WASHINGTON—The Justice Department is releasing more than three million additional pages, videos, images and other files related to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, a top official said Friday, after a legally mandated review of documents intended to shed new light on a scandal that has reverberated for years.
That brings the total number of pages the department has produced related to Epstein, the convicted sex offender, to 3.5 million, he said. Justice Department lawyers made swaths of redactions to the materials with an eye toward protecting victims’ identities, Blanche said, blacking out women depicted in images and videos aside from Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The “release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference. The latest round of releases, which began Friday, included three million pages, more than 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images, he said.

Epstein was once a wealthy, well-connected figure who socialized with powerful individuals in political, corporate and academic circles. But public revelations of his crimes have since turned the spotlight on those associations and fueled calls for the release of more information. Being mentioned in the files isn’t an indication of wrongdoing, and many of those associations have become public knowledge over the years.

Among those associates is President Trump. The continuing release of the Epstein files has also kept Trump’s past relationship with Epstein in the spotlight. Trump has said he cut off ties before Epstein was first arrested in 2006. Trump has complained about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the files, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

“I can assure that we complied with the statute…We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect or not protect anybody,” Blanche said. “There’s a hunger and thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents.”

He added later, “I hope the work the men and women did in this department over the past two months hopefully is able to bring closure” for Epstein’s victims.

Friday’s release contained a 2002 email from Melania Trump that appears to be sent to Maxwell, praising her appearance in a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, and emails coordinating several planned visits by Elon Musk to Epstein’s private island. The visits all appear to have been canceled, the emails show.

The White House, the first lady’s office and Musk didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

The Justice Department began the much-anticipated document dump last month, releasing thousands of pages in a scramble to comply with the Dec. 19 deadline set in the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act passed by Congress in November and signed by President Trump.

But the Justice Department missed the deadline, releasing only a fraction of the documents under review, and failed to explain redactions as required by the law. Hundreds of department employees have spent the past two months working to review and redact victim-identifying information from the files. Blanche said they pored over six million pages. He noted various exemptions under the law but said, “there’s not some tranche of super-secret documents about Jeffrey Epstein that we’re withholding.”

Epstein victims and others have complained that the Justice Department has been overly aggressive with redactions, withholding material that should be public, while in other cases improperly disclosing victims’ identities.

Brad Edwards , an attorney for dozens of Epstein victims, said he’s heard from clients on Friday that some of their names were exposed in the latest files. He said the Justice Department was provided the names of victims in advance, and he has been in touch with the government. “We started typing in names, particularly those who had never been publicly known, and realized the victims were right,” he said. “This is going to have catastrophic consequences for so many victims.”

Asked for comment, a Justice Department spokeswoman referred to a letter sent to Congress, saying it would promptly add any necessary redactions.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), who co-authored the transparency act, asked a federal judge to appoint a special master to oversee the release. On Jan. 21, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer denied the request.

Allegations that Epstein had been sexually abusing girls became public in 2006, and he was arrested that year. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors to engage in prostitution, under a deal with prosecutors in Florida. Epstein died in 2019 in jail after he was arrested a second time and charged by federal prosecutors with sex-trafficking conspiracy. A New York medical examiner ruled his death a suicide .

Epstein’s associate Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in 2021 of sex-trafficking offenses and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Maxwell has filed a habeas petition seeking her release, claiming that new evidence undermines her conviction.

The documents being released involve unclassified materials related to Epstein and Maxwell. They could include travel records, internal government emails, witness interviews and other records related to Epstein’s death and the government’s investigations into Epstein and Maxwell.

Many records, including surveillance videos, appear to be related to the Bureau of Prisons investigation into Epstein’s death.