the Act.”

The initiative will be staffed by Justice Department attorneys from the Criminal and Homeland Security Divisions and will also include the assistance of more than 100 FBI analysts with experience handling sensitive victim materials, according to the letter from Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer.

“Many of the Department’s attorneys engaged in this review have experience in issues related to victim privacy, which is necessary given the nature of the materials and the types of documents that require careful drafting,” Clayton wrote. “While the commitment of Department staff to this effort has been substantial in breadth and impressive effort, much work remains to be done.”

The letter does not indicate a total page count for the millions of records under review and does not provide a specific time frame for when the DOJ expects to complete the work or when to expect its next public disclosure. The deadline set by Congress for the release of all investigative files related to Epstein was December 19.

So far, the Justice Department says it has published in its “Justice Department Epstein Library” 12,285 documents totaling about 125,000 pages.

DOJ filing follows ABC News reported last week that the Justice Department had recently identified more than 5 million records that may be subject to disclosure under the law.

In a footnote to Monday’s court filing, the DOJ indicates that it expects that a “significant portion” of about 1 million newly identified FBI records may be duplicative of others already collected by the DOJ for review, but those documents “still need to undergo a processing and deduplication process.”

Clayton’s letter on Monday also notes that the DOJ has received “dozens” of inquiries from alleged victims and their representatives requesting that materials already posted on the DOJ website be further redacted to protect victims’ privacy interests.

The Justice Department will modify its procedures in the future “to better ensure the protection of victims’ identifying information,” according to the court filing.

“The Department remains committed to providing the greatest possible protection for the privacy interests of victims and their families,” the letter states.