The Department of Justice just dropped a bombshell that’s got transparency advocates fuming and bureaucrats scrambling.
The DOJ revealed on Wednesday that over a million additional documents tied to the late Jeffrey Epstein have surfaced, pushing back the public release of these files well past the deadline set by a new law.
President Donald Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law on November 19, mandating the DOJ to release all unclassified materials related to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking cases within 30 days.
This bill was supposed to be a win for accountability, ensuring the public could see the unredacted dirt on high-profile figures connected to these cases.
But fast forward to the deadline day, and the DOJ was already uploading tens of thousands of pages to a public website while admitting they’d miss the mark by “a couple of weeks.”
Critics pounced, slamming the department for heavy-handed redactions and dragging their feet on a law meant to shine a light on some dark corners.
Then came Wednesday’s shocker: the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York handed over a staggering new batch of over a million documents, just days after the deadline passed.
The DOJ now says this “mass volume of material” could take “a few more weeks” to sift through and redact.
Translation: don’t hold your breath for full disclosure before the new year, as this latest update hints at even longer delays.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche took to “Meet the Press” on Sunday to defend the missed deadline, citing “well-settled law” that justifies the delay due to legal necessities like protecting victim identities.
While safeguarding victims is non-negotiable, one has to wonder if this “well-settled law” excuse is just a convenient shield for bureaucratic inefficiency—or worse, selective censorship.
The transparency act does allow withholding info to protect victims, ongoing investigations, or national defense interests, but it also explicitly demands that details damaging to politically connected elites remain unredacted.
So, while the DOJ claims, “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 public’s patience is wearing thin.
Are we getting the full story, or just the parts the government deems safe for consumption?
In a world where trust in institutions is already on shaky ground, the DOJ’s slow-walking of this release—coupled with redactions that some call excessive—only fuels suspicions that the powerful are still being shielded, despite the law’s clear intent.
