I guess the DOJ hasn't a clue about what they are doing beyond "delay, delay delay."
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An undated image of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell released by the Justice Department.Credit...Department of Justice
The Justice Department said on Wednesday that it had discovered over a million more documents potentially related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — increasing the amount previously known and lengthening the time it will take to release the material.
To date, the department has released about 130,000 pages of information, some of it redacted, to comply with a law passed by Congress requiring the disclosure of most of the material about Mr. Epstein. Under the law, the administration may withhold records that identify victims or information that would “jeopardize an active federal investigation.”
The law gave the Justice Department a deadline of last Friday to release the files, and a batch of about 100,000 pages was released that day. But over the weekend, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that about a million pages of information were being reviewed, and that the full release would take a few more weeks.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department said the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, which oversaw the investigations into Mr. Epstein and his longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell,
had informed the department “that they have uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.”
Democratic lawmakers, who had criticized the Justice Department’s release of the material, immediately accused the Trump administration of violating the law mandating that the files be released by Dec. 19. “It’s outrageous that the D.O.J. has illegally withheld over one million documents from the public,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, accused the Trump administration of hiding something. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” he said in a social media post. “Release the files. Follow the law.” Since late November, the department has assigned nearly 200 lawyers from the national security division to review the documents and remove any information about victims, or anything that would compromise continuing investigations or national security.
Earlier this week, department officials sent out an emergency request for reinforcements, asking for lawyers to volunteer over the holiday break to join the effort, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal workings of the department. It is unclear how many lawyers volunteered. “We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible,” the department said on social media. It added that releasing all the material may now take “a few more weeks.”
The department’s release of material related to Mr. Epstein has not gone smoothly. After the initial release last week, some photographs were removed from the online collection because of what the department described as concerns they might contain information about victims.
One image showed a credenza with a number of photos on it, including one of President Trump. Mr. Blanche disputed that the image was removed to protect the president, and said concerns had been raised about whether that image contained any victims. The image was later restored to the collection.
A subsequent release Monday of some 30,000 pages also got off to a rough start, as the pages were available for a few hours, then taken down, then put back online.
