Justice Department prepares to drop trove of Epstein files as deadline looms

Department of Justice officials are in their final sprint to assemble by Friday a tranche of records related to Jeffrey Epstein, but the extent of material that will be made public remains unknown.

The DOJ could withhold large portions of the material under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bill passed last month requiring the government to release within 30 days all unclassified material in its possession related to Epstein and associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases.

The law allows the DOJ to omit or redact any references to victims and files that could jeopardize pending investigations or litigation, such as a probe Attorney General Pam Bondi recently opened in New York into Epstein’s ties to Democrats. Information could also be left out “in the interest of national defense or foreign policy,” the law says.

Friday’s release is expected to contain hundreds of thousands of pages, two sources familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital. The sources said information protected by attorney-client privilege or other standard privileges would also be redacted.

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The DOJ’s effort has involved collecting records from multiple entities, including the FBI and the Southern District of New York, and then reviewing them for responsiveness to the transparency law and making redactions.

The National Security Division was tasked with reviewing the material and was still receiving new files as of this week, the sources said, meaning more files could be made public after Friday’s deadline.

Bondi is facing intense pressure to adhere to the bill’s deadline from victim advocates and members of Congress, who have been warning nearly daily that the attorney general will face legal and political consequences if she does not deliver.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., threatened the administration not to withhold documents or abuse “narrow exemptions to hide the truth.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., one of the leading Republican voices supporting the transparency bill, posted on social media a 14-minute video on Thursday laying out his expectations. He said he anticipated seeing new names of at least 20 men, a claim that comes after the DOJ said in a memo this summer that it had reviewed all the files and found nothing that would warrant further investigation or prosecution of anyone.

“If we get a large production on Dec. 19, and it does not contain a single name of any male who’s accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape or any of these things, then we know they haven’t produced all the documents,” Massie said.

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He suggested Bondi could face legal repercussions, including possible prosecution from a future, hostile administration if the transparency law is not followed.

Friday’s expected release marks the culmination of a matter that has roiled the administration all year, beginning with Bondi enraging Trump’s base by hyping up a rollout of the case files and then failing to produce anything new. 

Other DOJ leaders, including FBI Director Kash Patel, had accused the government of hiding a damaging list of sexual predators affiliated with Epstein prior to joining the administration, but those claims have not panned out.

The issue has been one of the most divisive within the Republican Party, as President Donald Trump, who was formerly among Epstein’s many wealthy friends, also downplayed the files’ significance, upsetting a faction of his supporters. 

The president for months resisted signing the transparency bill, which had bipartisan support, but he relented as its passage became inevitable.

Alex Miller contributed to this report.